I am tearing down an Addams Family. It has some wear at the vault as well as around a few inserts. Ideally I would like to touch it up with some Acrylic paints then protect the touch up with some brushed on clear. Everything I am seeing on-line deals with a complete clear of the entire PF. I am not wanting to go that deep into it. Any tips on how to go about doing this without having the touch ups stick out like a sore thumb?
Clay recommends "Varathane Interior Diamond Wood Finish (Water-Based)". Not sure yet how that will look. I do have a place at the swamp that is hidden under a plastic that I can use as a test bed.

brent

I think you all may be misunderstanding what I am asking. I am not looking to brush clear the entire PF. I have the tools and ability to spray a clear over the entire PF if I wanted to do that. In this case I am looking to touch up and "spot" clear those small areas as I know the acrylic paint alone will not survive very long. My goal is to clean it up, make it more presentable, protect areas that are already getting bad (vault, some inserts, ball drop spot from the wire form that crosses the PF, etc..) and play it. The game, overall, is in fair shape but to "do it right" I would need to totally tear it down and address cab and all. I am not looking to do that. I want it as a solid player game. Frankly, for the time involved I would just sell this one down the road and "buy up" if I decided I needed to have a nicer game.

I never said I didn't care. Trying to touch it up a bit and protect some small areas should be evidence of that.

Frankly, every machine any of us touchs does not automatically trigger a factory fresh style restoration. This is a player game. I think your estimate of a few hours to prep and clear is completely unrealistic. At least unrealistic in terms of how I do things.

If there are no suggestions or tips in terms of some simple spot fixes short of fully strip and clear of the entire PF I will stick to my original plan and figure it out myself.

Yeah, exactly how I feel. Granted, your meaning and mine are surly from different perspectives.

Vid1900 I took your comment "If you are just going to play it and don't care" as if I did not care about the game overall and, thus, I was not fixing it correctly as opposed to not being concerned about a full clear. Looking at your last post I can see how I misconstrued the original intent. On topic, the vault entry is rather chipped. I had not considered mylar as a way to shore up that area. I think that is the way to go in that spot. Appreciate the idea!

This aside I am not sure where we de-railed. I am an old school car guy so let me put it this way. I have a bad alternator and I asked for tips on a swap. Everything I hear back is directing me to completely swamping the engine. A solution far beyond the scope of the problem. The question is far simpler than that.

To clear the air.
I am not pulling and clearing the entire PF.

I understand the idea of a future potential restoration to be completed by a potential future owner. I have shown cars for 25 years as well has had a video game collection for around 8. I do all of my own work to include fixing the transgressions of past owners. Given this, in all of these hobbies I realize, as we all do, what is ours is ours, what is some other person's is theirs. We can do what ever we want with our own stuff. If I want to touch up and spot clear some areas I can do that just as I can decide to pour sand in the PF and start playing games. It's mine. I do appreciate the ideas of a full clear but, as I said, its not in my cards for my game for reasons that are my own.

To address the couple of additional hours to clear the PF. To be at the point of just being a couple of hours some assumptions beyond what I mentioned would have to be made. In other words, unless you are in front of my game you don't know what state its in. I am stripping it but not to the point of having every single thing off. I am stopping at wire ball guides and a few supporting pieces I can easily clean and wax around. There is also factory mylar in several large areas. I am not even pulling the stand up targets unless they need replacing. Ramps, pops, (most)posts, plastics, bookcase, Thing, etc...are all off or out. I am not near the point, nor will I be, of being only a couple of hours away from a clear. For me to consider a clear I would go as far as pulling the harness as opposed to dropping targets and sockets. Personally, I would also have to build a fixture to hold the PF while I worked.

Consider this a deep shop job as opposed to a full resto. Frankly, this Addams is already much better off than it was 6 months ago. I got it from a building that was stating to develop moisture issues. Its been sitting since the late 90's. I have already had to strip the lower 1/3 of the CPU board (switch matrix area mainly) due to acid damage. Pulled a favor for a bead blast to clean up the acid, then rebuilt everything including a lot of lost traces and vias. The DMD had a dead column that I fixed and documented for others as my first pinside post:
http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/fixing-a-dead-dmd-column-or-row-cherry-4205-dmd

Now its getting a good shop out so that it can be a good playing game. Even at that I am looking to spruce it up a bit beyond cleaning. It's not going to be perfect. For example, there are 2 flipper buttons on the left side currently. The game was routed where the location owner's son had MS. So that he could play pinball the OP installed redundant buttons for the right flipper on the left side of the pins at that location. As the new owner, having to work with transgressions of the past, I have to accept a button plug on the left of my cabinet.

Anyway....back on topic. I think I can go the mylar route up by the vault. I do have several inserts that would be nice to touch up while waiting for other things. Mainly back key lines and other small areas that would not be good a good candidate for pieces of mylar. I can go enamel and let it fly or acrylic with a dab of some kind of clear....so I am still back to my original question of wondering of anyone has tips for spot touch ups. I would prefer using acrylic as its easier to color match but would need protection. I am mainly dealing in black but there is a little color in the Mansion area.