I purchased my first pinball - The Shadow - several (8) months ago that needed some TLC. I wasn't sure to what level I should attempt "restoring" it with my limited knowledge of pinball. I have, however, restored several arcade machines. So, I wasn't too worried about fixing the cabinet. But, I wasn't too sure if I should do anything with the playfield as it only really has one issue.

In hind-sight, with the time it took to do certain things, I probably should have done the playfield too. I may do it in the future...

I am hesitant to post this is as I had an issue with an SD card in my camera and lost a bunch of pictures. Mostly, ones pertaining to fixing of the cabinet. But, I figures what the heck, so I'm posting anyway.

Anyway on to the machine as I bought it.

The front-right corner was coming apart:

The left corner (bottom) was damaged a bit:

The right side had a bunch on small holes in it:

The start button was cracked in half:

The gun was tarnished/rusted:

The buttons where wrong, one set was clear with LED lighting:

1 cab_left_front (resized).jpg

3 cab_front_gun (resized).jpg

2 cab_front_start_button (resized).jpg

5 cab_right_closeup (resized).jpg

4 cab_right (resized).jpg

6 cab_right_bottom_corner (resized).jpg

7 cab_right_top_corner (resized).jpg

8 cab_left (resized).jpg

9 cab_left_bottom_corner (resized).jpg

Here are some pics of the back box and play field:

10 backbox_left (resized).jpg

13 playfield_dirty_1 (resized).jpg

11 backbox_right (resized).jpg

12 backbox_top_corner (resized).jpg

14 playfield_dirty_sanctum (resized).jpg

15 playfieldy (resized).jpg

Again I'm missing pictures of the cabinet repairs, but here are a couple of the back box and the cabinet in progress:

And some random rusty bolts

16 backbox_stripped (resized).jpg
17 cab_stripped_glued (resized).jpg
18 bolts_rusty (resized).jpg

backbox with bondo (resized).jpg

Here are a few pics of the metal part dirty

cab_screen_dirty (resized).jpg

playfield_metal_original (resized).jpg

metal_origial (resized).jpg

Here is the metal cleaned and, in some cases, plated:

cab_screen_clean (resized).jpg

playfield_metal_cleaned (resized).jpg

metal_after_plating (resized).jpg

Sadly I lost the pic of the bolts all together finished, but here are two pics of the bolts all rusty and with the rust buffed off:

bolts_original (resized).JPG

bolts_smoothed (resized).jpg

Here are pics of the cab painted and decaled. One picture shows the right corner I glued back together.

1 cab_right_top_corner_glued (resized).jpg

2 cab_painted (resized).jpg

3 cab_left_angle_decaled (resized).jpg

Here is the back box with the back stencil and the side stickers.

4 backbox_back (resized).jpg

5 backbox_right_side (resized).jpg

Here is the cab re-assembled and some close ups of the replaced buttons and gun. For the gun I made custom white-pearl grips. The legs has a bit of rust, mostly on the inside. I evapo-rusted them and buffed them up a touch.

6 cab_front_coin_door (resized).jpg

7 cab_front_right_gun (resized).jpg

8 cab_left_front_side (resized).jpg

Here are some playfield shots. I re-did all the lights with LEDs. I tried to keep true to the original by using warm white lights. I used a couple of accent colors to transition the middle of the play field to the back. All the rubber was changed to purple and the flippers changed to gold (to match the other parts of the machine). Added he gold side mirrors to add a little bling. I also added 4 pot lights to help accent the gold/brass plating as well as make it playable in the dark.

Additionally, I tried to replace all the visible screws/nuts with brass to further accentuate the existing brass.

I was never really able to get a good shot with the lights on. All the shots make the lights look too white, they appear much warmer in person.

playfield_front_flippers_w_light (resized).jpg
playfield_front_full_no_light (resized).jpg
playfield_left_ramp (resized).jpg
playfield_front_full_with_all_light (resized).jpg
playfield_left_ramp_top_down (resized).jpg
playfield_middle_upper (resized).jpg
playfield_right_ramp_top_down (resized).jpg
playfield_right_side_lower (resized).jpg

I didn't.

There really only is one blemish no the play field so I decided not to do anything other than clean it up and buff it. Additionally, as noted by Rum-Z, there is a full playfield protector on their too.

Since this was my first restore I was a little hesitant to tackle painting or decaling and then clearing the playfield. But, in the future I think I'd be willing to tackle that job now that I have some experience disassembling and reassembling the majority of the playfield.

Mostly the playfield was just dirty and had a bunch of wax on it. Here is are before and after pics on one spot. I was able to buff out the ball marks in this area, but don't have a pic of that.

13 playfield_dirty_1 (resized).jpg

playfield_clean_1 (resized).jpg

Indeed!

I struggled with how to tackle the grips myself. First I just ordered some 1911 grips, but found out that the holes don't match up. So, I looked around for some blanks. You can buy a "chunk" of the white pearl used for gun grips, but I didn't trust myself to mold them without messing them up. So, ended up getting a couple pair from Tombstone Gun Grips modeled after 1911 grips (http://www.tombstonegrips.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TGG&Product_Code=Blank_147b&Category_Code=Blanks). I emailed Dave, at Tombstone, and he said to make a note that I didn't want holes drilled, since the 1911's don't line up The Shadow holes. I then drilled them myself using a combination of regular bits and forstner bits. Additionally, I tried to make the notches match up to the stock ones.

I didn't ask Dave, but I know he takes traces of grips to make sure everything lines up, so you might be able to trace the stock grips and he could probably do it all for you, not 100% though given they way the bolts recess into the handle.

Oh I forgot to add, I installed the LED OCD as to retain the fade in fade out look of the incandescent lights. It looks soooooo much better with that than the instant on/off of the LED without it.

Also, I picked up the "battle field light mod" from GRUMPY. Here are a couple of pics without light and with light:

battlefield_light (resized).jpg

battlefield_no_light (resized).jpg

Yeah, I don't much need to change those out. They look pretty damn good to me!

Not very much. If you look at my second post about the 5th pic, there it shows the sanctum. I buffed what little of a "scuff" there was away.

Here is a direct link:
https://images.pinside.com/7/1e/71e7381932df68bc07948a435c7fdc6b8e13473c/resized/large/71e7381932df68bc07948a435c7fdc6b8e13473c.jpg

Here are a couple before and after pics of the ramps. Probably not a real fair comparison as I didn't have the lights on in the before shots..

right_ramp_after (resized).jpg

right_ramp_before (resized).jpg

left_ramp_after (resized).jpg

left_ramp_before (resized).jpg