They want $10 for a sample . It hard for me to wrap my head around their pricing, but this thing still has plenty of patina!

Thanks. That target assembly is huge. I'm excited to tear it down, but a little anxious since there is no telling what I'll find in there.

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Gun Disassembly

I haven't had a ton of shop time recently. Other projects and family have been putting this on the back burner, but I had a little time to look into the gun assembly. I recently got some really accurate photos of an original gun stock from @mopar. The stock I bought is close to the original, but there are a couple of differences. I'm still deciding if I want to reshape the new stock I bought to more closely resemble an original. Before I decide that, I have to get the existing stock off the trigger mech.
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I thought this was going to be pretty easy. Tap the pin out to release it from the base, and then slide the mech out. Boy was I wrong, and while trying to do this I almost destroyed the gun mech. I clamped the gun and mount into my vise and took a punch to the pin. It wouldn't budge. I assumed it was just rust keeping it in place. I wound up hitting the punch so hard that the gun slipped out of the vise. I managed to catch it with my foot. If I wouldn't have, I have no doubt something would have broke when it hit the concrete. I've always liked taking things apart to see how they work. The #1 thing I learned doing this is if you have to force it, you're probably doing something wrong. Some force is fine, but too much and you need to step back and reevaluate how it's put together. It originally went together without that much force, and it probably should come apart the same way. I have to keep reminding myself of that. Upon closer inspection, there were two small holes on the underside of the gun.
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After clearing the dirt out of them, a small set screw was inside of each one. After removing them, I took a punch to the pin and it came out. Here is the pin. You can see where the set screw lies in a groove in the pin. I was never going to get the pin out without breaking the set screws or mangling the pin.
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Next problem was removing the slide from the top of the gun. It could slide forward and back, but sliding it back made it catch on the metal tube coming up from the bottom. Sliding it forward made it catch on the stock. Neither way allowed it to come off. I concluded it had to slide forward to come off but there just wasn't any clearance. I found a pin on the underside of the gun. I assumed like my last problem that this was what was keeping everything in place.
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After messing with it, I came really close to drilling it out. I convinced myself that was the only way, but surely they didn't peen a pin into place that couldn't be removed. After a lot of back and forth, I found the metal tube had some vertical movement to it. To remove the slide you have to push the metal tube up into the mech this allows for enough clearance above the stock to remove the slide. Then you have to rotate the tube slightly. This revels the screw I thought was a pin. Thank God I didn't drill it out. After the screw is removed, the mech can come out. I never would have guessed this thing was so complicated to disassemble. The milling on this stock to fit the mech looks complicated. I'm going to have to think on how to mill out the replacement I have. If it was just a couple of holes, it wouldn't be so bad, but there is a lot of shallow recesses. My rough plan is to do remove the bulk of the material where needed with a drill press and then do the rest of the milling using hand tools. This is going to be tricky.

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That's the best idea I've heard from someone on how to do this with the tools I have at my disposal(no milling machine). I've never inletted a rifle before. That's why I bought the cheapest stock I could find. I assume I'm going to mess it up the first time learning.
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Here's what we are shooting for.

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Cabinet Work

I knew going into this that this was a massive project, but I didn't think I would be spending this much time on the cabinet. While I was happy with how clean it is now, the wood looked terrible. It had been dried out by countless summers here in SC. The weather here is brutal on anything left outside because of the heat and humidity we get. As a woodworker I couldn't stand to look at it in such poor shape. Even though it was sanded smooth it was still faded and just all natural oils were long gone. I decided to do something about it. In for a penny in for a pound.

I decided to use Howard Feed N Wax to recondition the cabinet. I really like using this product for this sort of thing. Its feeds natural oils back into the wood and seals the oils in with a mixture of beeswax and carnauba wax. Its easy to use. Soak a rag in the stuff, wipe down the wood, and then 10-15 mins later wipe off any excess. In my case, there was zero excess. I've never seen wood drink up this stuff like the cabinet did. I did half of the coin door to show just how dry all this wood was.
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Here's some more pics. Sorry for some of the darker pics. I'm going to try taking better pictures.
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After the Feed N Wax application, the grain really pops. All the wood looks healthy and it's smooth to the touch. It shouldn't need another application after being moved to a climate controlled area.

