That volcano looked great. You use a whole can on 1 layer of lockdown? Or you somehow keep it for multiple applications of lockdown after each repaint?

I go with entire can at each spraying. I do it in multiple coats, but empty the can.
Others have preserved it in the refrigerator. Look for the recent Flash restoration thread. I think OP kept it up to 2 weeks and it was still usable.

For me, the touch ups can take months. Rather than have the clear harden up in the can i just unload it on the playfield.
As i said , I use 2 to 3 cans total. For the final coat i like to have a can on deck in case i need it.

Going to be starting my first playfield restoration this spring on a 1971 Gottlieb Lawman. Seeing a lot of good information on here, so I'm going to give it a try the right way! Will also be starting a thread for the restoration, but first I'm commenting on all the threads that have helped my learning thus far so I can stay active on them and continue my education!

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Looks like a very good first project. Good luck

What brand of waterslide decals are you guys using with the SprayMax? I tested out a few and they look terrible. They didn’t have any reaction to the SprayMax, I did 2 light coats then buried them and they look like crap.

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Did you slide them off of the backing paper?

I’m not sure if that’s a serious question but yeah I did.

It’s laser jet ink style water slide.

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I only ask because in the pic it looks like the decal is still on the backing paper.
Were they applied over a clear coat base?
The print quality looks good.

If you look at Vid1900's Ultimate Playfield restoration thread, he recommends a particular brand of water slide decal to use under clear coat.

Hard to tell from your pictures. I've used that exact brand before with good results. Are you printing a white background on the paper? That is probably the issue if so. Either buy the white paper or just have it print the letters with no background. I can't see why they would turn out the way they have otherwise.

After some deeeeeeeep digging on this site I found a convo between someone else and vid. The problem was on my test piece that I cleared, I sanded the clear with 600 to rough it up for the next layer of clear. (Which is gospel according to anyone that does clear coating) but apparently you don’t want to sand the area the waterslide goes on so the decal can adhere best. Or polish the area for the waterslide and leave the rest sanded for the next coat.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/cloudy-insert-after-water-slide-decal#post-4819402

I used the same paper and spraymax.

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This makes sense. The area under the decal was sanded with 600 grit. The decal now prevents the new layer of clear from filling in that 600 grit scratches. It actually amplifies the 600 grit scratches giving a cloudy appearance under that decal.

This is great information for any future work!

-Paul

So the decals go of top of an un-sanded layer of clear coat. Can I then spray another layer of clear over it without sanding or should I sand around the decals and then clear coat?

According to vid you lay the decals down unsanded and sand around them.

I’m kind of puzzled why he wouldn’t have explained that in the ultimate restoration guide, seems like a major piece of info to know.

Is your water slide the yellow insert? How did you go about it? Sand around or not sand at all?

Here are recent pictures of both sides. I did sand lightly with I believe 800 grit before I applied the decals. When I look closely I can see light scratches on the plastic inserts, but not a huge deal. The key lines around the inserts as well as the 5000 when lit and 1000 when lit are decals.

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Silverstreak02 Looks good!
So I went back to my playfield I’m clearing and sanded a small area from 600 and stepped up to 2000 then novus 2.
MAJOR improvement!

I guess I’m good with paper I have. Now just need to figure out where to get them printed.

Staples did mine.

I tired them before and the dude went on and on about not being allowed because it jams the printer. If they’re still open during this distancing crap maybe I’ll try again. I’ll risk covid for a pinball machine.

Laser printers are pretty cheap!

Do you know one for a sensible price that will a print a perfect color decal? I don’t.

Color matching decals is really hard, you have scanner/camera issues, monitor issues, printer issues.... in addition to the color hue, there is the saturation issues. I have a low-end dell laser (I print something about once every 6 months) and it is not too bad but noticeable on the plastic, I would not try to match a portion of the playfield.. whole sections or black is all I would do to minimize color matching issues.

If you are interested in how mine came out, I posted my results of making a new plastic piece with art at. https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/it-was-supposed-to-be-a-simple-flash-restore/page/4#post-5513198

Honest confession here. I use my work printers here when it is quiet. I have made perfect decals for playfield and the colors blended in perfectly. As expensive as they are printers are not set up the same so you need to try a few. I went to staples or office depot not sure which but they jammed their printer so I can't go back there.

I have bought two laser printers one new and one was recommended a few years back here and I got one second hand from ebay. Neither could pass the paper through without jamming. Returned both.

So still waiting (and my employer) for a home laser color printer recommendation for waterslide decals.

This. I'm not aware of any one-size-fits-all perfect color solution every time. It's a crapshoot: you have a printer that does certain colors perfectly, but is simply incapable of rendering others acceptably. Sometimes you get the "color" you want but with the sacrifice of dithering.

