New to the hobby, I jumped in with both feet by deciding to do a full retheme on a 1968 Williams Student Prince.
I've been on a bit of a tiki kick lately, so the retheme will have that as the base inspiration. I plan on replacing
everything that is wood (cabinet and playfield), and the playfield will be done with veneer marquetry techniques
instead of the usual painted graphics, with the text laid on top via decals. The metal siderails and lockdown bar
will also be replaced with either laminated bamboo or a to-be-decided hardwood, and the posts are being
replaced with lathed black palm.Black palm posts.jpg

I'm slowly working through refurbishing the mechanisms (with lots of help from the VECTOR guys at the Dallas
Makerspace), and alternate that work with artwork design and woodworking on new parts. I've finished
prototyping the graphics and design for the pop bumper caps.design test.JPG
The outer skirts are lathed, then laser etched with the design.outer skirt test.JPG
The same with the cap centers, but each cap has a different face etched on it.center cap test.jpg
The centers will be slightly raised above the outer skirt, and have the bottom of the part silver leafed so
when the bumper is lit, the light will spill out onto the outer skirt. The plywood on the bottom will be removed after all the work on the lathe is finished.pinball cap02.JPGpinball cap01.JPG
After getting some feedback, I will also be adding a circle of thin lexan under the bottom of the caps that sticks out about 1/16" to take any hits from air balls.

Huh, not a bad idea. I'll have to look into doing a sample cap just for giggles to see how it would come out, but pretty sure you're right and it would look nice. Question would be if it should be gold leafed (fake leaf, can't afford 22kt leaf) or not...

Everything. Full retheme of playfield, plastics, cabinet artwork, and backglass. I'm planning on using wood or wood veneers for everything on the cabinet and playfield (no painted graphics) except for black decals for the playfield text. I'm still debating the artwork style for the backglass and plastics right now. The backglass is most likely going to be a ink painting on rice paper of a beachside tiki hut, and the plastics will either be more ink paintings, or thin carved/etched wood like the caps above.

The center "faces" of the caps are raised above the outer ring, so the light will bounce off of the bottom of the center and light up the outer ring of the caps. You can see the gap in the 2nd to last photo with the side view.

Yeah, I just looked up the playfield layout for PotC and saw that. Ehh, still think it's a cool idea, and will try it out for fun.

Heh heh heh. Yeah, already big fan of Trader Sam's, visit there every time I'm in LA. This retheme will be pretty non specific, but I have ideas for a full out custom tiki bar themed pin... Boy do I have ideas. Biggest one is to use the backbox as an animated, interactive diorama, so for example when you start the "Shipwreck Mode" the little ship in the bottle over the dollhouse sized tiki bar sinks, "Cursed Idol Mode" has a little carved tiki idol (think I'm gonna have to research that one episode of the Brady Bunch) that floats around the diorama handing from a thin bit of piano wire, etc...

Yeah, I've seen lots of Shag's stuff. It'd work great for pin graphics, but for this theme I plan on minimal "picture" artwork and mainly use tribal patterns, like you see on the outer ring on the caps.

No need to sneak, every Thursday is the Open Tour night for officially scheduled tours, but there is almost always someone to do an informal tours on other days/evenings. We have classes pretty much every night that are usually free and typically open to the general public.

Also, September 12 is the annual Open House where we'll be doing Space-wide demos, classes, etc (+ food trucks), and I know the pinball guys (VECTOR) will be setting up a bunch of pins on open play in the smaller classroom. Might even have the 1972 Bally Fireball up and running by then...

Finally decided how I'm going to handle the siderails and lockdown bar over the weekend. Grabbed a big (7'x4"x2") board of zebrawood, and am working up a design to create a wooden version of the old Bally playfield glass frame ('72 Fireball as an example) but using a standard sized glass. The biggest design issue was figuring out how to make the lockdown bar removable to allow for glass changes, and I think I've got that problem finally licked. Looking like there will be a number of woodrail design elements in this thing by the time I'm finished with it mixed in with the more modern bits as I find something cool.

No worries. Didn't know how much you knew of the current setup or schedule for the Space, so figured I'd list 'em...

Got the final lathe and laser passes done on all four caps. You can also see one of the black palm posts in the center just above the playfield score reel. Next up is selective staining, shellac, and silver leafing the underside of the tiki face centers. This is still on the original Student Prince playfield, I'm still doing the art design for the new playfield.

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The caps with stain, Rub'n Buff, and shellac applied. I switched to Rub'n Buff instead of leafing for the reflective bottom surface of the center face caps. Same results, but faster and cheaper to apply.

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W
The inner "core" of the leg is sapele (somewhat similar to mahogany), and the outer "fins" are solid bamboo laminate.
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Still deciding on the design, but will be doing some veneer inlay into the sapele of some kind of running pattern down the length of the leg.

The original owner has dibs on them, along with the backglass. Sorry...

Assembled cap, almost 100% finished. Top left is unlit, top right is lit. I will probably use either red or orange LEDs for the lighting (possibly yellow, testing needs to be performed). The white is just what I had laying around the house to test the basic idea. Just need to put in the mother of pearl overlay on the fish detail...assembled cap01low.jpg

Playing with the graphics for the cabinet sides right now. Currently have this as the leading candidate.cabinet side design01.jpg
Veneers are mahogany (wide bands at top and bottom), lacewood (the wave patterns[stained and unstained]), zebrawood (the lighter middle stripe), and ebony (the tiki faces).

Ain't dead yet. WIP shots of me *finally* actually cutting some veneer for the cab sides...
Scale wise, the circles are 5" in diameter. Lighter wood is Zebrawood, darker is Macassar Ebony.

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My tiki retheme will be showing up at TPF, but will still be a (playable) WIP. Sooooo much fiddly detail work.
So far I've used ebony, zebrawood, mahogany, and curly/quilted maple veneers, along with solid pieces
of mahogany, sapele, zebrawood, and bamboo.

You can see the original Student Prince cabinet to the right of the new tiki cabinet in the first photo.

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This is what it looked like at TPF this past weekend. Polynesia works, but man she is cranky. All of the mechs need a very thorough cleaning to remove the decades of built up gunk.

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This is the current state of the playfield. I am really liking the light/dark contrast between the playfield and plastics (or I guess woods in this case...) and will go with that overall look. I'm thinking a light bamboo veneer with minimalist tribal line art for the playfield, and some minor detailing/carving/artwork on the woods. If I can figure out the correct settings for it on the laser I will also incorporate spots of inlaid mother of pearl. I'm really hoping to have the Polynesia name inlaid into the lockdown bar at the top right corner this way.

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