So my friend Dave (MrKegFlex) keeps bugging me to document the progress of a Time Warp I'm in the process of restoring. Ok... here you go Dave and I hope a few others enjoy this chronicle.

Like many good restoration projects, this one begins the same way. A machine found that is in a fairly advanced stated of disrepair, but shows a lot of potential. I always look at these restoration activities as learning experiences. I had never done much with airbrush techniques prior and wanted to try my hand at this. It's a Time Warp, so if something went horribly wrong, it's not like I'm destroying an AFM or something.

I'm about half way done, but I'll start out at the beginning with some photos of the machine and a few shots of progress documented with my phone camera.

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I began by cleaning the dirt and grime from the playfield and using the Magic Eraser to clean the dirt from the micro cracks in the original lacquer finish. I sprayed a thin coat of PPG Omni auto clear, and leveled many of the inserts and depressions/wear marks in the playfield and began the airbrushing. I won't go into the details of cutting the frisket and doing the masking... there are many posts on Pinside that describe that.

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This turned out to be a great deal of fun..... more to come.

Jeff

After a lot of airbrushing, clear, airbrushing, more clear (sanding between coats of course), leveling, decals, clear, sanding, etc. etc. etc., the play field has turned out fairly nice.... I'm satisfied with it, especially since it is my first attempt using an airbrush.

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Jeff

Sure... I need to get this one done first

I'm in the process of reassembling the play field, cutting stencils for the cabinet, sanding, filling, priming, and painting. I'm one of those really crazy people that polishes every piece of metal (whether you can see it or not), every screw, etc. etc.

I will also be doing the vector artwork for the BG and having a new one printed... that will be getting underway shortly.

Jeff

Thanks for the kudos and I hope to be posting on this one regularly for the next several weeks.

I don't remember exactly how many coats of clear there are, but I started with a couple light coats of clear to prep the surface for the painting, a coat of clear, then decals, then another 2 or 3 coats of clear, with the last one being quite heavy..... lots of block sanding (wet) by hand, then polishing. I sand and use a Scotch Brite pad between coats of clear. An absolute must when shooting auto products.

Jeff

Today I worked on the drop targets (along with a few other things), but thought that folks might like to see how I created my own target stickers (this works for standup targets, spinners, and a lot of other things).

I draw the artwork in the computer (Photoshop is my tool of choice) and print out a sheet of the target decals on plain old white paper. I have a color laser printer but an ink jet printer should work just fine.

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I then lay strip of thick clear packing tape over the paper

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After this step, I cut the decal out using an hobby knife or scissors

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Then, I simply turn the decal over and spray it with 3M 77 adhesive and position it on the target

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It works like a champ and I have been making my own decals this way. It's especially useful when something isn't being produced by others (i.e. I can't buy them), or when I'm impatient and want them now (which is usually always)

Hope someone finds this useful.

Jeff

Thanks Vid. I appreciate that coming from you. Your posts on PF restoration are very inspirational and you probably recognize a lot of the same techniques you use

Made quite a bit of progress this weekend. All of the lower playfield machinery has been completely rebuilt and installed. I also didn't like the look of the original wood lanes that were covered in "shedding" vinyl, so I cut new pieces made of oak and finished them with a simple Danish Oil.

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All of the stencils for the cabinet side artwork are complete, so this week I will be painting the cabinet and will get several pictures from that as I go. I need to get the cabinet knocked out this week since it is supposed to warm up to painting temperature here in Ohio and I fear it may be our last warm week until next spring... I can't wait that long

Thanks for watching.

Jeff

Thanks for the offer dnhayden. That is very kind of you. So far, I think mine are in good shape.

Thanks. I'm quite happy with the way things are coming together and looking forward to playing a few games. I don't recall ever having played a Time Warp

Great idea Ed. I might just have to do the same thing to mine. Thanks for sharing!