Lasers are traditionally far more limited, but it's not just a laser issue, because I've run into this with inkjets too. I once made custom decals in dayglo colors (yellow and orange) with an inkjet... the printed output was a perfect match to base paint I used. That printer died, I replaced it with the "next gen improvement" by the same vendor and... I could never get those colors (and fine text) to print the same way ever again.

Decals are especially difficult to color match because of their inherent translucency when using clear film. So what looks fine on white film (which is essentially paper) looks completely different on clear. Oh, and the type of printer ink affects this too. So again, the best choice for approach depends on the application... i.e, are you covering an insert, or not? Are you adding text over a complex graphic? Or replacing an entire bare area?

My recommendation from years of experience designing graphics and decals for scale models and playfields, is to figure out what color palettes your printer can handle, then scope your projects appropriately. You might have to get creative in your decal designs. I use an ALPS printer - precious unobtanium that prints white - but it also has a fairly limited color palette. There are certain jobs I simply can't do with the ALPS, and have to pursue other methods. Bottom line when it comes to color on a playfield, paint is your best friend. Save custom decals for text and keylines only if at all possible. If you need to replace sections of art things get much more complicated and can only be evaluated case by case.

I just leveled the inserts to prep for waterslides and it’s obvious under the surface where clear was dripped. Not because it sits higher but because it’s almost got a clouded look to it. Do these blobs ever go away or is this some precursor to areas that’ll eventually ghost or what?

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Well I talked the dude at Staples into printing the water slides for me, I had to do some awful things and I’ll never be able to look at myself in the mirror the same again but at least Firepower will get finished sooner

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Hey, you got them printed.
Dont look back

Well this is a catch 22

I sanded playfield with 1000.
Then I sanded the insert areas up to 3000 and polished for the waterslide decals.

Now I have all these areas around the decals that are polished that need sanded. I cant wet sand because it’ll lift the decals and when I dry sand around the inserts it basically is just scratching the hell out of the clear.

How do you guys do these waterslides???

Am I supposed to sand around all the decals now? Seems like it’ll take a year to do that and I’ve never seen anyone do this in any other thread.
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You're supposed to clear over the waterslide then sand and polish everything.

I will be doing that however I needed a smooth surface for the waterslide to lay on.

You can clear over that and sand smooth and polish the final coat.
Sand as much as you can now, excluding the areas where the decals are, recoat, sand and polish entire playfield.

In the future, clear it , sand it smooth, polish decal areas and final coat it.
Rinse and repeat

This is exactly what I did.

Sanded playfield level and smooth with 1000 grit

Polished the areas for the decals.

Problem is the half inch to 1 inch of polished clear surrounding the decal needs sanded down so the final coat of clear will lay down and it’s a major pain to sand so intricately around the decals all the way to the edge.

Especially wet sanding around a waterslide.

I followed this direction and it sucks....

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My first foray into clearing with 2K. This is on a project Jumping Jack that I am am using as a guinea pig before tackling a Black Hole playfield resto.

First lesson learned: don’t drip too much clear into an insert at once. As it dried overnight I got bubbles that formed. Most came to the surface so hopefully I can sand them out. Also it seemed to react a little with the original insert text. It made the edges slightly fuzzy if that makes sense.

Lots of sanding in my future! Going to let it cure for 3 days before I sand.

For filling low spots do most people recommend filling first with the dropper onto the sanded first coat and then spraying or spraying first?

So what happens if you don’t sand between coats? I know there may be unevenness but will the new coat not bond well?

I think you might be over-thinking and overworking yourself. The good news is, what you have now is recoverable.

It's true that decals need a very smooth surface to bond to, to prevent "ghosting" (or "filming" as it's called in scale modeling). But "smooth" does not mean glass-like perfection for this step! It simply means "glossy". Your 1000 grit polishing was probably well more than sufficient. I say this based on decades of scale modeling where a "spray can gloss surface with no finish sanding" has proven adequate - consider that many model surface details can't be sanded. I've used that approach with my pf decals as well.

Once applied, as long as the decal looks uniform, smooth, and clean, you're golden. Any small bubbles that might appear after a day or two, can simply be pricked with a needle to bleed out, and then blotted invisible with some fresh water or decal solvent (available from hobby shops).

Now, as for protecting and sanding the decals afterward: you need to bury them under a few layers of clear. BUT you absolutely must go with a few thin "mist" coats first, to prevent any averse reactions with the decal films or inks. Once you have a couple of those gentle locking coats down, then you go a little heavier with a uniform smooth coat on the whole pf. Then you add another layer. And then maybe another. Only THEN, after you've buried the decals, should you start sanding to level everything out. You may even discover by then that parts of the decal which originally seemed unlevel (around the inks and film edges, etc) have removed themselves as successive layers of clear self-leveled on top of them.

