I've been playing around with frisket film and the airbrush recently. The result? Chik-fil-a has been rebranded to Punk-fil-a

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So far I feel like working with frisket is akin to being a surgeon...requires extreme patience, care, and a full stomach lest you get hangry I think it turned out ok for my first time. I definitely made some clear mistakes but good to do that now and learn from them. More testing and practice to commence...

Mixing up larger quantities of paint because I know I'm going to need more based on my previous runs with the airbrush. I'd rather make a big pot than have to make a second small pot down the road only for them to mismatch slightly. I'm really glad I made those color charts!

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That's a great solution! I think I'm too late to add a metal plate but that's a sure way to prevent the hole from coming back.

Thanks! I'm so close to actually starting on the touchups. The prep work and practice is taking forever.

Running another practice session with frisket and the airbrush. What do you think it'll be?

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It's that good ol' Mountain Dew!

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KP, here, checking in with a quick update. A week or so ago I began masking the upper playfield in prep for the beige paint. I hear you're supposed to work from light colors to dark colors and I figured it's a good place to start since the beige of the upper playfield is mostly hidden by the plastics. I laid down blue painter's tape and some scrap cardboard to start masking areas off. It was a lot of work just to put in these small bits of masking - precision is important!

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The more I masked off, the more I began to wonder if it would be more worth it to just repaint the entire beige section of the playfield rather than do touch-ups. Does anyone have an opinion on that? My playfield has so many variants of the beige (some more yellow, some more white) that trying to match colors in every spot would be tedious, time consuming, and probably not turn out great. So if I redid the entire upper playfield, everything would look fresh and uniform. On the other hand, everything would look fresh...which means everything else might look noticeably "old" (40 years old) and the beige would look noticeably new. But then again, in either case, most of it will be covered by plastics.

I've been wrestling with these ideas for a while now. My OCD is winning this battle so far in my conscience; I'm favoring uniformity in the top section with all new clean paint over the fear of young paint clashing with old paint. Does anyone else have experience with this dilemma?

One of my great fears has become truth! I had a feeling back when I started mixing paint that maybe it it was originally white. I guess I should have done more research. Painting all currently-beige areas to white will be a substantial amount of work. Is it a huge travesty if I paint it beige instead of white?

Aaaaaaand I'm back with another episode of Do That Pinball Thing. Pinside took a break there for a week or so and then I went on a hiatus of other projects. I'm now circling back to give this pinball machine and community some love.

Thank you slochar, hisokajp, and A_Bord for your input, I appreciate the feedback! I was at a standstill for a couple weeks contemplating between beige and white. Your comments on beige gave me more confidence to do it as such because 1) all of the original machines are beige by now anyway, and 2) the playfield can be lit up with improved lighting, and 3) I realized if I repainted everything white, I'd also have to redo the white text throughout the playfield and that sounded like way too much work. It's decided, then; Beige will be fine!

Regardless, I decided to significantly boost my original beige mix with lots of white; it's more of an off-white now since I dissipated the yellow tone. This should be a good middle ground between original white and my current yellowed text. ** A disclosure for those following in my footsteps, my beige mix back in post #38 is now way off - I probably added 30 more drops of white to my original ratio. Although at this point you can have confidence to do whatever you want according to your playfield situation **

With the decision of paint, I also settled on repainting all areas below plastics so I masked off these whole sections.

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Next step was to bust out the airbrush!

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I think this was a good starting ground to get familiar with the airbrush on less-seen areas of the playfield. I made some mistakes throughout the process (like spilling my pot of paint on the playfield ) but I was able to fix those mistakes to the best of my ability and they'll be unnoticeable anyway.

A quick mention about primer. I primed the troubled areas of my playfield in hopes of building the depressed level back up so when I repaint, the new paint will sit even with the surrounding paint. This definitely helped but I can still see the tiny divot/edge where there was damage before. It's more subtle now which is good but I'm still not sure if it was worth all the time I put into priming every spot. If the edges become completely unnoticeable after clearcoat then I'll confirm it's worth it. But as of right now, it's still unclear.