Now, I could have stopped here, but some woodrail guys I talked to told me that they were waxing their cabinet paint with this stuff. They said it protected the paint and made it smoother which made it less prone to chipping. The paint of the cabinet is just as dry as the wood. I had thought about clearing the cabinet with a matte clearcoat to lock the paint down, but I wanted to try this first before constructing a paint booth. I did a small section of the cabinet as a test, and I'm pretty pleased. The right red square had the Feed N Wax applied. The left one didn't. In the second pic, you can clearly see the line were I applied on the right side and not on the left. It did smooth out that section and enhanced the color. I'm going to give it a couple of days to make sure there isn't any issues/reactions. If everything is good, I'll be doing the entire cabinet.
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Cabinet Work

Doesn't feel like it's been 3 months since the last time I posted. I finally got ahead of my honey-do list and had some time to work on this again. Even though the cabinet was clean, I was still getting a rat dropping smell every now and then from the cabinet. I opened it up yesterday and realized I didn't finish cleaning it. For whatever reason, I didn't clean the ball collection area. I pried up the cover and vacuumed and sanitized this area. In the last picture you can see the hardware that the legs bolts screw into. What a pain in the ass those are. Most of the screw jut turn in place and don't come out. If I could raise the cabinet up high enough, I would tap them all out from the bottom with a punch. But since I don't have a way to get under the machine, I've had to pull them the old fashioned way. I'm still trying to remove a couple of them. All of them are rusted through and full of rat hair.
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Main Target

After getting warmed up cleaning the cabinet, I had to decide between tackling the backbox wiring or the main target. I didn't feel up to tearing down the backbox wiring. So, I decided to start with the main target. The main target is HEAVY. It probably weighs about 40 pounds. I'm used to picking up my 35 pound toddler and this thing is definitely heavier.

First order of business was to remove the artwork. I didn't want to mess it up while tearing down the mechs. I got a lot of experience removing artwork that has spiral nails in it. It's hard to remove them without destroying the artwork, but if you are patient and careful, you can remove them without damage. Luckily only the artwork behind the duck targets was nailed in and only had 2 nails. The entire bottom artwork can be removed by taking out 4 screws. I lightly wiped it down and it came out really clean. Same with the other artwork. The plastic molding around it on the other hand will need some more elbow grease to get it clean.
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All artwork is removed. I'm missing chunks of the molding behind the duck targets. I'll try to source replacement, but I'm not holding my breath. You can see the motor for the duck mech and track it runs on. The bicycle chain is coated in hard black grease and barley moves. Next, I'll be removing the duck mech. I'm really interested in how it works. The duck mech is the bottom structure support for the main assembly. When I started removing it, the main assembly started flexing and collapsing inward. I stopped here to make sure I didn't break anything by removing it. I'll need another set of hands in order to take the mech out.
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Duck Mech

I got the duck mech removed yesterday. The mech has 2 metal channels that sandwich the board that holds the other artwork. The board was tapped out with a mallet.
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There are 2 sprocket assemblies on each side of the metal channels that keep the bicycle chain rotating.After I got the motor off, I found that these sprocket assemblies were gummed up and were causing the chain not to move. The motor is in good shape and spins freely. The motor is a Motoresearch 50V Spec 3323A
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The duck target are attached to the chain and ride inside the channel. When a duck target is hit, it lowers behind the artwork. On the backside of the mech, there is a ramp that any downed target will ride up which resets the target.
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The target are rivet to a piece of bike chain linkage. I want to soak the whole thing is degreaser, but I don't know if the bakelite board can be soaked like that. Anyone know if it's ok to soak them? Last bit of time in the shop was cleaning the ramp that resets the targets. I don't know what was on it, but I had to wet sand it in order to get it clean. Here is a pic of the underside that is in original condition and a pic of the topside after I finished cleaning it
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Yes. It's amazing me what they did with this game for the time it was made. This thing was built like a tank. And yes it's hard to be jealous of the guy picking rat fur out of switch stacks. Just wait until we get to the ball mech and blue fake leather!

