I have a Bally Bow and Arrow I'm working on. The playfield was pretty rough so I knew I wanted to do some touching up right off the bat. At this point I'm wondering how much more should I do. How much imperfection should I leave?

When I first picked it up it was pretty ugly. I knew the lower blue area would need to be repainted for sure.

lowerbluebefore.jpg

The upper blue area was so discolored after cleaning I figured I'd repaint it to match the lower as well as the center arrow.

upper-blue-before.jpg

So the result was pretty good and really made the playfield pop.

lowerblueafter.jpg

Next worst were the yellows so I did those.

middleyellowbefore.jpg

middleyellowafter.jpg

Here is how it looks now.

playfieldcurrent.jpg

So the next part I need to do is the "Out hole scores double bonus" area. Question is do I repaint that area and just touch up the other cream colored areas or mix enough paint to completely repaint all of the cream areas to match? Then do I repaint the whole thing?

Even though I have more yellow I didn't repaint the yellow in the outlanes since they're almost perfect. The yellows don't match exactly but I think they're far enough away from the fresh yellow to stick out.

To be honest most of what's left isn't that bad, mostly some minor wear and swirling that couldn't be scrubbed out. Just a few wear spots. The worst spot is above the left flipper- you can see it in the first photo and a preliminary touch up in the third.

Take for example this area:

bonus.jpg

Do you think areas like this should be repainted or just leave them as is? My thinking is it will never be perfect... it's not a collector's piece and I have no sentimental attachment to it. Or will I regret not doing a full repaint later on? I'm on the fence.

Thanks for the input. I've been mulling it over and I'm still torn On the one hand I have the opportunity to make it really pretty but on the other hand I always hate to ruin or in this case cover up original paint on things. The areas I did already were necessity so it didn't fall apart but the other areas aren't.

I'm interested in hearing more pinsiders' takes on this.

Yes I did mine free hand with paint but I think decals are normally the way to go. I used a fine #2 artist's brush and black paint thinned so it's a little runny. In my case most of the circles had remnants of the original so I was using the original as a guide and filling in if that makes sense. You can see in the yellow arrowhead where the worst areas were the ridge around the sunken insert which is actually inside the circle- so the inside and outside edge of the circle are conveniently there for me. On some others where there was nothing to guide me I laid down a circle template I had from drafting and used it as a guide to eyeball it. The trick then is to "cut in" with the brush just grazing the edge like if you were painting a wall and cutting in at the ceiling. They aren't exactly perfect but from arm's length they look like it.

Thanks for the encouragement Jimmiex.

The "collect bonus" area was the next part with wood showing through that had to be repainted. The two "lite bumper and 3000 when lit" areas had lots of planking so I decided I'd just do all the white. I spent a lot of time trying to match what was under the posts but just couldn't quite get it right. What looked close to original was too brown but even a darkened, yellowed, white was too bright so I settled on something in the middle. It actually looks like a "straw" color when painted on white paper but it looks good on the playfield.

Then I tried to touch up the orange in the two "advance bonus" arrows but like everything else I figured it would just be better to repaint the whole areas. I only did the bonus areas though, not the orange between the pop bumpers or the feathers, they were good enough to leave as is. Same with the yellow outlanes- it doesn't match the other yellow I did but I think the board is busy enough and they're far enough away you don't really notice unless you're looking for it.

The last part that really needed repaint was the "out hole scores double bonus" area. I went ahead and mixed enough to repaint all the cream areas if necessary. I went ahead and did the inner outlanes instead of touching them up which looks so much better, and I think I'll do the two small areas adjacent to the center yellow arrowhead since are darkened with a lot of swirling. But I think I'll leave the upper left bonus counter area as is. It's not horrible and I don't think messing with all that lettering will be worth the work involved.

So I think I'm almost done. Here's the playfield as of now:

playfield-2015_4_15.jpg