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Another note, be more generous than I was with your masking job. My edges were fine but I thought one extra line of masking tape will prevent overspray from the airbrush but I was mistaken. I have some overspray I need to clean up before I can move on. Next time, I'll cover everything other than the area I'm painting so I don't create more work for myself.

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mof et al: "Kept you waiting, huh?"

It seems I lost track of time and this documentary. I hit some discouraging snags in the last year but still moving along. I think I'm through the jungle of playfield restoration and I'm on to the next task. Let's get you caught up.

Remember when I said I'd tackle this project with an "unprofessional budget" way back in post #1? Well, everything changed when the Fire Nation Covid attacked. Let's just say this project is now government funded (unofficially, of course ) thanks to ye ol' stimuli $$$. I purchased a 3D-printer and laser-cutter combo machine of awesome power! After months of toying with it, I used said device to laser cut stencils into frisket which I used for airbrushing designs and text. Laser-cut frisket stencils have been a powerful upgrade to this restoration process. I'm not fond of the printer-related (waterfall decal?) restoration methods so this was the perfect route for me. I recognize not everyone has access to a laser cutter for making stencils but I assume the same results can be achieved with a Cricut machine if you have one, perhaps a CNC if you're brave, or even by hand if you've got a lot a time and patience. All that to say, I'm sorry if I broke the budget barrier that I intended to keep at the beginning of this project.

I started out with the playfield rubber dimensions. I created these stencils by snapping photos of the playfield, editing the images, converting to black & white, porting to vector graphics (I use Inkscape), and reworking the details.
NOTE: These are not exact replicas of the original! You can't just print out this stencil, line it up to your playfield, and see a 1-to-1 overlay.
I took the liberty of removing the tick marks denoting inches (") from the upper-left sling shot and the right spinner rubber dimension artwork. For those looking to follow in my footsteps, here are the resulting stencil images:

Note: Filenames indicate placement on playfield.

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Here's my hefty machine cutting away. If you happen to be laser cutting frisket like I am, you need to put the frisket face-down so the laser cuts the paper first and then the frisket. If the laser hits the frisket side first, it melts the edges of the stencil so you don't get as clean of an edge. Because the frisket is face-down, you need to reverse your images before running the cut so they come out correct for the sticky side of the frisket.

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Once cut out, peel your frisket stencil stickers and slap em in place. Tweezers are necessary to accurately place tiny pieces or fringes of the stencil. It's overall better to use tweezers so you don't wear out the stickiness with your fingers. Mask around your frisket and airbrush away.

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As time progresses, you can visually see my frustration rising as I'm blundering with the airbrush. The final straw to my nerves was the upper-left sling which also happened to be my last stencil to paint. At this point, I was still trying to figure out the finesse of the airbrush: paint viscosity, dry times, cleaning the airbrush, air pressure, engaging/releasing air for paint, and the fateful air hose condensation.

At this point in the project I was pretty upset. I spent a ton of time working on stencils, airbrushing the white, and I quickly followed it with an almost instantaneous mess of paint. I actually had to step away from the project for a while because of my frustration and fear of making things worse.

* ...calm...deep breath...calm... *

I lifted the masking tape around the playfield for some encouragement.

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I came back later to hand paint over my mistakes. Things turned out pretty good after the touch-ups.

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Ok, time to go back to physics class. So I was really struggling with condensation in my air hose which was caused by a bunch of factors.

1. Compressing air takes energy which causes heat
2. Compressed air itself is stored at a higher temperature than it was before it was pressurized
3. Hot air leaves the compressor and travels through a long, relatively cool, hose
4. The water vapor in the air condensates as the air moving from the hot compressor moves through the cool hose
5. Water droplets shoot out of your airbrush in addition to paint and air, resulting in a watery-thin painted mess
6. Icing on the cake: I was airbrushing in my basement (cooler temps) during the summer (high humidity)

Sooooo, it took me a while to mentally get over these mistakes and blunders, clean up my mess, and press on. To better improve the performance and reliability of airbrushing without condensation I had to make the following changes:

1. Use a shorter hose so there's less temperature change through the shorter distance that the air has to travel
2. Regularly release the water trap on the compressor itself (every few minutes)
3. Add an additional water trap and/or filter at the end of the hose so it captures any stray particles and condensation directly before it shoots through the airbrush
4. Work in less humid conditions and/or use a dehumidifier to reduce room humidity

I've honestly needed that reminder! But I'm also dying to play this pin again! It'll get there!

