I recently built a cabinet from scratch for my Transporter the Rescue, I need to apply decals for the art and since I have many years of experience doing this, I thought I’d share my method.

First thing... the cabinet needs to be stripped down,

- all metal removed
- old decals removed
- old decal glue removed
- prep the cab... cabinet sanded, and bondo, or wood filler, get it flat and smooth, focus on bad corners and such
- spray paint the edges the primary color of of the decals, let dry and sand smooth. Do a few coats if needed.

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The pictures will speak for themselves;

Get something heavy but small, sometimes a car battery is suggested ... I had a broken inverter that worked fine

Get together other things needed; straight edge, tape, razor blades, squeegee with soft edge, towel to protect the decal from heavy object...
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I like to start with the front of the cab...put the cab on its back...

- Position the decal on the cabinet

- place towel on the left side of the decal and then heavy object

- or you can tape the decal down, I find the decal moves when doing this, others have had different results. My preferred way is a heavy object .

- peel back the right side of the decal from its backing, lay the decal over so the backing is exposed

- cut the exposed backing off

- take squeegee, pinch grab decal and hold toward right side of cab where decal needs to be laid, squeegee the decal from the left side to the right side, making sure bubbles and creases are ironed out

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- If there’s a crease, pull the left side to the left and if possible pull up on the decal and iron out smooth

- pull left side of decal to the right and peel off backing

- hold decal to the left and squeegee to the left to finalize applying decal

- crease the first edge to the cabinet - needing to be trimmed

- take a straight edge and line up to the edges 1/8” into cabinet facing and decal and trim with a razor blade — do this for all 4 sides of the front decal

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- trim all the holes with a razor blade and a scoring knife for the small bolt holes

-After trimming the edges to the front decal, lay the cab on its side

- If the side decal does not have excess on the bottom, lay the decal down and position 1/8” to 1/16” above the bottom of the cab, center decal left to right.

- Apply the Decal the same way as before

-trim front and rear 1/8” from the edge

- trim top to the edge of the wood by running the blade almost flat against the edge and trim

- on this bally machine, I trimmed right below the wood that the head rests on to keep the decal from peeling or bubbling

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To prevent decal curling from putting the legs on, I recommend using the metal leg protectors from Marco specialties or pinball life,

- place the protector on and run bolts in

- trim 1/8” all the way around the protector

- remove the protector and remove the cutout decal, re install the protector with bolts tight and screw in screws supplied with the protector, do all 4 protect tors

- trim the rest of the holes in the cab with a scoring knife or razor blade

- touch up any paint needing to be touched up on the edges of the cab .

- do all the same steps for the head of the cab.

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