Duck Mech

I took the plunge and took the entire duck target chain and dumped it in a container of degreaser. I check on it every couple of hours and the bakelite seemed to be fine being soaked. I took the duck target faces and the sprocket ends inside for polishing. I still don't own a tumbler. I was on the verge of buying one, but I just don't do enough small part polishing to justify the cost. The degreaser gets the parts pretty clean, but the polish takes it the rest of the way. Here's a pic of the same part before and after polishing.

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My hands do get tired holding these small parts. I have this small hand vise that I use to hold parts so that I can work on them easier

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All the parts are polished. The sprockets were oil and are spinning freely. The duck target faces also got a round of Novus 2 and Novus 1 to remove a few scratches. The silver in the targets isn't painted on. It's impregnated into the plastic. I may put mylar over the target since I won't damage the art if I need to remove the mylar, but the jury is still out on that.

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Ball Mech

While I'm waiting on the duck target chain assembly to soak, I decided to start tackling the ball mech, and further disassemble the main target. Here is what's left

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The 2 background blue pieces are molded plastic that have a leather texture. I pulled them out a gave them a good cleaning. The one of the right has been cleaned.
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There are 2 posts in the back of the target. When a ball is shot, it falls into the back of the main target. The posts make sure the ball is diverted correctly to hit a bar that closes a switch to register the score. The posts are marbled and stunning when cleaned up. Too bad they are buried in the back where no one can see them
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Ball Lift Mech

The ball lift mech is a blast gate. The balls collect in front of it. There is a small post that only allows one ball in the mech at a time. The mech is controlled by a V23-900 coil. Tough to find one of these, but this one is in nice shape and shouldn't need replacing. The coil rotates the inner cylinder of the gate allowing the air from the compressor to push the ball up a tube on the back. There is a piece of metal to guide the ball at the top onto the ball track. Then the ball rolls down the tracks using just gravity. The cover for the top of the tube is broken under one of the screws. No surprises considering how thin the plastic is. After getting it all out and in piece, part of the inner cylinder fell off. It was poorly glued on and will need to be secured again. For now, I'm going to focus back on the duck mech and get it back together. I don't want to take the game apart more then this or I have parts everywhere and it becomes to much of a mess.

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No problem. Glad you guys are enjoying it. I'm pretty floored with what they did on this one when comparing it to the Deluxe Shooting Gallery.

Duck Mech

I messed up..... bad. Anyone reading with a heart condition or a weak stomach should skip this post. I left part of the chain and the rest of the duck targets soaking on Tuesday 5/5. We had a minor family emergency(everyone is fine) and then work was riding my butt all week. On Saturday, I walk into my shop and see the part still soaking and I freaked out!!! The chain part of the mech was fine, but the duck targets were a different story.

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It's hard to see in the picture, but the duck target plastic was foggy and the silver was now a weird grey color. The metal was worse than when I put it in. I wasn't really worried about the metal. I'm very confident in bringing metal back to it original condition, but the duck targets looked wrecked. Panic set it. There was no way I was finding another set of these. Reproducing them isn't an option. Deep breath. I took the worst one and did some cleaning tests on it. Here is what it looked like to start
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I started with a 4 sided nail bufffer. Stay with me here. My wife has been purging the house while in quarantine and was throwing one of these away last week. She had been using it for years and all the grits were well worn. She looked at me weird when I grabbed it out of the throw away pile. I thought it would be good for polishing small parts. I few minutes of light rubbing and this was the result.
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At this point I was feeling better. At first I thought that the plastic had been eaten away and the impregnated image had been messed up, but it was just junk on top of the plastic. You can see around the rivets and nose area that it wasn't getting everything. I needed something for abrasive, but not abrasive enough to scratch the plastic really bad. Enter #0000 steel wool. I've used it a lot on tool restores. This worked really well. After the steel wool, I used Novus 2 and Novus 1 and the results were great. Bullet dodged. Set backs like these kill me because they are 100% self imposed. What should have been 15 mins of cleaning after the degreaser became a stress filled hour. Lesson learned

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Me too. I've never seen Simple Green do that. Must have been whatever it was contaminated with. My wife's company bought us a really nice printer/scanner for her work. I've been meaning to scan all the graphics and cards in.

