Hey everyone,

I thought I would take some time and share my experience with using Pinball Pimps Stencil Kit.

I have another thread about the restoration of my Star Trek game, but thought if someone does not like Star Trek, but wanted to know about these stencils they might look here.

So....when I ordered them they showed up in 3 days. Real happy about that.

I then looked at all the info on their website concerning how to apply them, and I followed those instruction to a "Tee" Laying them down went pretty easy, but they say in the instructions to cut off the excess material, which I did, but then it made the stencil a hair short on the corners of the cabinet. Which was no big deal if you just tape that off with blue masking tape.

I thought I had a corner looking good, but some overspray go onto the corner and now I just have to touch it up with yellow. Here again no big deal.

I also made sure that the base coat of yellow had dried for 3 days. Maybe overkill on time, but I did not want the paint to get lifted when the stencil comes off.

After I laid the stencil down and pulled the backing material off, REALLY SLOWLY, to prevent the actual stencel from lifting, I sprayed the Orange. This was the part I was unsure of. The instructions say to peel off stencil as soon as it is painted if you use Rustoleum 2X paint, which is what I used.

Man it was a mess of paint all over my finger from the wet paint. And then when pulling off the stencil it tends to want to tear in the small detail areas, so trying to handle that with paint all over your fingers and not let the stencil fall back into the paint areas or base color was a real challenge. I found that if you cut off the pulled off stencil as you go it seems to work better. Overall I think it went pretty well and I am super happy with the results.

I am not sure if waiting for the paint to dry up more is better??? Or if doing that tends to make the paint stick more to the stencil causing other problems as you tear it off. Don't know.

Then the coin box area was a challenge too. I made a piece of cardboard to cover the hole, per instructions, to make it easier to lay down the stencil but had to reposition the stencil and that caused the "X makes the spot" thing to be slightly in the wrong place for the next stencil placement, which is blue.
I don't think that will be a problem. We'll see.

So I am really happy with the way these have been laying down and coming off, and the results look great so far. When I do the blue I'll update that as well. Thanks!!

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The calendars are all just a bunch of topless girls that you can't get any more. I deleted the picture so no one gets offended.

I used these rattle cans. 4 yellow, 2 orange, 2 blue, 1 black, 1 light brown, 5 flat white primers (not shown) Blue will probably be shot tomorrow or next.

Probably better not PC police are watching, sorry.

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Thanks for the encouragement. I laid down the blue this morning and it came out pretty good as well.

A couple of things that did come up were:

When I started spraying the blue, I got 3 different colors coming out of one can. And yes I did shake it for well into 5 minutes to try to make sure that would not happen, but it did. I had the same problem with the yellow. It would occasionally puke out a blob of orange. Once I got a clean same color of blue over everything I called it good.

The stencil was a little harder to lay down, due to trying to make sure everything lined up. Even lining up the X's it was off slightly. SO when the stencil was exposed, the bad stops I blue painters taped to get it right. Not a big deal. I also torn the stencil about an inch which sucked but blue tape fixed that.

I also wore plastic nitrile gloves this time. Which made clean up easy. Cutting back the stencil as you are pulling it off seemed to make things easier too.

Overall I think it turned out nice. There is a couple of little spots that need touch up, but overall I am very happy with the results

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OK well the cabinet is basically done. Laid down the rest of the blue yesterday. Went pretty well just a couple of touch ups but nothing big.

It would be nice if, the stencil paper that you peel off to reveal the actual stencil, was more transparent so you could see for sure that everything was lining up correctly. Lining up the "X's" worked ok, but a couple of spots were off just slightly and if you try to peel back the stencil itself, you run the risk of stretching the tape or tearing it, but I figured that it was probably not perfect from the factory, so who cares.....it looks great!

I also got the playfield switched over to the new one and installed.

I am super happy with the way it turned out. I would definitely recommend the stencils for anyone thinking about restoring a game.

On to the back box...............

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I bought a couple different cans of yellow. I think the one I used was the closest to the original. Kind of hard to tell for sure when the cabinet is aged and faded.

Was going to sand the back box today, but it is raining outside and does not seem to want to let up, which sucks. Pulled everything out of the box with the exception of the metal ground sheeting stuff, just masked all that off. Pretty nervous about removing all the boards and transformer.

hope it all works when I put it back together, we'll see.

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