As for your scratches, it's nothing that another coat or two of clear won't eliminate like they were never there. That part is always like magic

If I were you I'd stop sanding right now, add a few layers of overall clear, THEN start sanding with polish grits to work everything level as needed.

That's what I was wondering about. I'm about to retheme a pin and am trying work these potential issues out. What a great forum!

Team Max2K,

Over the last 3 years or so I've done two playfields with Max2K and both came out good. One was Firepower and the other was Bally Monte Carlo. I'm no artist so I don't even try to make touch-up part of the process; I just want to keep the art that is there from getting any worse. I'm working myself toward doing a Flash and I've run across a concern that I figured I would seek feedback via this thread.

I have a total of 4 Flash playfields (story for another day) from which I selected the best as the clear coat candidate. Problem is the candidate is not be made of plywood - I think it's some sort of MDF. And I don't think the art on top is just paint on top of the material. It just looks different from the edge than painted plywood. Maybe this different material is why this candidate has weathered the years so well. Pictures below are the edges of first the 'maybe MDF' PF and second a plywood PF

My questions revolve around whether I should clear this guy. For example, if the material is more forgiving/pliable than plywood will the clear fail? Some inserts are loose so I'll be correcting that as well. Maybe I'd need different glue for this material? What other "gotcha's" might you worry about with this playfield? If anyone has come across this and can report results I'd be much appreciated. I didn't know there were non-plywood playfields out there. I could just do one of the plywood PFs but there is a big difference in art condition between this example's art and the other three I own.

the non plywood PF

one of my plywood PFs

-Rob
-visit http://www.kahr.us to get my daughterboard that helps fix WPC pinball resets or my Pinball 2000 H+V Video Sync Combiner kit

Is that possibly veneer over solid wood? It looks like you might be able to see very light grain in the wood on the edge. Can you post a picture of the shooter lane groove and the radius around the scoop?

I saved a piece of masking paper that was fully coated ( thickness same as playfield) with 2k. You can bend it anyway you want . Material does not crack. It is way more pliable than i imagined.

Thanks, great ideas for additional relevant pictures. Got me thinking I could take a couple with my USB microscope as well. Here they are (sorry the microscope pics don't allow a zoom-in):

1. Shooter lane - shows no woodgrain

Shooter lane

2. Scoop - no woodgrain here either

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3. Cut for the drop targets - doesn't look like plywood

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4. Microscope pics - look at the second one in particular where the yellow seems to seep down into the wooden layer

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Also visible in the two microscope shots are cracking that is not visible to the naked eye.

Obviously I've still got cleaning work to do.

-Rob
-visit http://www.kahr.us to get my daughterboard that helps fix WPC pinball resets or my Pinball 2000 H+V Video Sync Combiner kit

I’m hoping to get a coat of Spraymax 2k on my Gold Strike soon. What can I do about these bad bare wood areas? I hate to lay down clear over this and lock it in.

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Tape of your painted area and sand the bare wood. Then use shellac clear or with some tone to get close to the remaining wood tone. You should be able to remove the ball line.

Be careful if there is a lot of wear as the top wood layer is not that thick. Use shellac spray or brush on to match the rest of the wood. Then apply clear with a pipet to spot fill wear spots in the wood if you need.

Thanks, that sounds doable. What do you mix with the shellac to give it some tone?

Given those pictures what's the collective thought on clearing this PF? Maybe nobody has come across a PF like this?

-Rob
-visit http://www.kahr.us to get my daughterboard that helps fix WPC pinball resets or my Pinball 2000 H+V Video Sync Combiner kit

I don't see any wood grain in there either. Must be some type of MDF with a wood veneer. I don't see why you couldn't clear that type of wood.

How do you get rid of the scratches from sanding?

I’ve tried an orbital buffer and by hand and I’m still left with this from my last block sanding of the 3000 grit

Just looks hazy

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How long since you cleared it. I found I had to push down quite hard on the buffer and for a lot longer than I thought I’d have to, quite a workout. I used Meguirs 105.

Yesterday was the final coat

So what I’m finding is I’ll get a flawless look using the Ultimate Compound and a pad in a swirling motion but when I go to buff and wipe up the product the microfiber is leaving those tiny scratches. I’m in a catch 22 right now. I’m looking at a sweet playfield covered in a thin layer of compound that I cant wipe off.

In this pic it’s got a layer on it. I cant wipe it off or I have to start over. And these are brand new microfiber hand towels I’m pulling right from the package.

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I think it's more likely the Ultimate compound is leaving the tiny swirl marks because compound is considered an abrasive, and your microfiber is absorbing the compound that was left in those tiny crevices, making it look like it's the towel causing it. I would treat it like the clear coat of a vehicle. You want to use a polish afterwards because that removes the swirls left by the compound.