Count me in for buying a set.

Finally got all the hardware off my original PF. Now to decide which one to put back in. Paint and re-clear the original, or apply coyote's decals to the CPR repro?

Has anybody installed and played their repro yet? I'm interested if there are any annoyances with it. One thing that irked me with the original is that the kirk post was not centered between the flippers. It looks like the same is true of the repro. I'm seriously considering plugging the hole in both of them with bamboo skewers and wood glue, and drilling my own hole dead center between the flippers. Unfortunately the compass artwork around the kirk post is a little misaligned on both the orig and repro, and fixing the position of the post actually puts it even further from the center of the compass, so it would make the PF a little less aesthetically pleasing. Was the game intentionally designed to have that post off-center?

Also, at first I thought the back of my repro came un-painted, however after a closer look, it definitely has some clear layer on there. I'm guessing some kinda oil-based polyurethane, as it's yellowed the wood slightly.

In the 2 pictures showing distance between post and left flipper, it looks like the calipers are spread too far apart, but that is just the angle of the calipers and camera (it was awkward to hold). First 2 pics are original, 2nd 2 are repro.

orig_left (resized).jpegorig_right (resized).jpegrepro_left (resized).jpegrepro_right (resized).jpeg

So, what's the recommended method for applying these? Should we slap em on, then clear coat over them? Should the area under the decals be lightly sanded first, to promote adhesion? Or are they durable and thin enough that we can just stick em down and play?

So far, so good!! You can juuuuust see the edge of the 6000 decal. I cut them with scissors as recommended. I left some room on the top of the 6000, but I cut the 2000 very close to the ink, so that may hide the edge a bit better. Hoping the edges will be completely invisible after the clear coat. The yellow arrows really help to align each decal. Big thanks to Coyote !

waterslide (resized).jpeg

Hopefully will be giving my re-painted original and the CPR repro a new clear coat tomorrow. The trouble is finding a full face respirator. Everywhere around here is sold out on account of covid.

Quick and easy. I also made sure to wipe each landing area with naptha before applying the decal. I didn't need microset or anything. Just a q-tip, water, gentle tweezers. The decals are quite forgiving. A little finnicky to get placed just right because of how easily they slide around, but it just requires an ounce of patience. Now if only there was a decal that brought the detail back to the explosion above the spinner :p

waterslide_done (resized).jpeg

I ordered a full face for a bit over $100. Going to use that in a well ventilated area. I'm going to test to make sure the mask seals well around my face; if its not a perfect seal, ill get the hardware to convert it to supplied air. Thinking i may be able to just use my airbrush compressor to supply the air haha.

Welp, my airbrush compressor doesn't produce enough CFM to act as a supplied air pump. I was considering making my own supplied air system by pumping air into my mask from a larger compressor, but to do that safely, the compressor has to be oilless, (i guess even with oil traps, some amount of oil gets through?) and oilless compressors have pretty low CFM, so it may not work well anyway. Plus those small compressors are just about useless. Anyway, i found a supplied air system that uses a squirrel cage blower on ebay for $200. Should be here in 13 days. Not excited about the wait. The portable pumps that painters use are either super expensive, or would take a month to arrive.

Well, while I had the original playfield stripped, I decided to make some insert modifications, but it turns out that meteor uses 7/8" inserts which are absolutely impossible to find. Guess it's staying the way it is.

If anybody is interested, I was able to make some 7/8" inserts in various colors. I'll post pictures soon, once I run a couple more colors.

Not great news regarding the decals; I sprayed a normal thickness coat of cc from a rattle can down, and noticed that some paint had flaked off of the decals, and they started to wrinkle up. Luckilly, after the cc dried, the decals unwrinkled mostly. Some sandpaper and another coat of cc should fix that right up. Now to be clear, Im unsure whether it was the cc, or a preceding swipe of naptha that removed some paint. My guess is the naptha, and i just didnt notice it till after the clear was applied. Plus I would expect to see the white paint chips floating around in the cc if that's what took it off. In any case, a little white paint to sharpen up the edges of the numbers, followed by another layer of cc should do the trick.

Welp, the more you know...
Luckily it's salvageable. Hopefully Kruzman knows to put a light coat down first.

Mine was smooth as glass :\

Here's my end result. There's a couple layers of clear over it. I had to paint over some digits that got washed away, and I'm not the most skilled painter, so it's not perfect, but if you're more than 2ft away, it looks just fine. A player would never notice it unless they were looking for it (heck, I didn't even notice the freaking numbers were *missing* for the first month I had the pf)

Edit: to elaborate, I painted over some digits, then added more CC. Probably going to add at least 2 more coats and do some sanding to remove that slight orange peel I got going.

20201116_181514 (resized).jpg

I mentioned it in a previous post; I'm actually not sure if it was naptha or clear coat that lifted/washed away some of the ink on the decals. I was using VM&P naptha, and spraymax 2k clear glamour high gloss CC in a rattle can. Note that the decals also wrinkled up when the CC was first applied, but flattened back out nicely before the CC set.