Duck Mech

I carved out some time to finish the duck targets that I messed up last time. I decided to give them a evaporust bath to see if it could cut through whatever this crude was. I filled the container with just enough not to get it on the plastic targets. While soaking, something weird happened. Parts of the metal were covered in a yellow/green film. I kept taking the parts out cleaning off the film and returning them back. After a few rounds, the film stopped forming. The targets were rinsed and polished.

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Glad I'm not the only one.

Strap in. You ain't seen nothing yet.

Ball Lift Mech

While I was cleaning the duck targets, I decided to experiment with the Evaporust to see why that film was forming. I thought maybe my batch of Evaporust got contaminated. I opened a new never used batch and dropped part of the ball lift mech in. Came back half an hour later and green/yellow film on some of it. At this point, it has to be something that is on the metal that is reacting to the Evaporust. It's not a big deal and doesn't hurt anything it was just weird. I'm sanitizing every part in the game. My wife won't allow the game in the house when it's done unless it's clean enough to eat off of because of the previous tenants in the game. Maybe I'm not getting all of sanitizer off. While I was doing all this, I was browsing Pinside and came across this:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/gottlieb-atlantis-3/page/2#post-5653163

If you aren't following his restore, you should. I was floored when I saw that stepper. The parts in these games are zinc plated steel. I didn't think you could get the corrosion off the plating and get it to a mirror shine like that. Leckmeck set the bar high and I had to see if I could get mine the same way. I took the ball lift mech part out of the bath. Rinsed it and set to work on it. I know mileage varies based on the condition of the existing plating, but I have to say I'm pretty proud. Will I do this to the whole game? Maybe. I haven't decided if the juice is worth the squeeze, but it's good knowing that I can if I want to

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Main Target

I'm gearing up to put the duck mech back together. If you recall, the piece that holds the artwork on the main target slides into the duck mech. I wanted to get that squared away before reassembly. At this point in the restore, I've stopped asking myself what the filth is. Rat poop and pee? Dirt? Fungus? Doesn't matter it. I cleaned and sanitized the whole thing. I'm still hoping someone sees this and can point me in the direction of some replacement plastic channeling. Most of it is in good condition, but the one behind the duck targets it pretty much non existent from getting shot at a bunch.

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Both of you need to stop egging me on to buy a tumbler I have a shop separate from the house. So the noise for me isn't an issue. But it's hard to buy a tool that expensive that I'm not going to use a lot. But my fingers are starting to hurt

You're starting to convince me I need another tool... now convince my wife.

Now which one of you is explaining this to the boss?

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Thanks guys. Glad your enjoying it.

Ball Mech

The game had 7 red target balls when I bought it. 3 were in really rough shape. The other 4 were new and were the same balls used in the Deluxe Shooting Gallery. I assumed the 3 messed up ones were original. So, today I took out some calipers to check them. Lo and behold the 3 messed up ones were smaller by .02 inches and slightly heavier. I think the game would work with either but then I asked myself can the original balls be salvaged?

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Short answer. Yes. I started by wet sanding them with 240 grit. After that it was progressively higher grits followed by some Blitz wax. The results were great. The balls are marbled like the blue posts in the game. Hard to photograph,but they were really cool looking. As I was cleaning them I asked myself am I going too far with the restore. I mean seriously I have NOS balls. Why am I wet sanding these? Because I'm a restore addict at this point. This is going to be the nicest Midway Deluxe Shooting Gallery when I'm done dammit! Also had time to do some more of the ball blast gate. One part is still in evaporust. It's being really stubborn. I've switched it over to a vinegar bath to see if that makes a difference.

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I havent been working on the game because I was waiting for this! Finally here. Time to get back to work. 1 of 2 deliveries this week I was really looking forward to. Second delivery this week is really gonna turn some heads!
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Not gonna ruin the surprise, but it's pretty awesome.

I threw in a couple of larger pieces. After a couple of false starts (too much media), it shaking away in the shop. I'm eager to see the results

Package 2 of 2. I bought this in the beginning on March. It's been a struggle to get it down here, but it's finally here!!!!

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