Back for some more!

After fixing up my airhose situation I had to update my stenciling process. You can see a lot of leaks/bleeds in the previous pictures where the paint moved beyond the stencil lines. Some likely reasons why that happened:

1. Condensation from the hose threw water with the paint making it easier for the paint to bleed
2. Hasty stencil laying. Need to make sure I more firmly secure the stencils before airbrushing
3. Air pressure from the airbrush could be too high or I could be airbrushing too close to the surface of the stencil (likely the latter), causing the inner edges of the stencil to lift, losing integrity of the shape
4. Airbrushing at a sharp angle (closer to the parallel of the stencil rather than perpendicular to the stencil). The more I can spray perpendicular to the stencil, the less likely the stencil edges will lift strictly from air pressure.

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My airbrushing/masking techniquess evolved over time so you'll see how I changed things up as I moved forward.

General rule of thumb is to start painting with lighter colors first and move to darker colors as you go on- this is because it's easier correct mistakes with light-colored paints; it's more difficult to cover up a dark color with a light color. This principle basically only comes into play when working with two colors that border one another.

So, naturally, I started with the darkest color I have, black It seemed like the easiest and the most rewarding color to paint at the time. No regrets. Part of my reasoning was so I could mess around more with frisket, masking, and airbrushing techniques, too.

Technique 1: Shadow mask (not recommended)
Use blue painter's/masking tape, cut out a piece of the tape so it loosely resembles the area you're painting but always exceeds the target area's size (I used a hole punch to cut a small circle), lay down mask for small target area, and airbrush.

I learned this in elementry school as a "shadow cut" or a "silhouette cut" - not sure if that terminology still stands today? Anyway, I attempted this as a "one size fits all" solution but the resulting shape of paint seems to draw more attention to the original wear. It didn't turn out bad but I don't really recommend it either - it definitely won't work for every spot on the playfield and it looks much better when your touchup paint goes solely where it's needed.

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Technique 2: Risk it for the Frisket (meh)
Lay down a piece of frisket and use an X-Acto knife to cut out a stencil, mask around the frisket using PostIt note stickies or other masking tape, and then airbrush.

Switching gears, I picked up yellow and orange at the bottom of the playfield. Cutting the true shape of where you want lay down paint is visually much more preferred over the shadow masking from Technique 1. It's much more time consuming but you aren't left with much overlap between the old paint and the new paint. I saw some people on the internets use PostIt note stickies as quick and dirty masking tape. Don't bother using sticky notes, not worth it! They don't stick well, blow off easily, and even if they survive you often can't use them again.

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After airbrushing these spots I messed about with hand-painting what I call the dot-matrix but its technical terms are somewhere in stippling, letratone, or Ben-Day Dots. Turned out ok! I came back at the end of the project to clean up the sloppy ones.

Technique 3: BBQ Frisket ( )
Lay down a piece of frisket, cut out a shape using an X-Acto knife, and mask around the frisket using tape (blue painter's tape is preferred). Get a large piece of construction paper (or similar) and cut a small "window" out of it (roughly 1.5inch by 2inch). Place the mask paper on top of the work area so you can see the frisket stencil through the window. Finally, lay a plastic, hole-stencil on top of everything and airbrush through the window.

Back to black paint- can't make up my mind, man! The previous technique (#2) was way too slow and took way too much material. I grabbed a large piece of construction paper and cut a small hole in it (about 1.5inch by 2inch) to use as a masking window. Benefits here include: less masking material, less risk of lifting paint with masking tape, no need to worry about overspray, and the mask paper is reusable/portable. Win, win, win!

The hole-shaped stencil helps to hold everything during airbrushing because the mask/construction paper isn't secured. This helped to keep everything nice and tight, targeted, and streamlined. It really improved the integrity of the frisket stencil and ensured no overspray. In a way, the circle-shape stencil also helped with airflow control for when the air hits and escapes from the surface if that makes sense. All in all, worked out great!

Before I discovered and relied on Technique 3, I used a conglomerate of all of the ideas thus far so that's what you'll see in these photos:

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