I airbrushed some of the baby blue areas. Others were fine. Any lettering that was wiped out by the airbrushing was replaced with a water slide decal between coats of clear. Thanks for the kudos This has been a fun project.

Thanks.... more to come. I should have the cabinet painted this week.

- Jeff

I have been using the Papilio water slide decal media (http://www.papilio.com/) for my HP laser printer. I am very pleased with it. The method I use, and I believe what I have seen others on this forum use, is to spray the playfield with automotive clear coat after the airbrushing, sand/score the clear (i.e. using a scotch brite pad), apply the water slide decal, followed up by another coat (or 2 or 3) of clear. I believe Vid shows this in his tutorial on playfield restoration, which is extremely well written.

- Jeff

Made some good progress this weekend. After many hours of sanding, filling divots and missing chunks of the cabinet with auto body filler, I primed the cabinet.

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Once the primer was nice and dry, I shot the color. After looking at it for a day.... it just looked too purple....

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I decided to reshoot the color coats.... This is more what I was after

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I'll let this dry for a couple of days then move on to stenciling the cabinet.

Of course I'll post more pics as this progresses.

Jeff

Cabinet painting is done.

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Time to start liberating metal parts of rust and caked on beer residue.

Jeff

The main cabinet reassembly is complete. Time to start work on the back box.

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Jeff

Got the playfield all back together, installed, everything adjusted, when I discovered that I installed the wrong pop bumper bodies I'll get the correct ones on order this week. Still, the game plays really well and it's a good excuse to start work on the back glass.

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Jeff

The banana flippers are quite fun. It's very different, and after playing for a while, going back to straight flippers takes a little time to adjust back. A cool novelty to have in the lineup

I've been working on the back glass. I have the black pretty much done.... time to start working on the colors now.

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Jeff

Some additional progress on the back glass.

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Jeff

I think somewhere in the neighborhood of 14 or 15.

Jeff

Thanks RDM. I appreciate the kudos. It's a labor of love

I have a local print shop that I work with that does really nice work. This will be vinyl print on glass. I have had them do other back glasses for me. When back lit the colors are not quite as good as a screen print, but the cost trade off more than makes up for the slight difference. Having this screen printed would be cost prohibitive for a single glass.

Jeff

Thanks Ryan. It's always nice to see folks appreciate the amount of work and attention to detail that goes into something like this.

I would be happy to post photos of the original and reproduction glass when I get it done (both lit and unlit). I'm still a few weeks away from getting the file ready to be printed. I only get an hour or two here and there to work on it in the evenings after work. The sign shop I use prints to the vinyl which is then adhered to the glass. They do very nice work and the end result is quite impressive.

Jeff

Thanks Dante. I enjoy writing them

Each color is on its own layer, so theoretically, I could have screens created and a full silk screen could be done. At last count I think there are 15 or so colors on this backglass. That's a lot of screens or layered prints that I would have to put together. I have never done a screen print before, so I can't say with certainty that the file I am creating would be ready to create screens (It would be a miracle if no changes were necessary). It's rather difficult trying to determine if one color is layered below or on top of another with this many colors (i.e. 4 shades of green, 2 yellow, 3 red, etc. etc.). As you can imagine, a glass like this can be a tall task. It might be interesting to try the layered prints on a smaller scale and see how it would work... I'll have to think about that one. Thanks for the suggestion.

Jeff

Wonderful restoration of the cloud and great documentation to go along with it! I love to see this kind of stuff. Great job!

Jeff

A bit more progress on the colors.

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Jeff

I don't disagree. I have been pouring over this back glass for a few weeks vectorizing the artwork. I currently am up to 10 colors, only one of which looks like it's a combination of two different colors (green and yellow to create a yellow-green color). Everything else appears to be a discrete color. I'm treating just about everything as a discrete color.

Jeff

Heh... Thanks Bob.

Strikes and Spares was a much more difficult playfield (I did the whole PF), but I was able to find a NOS back glass so that part was much easier. S&S worked when I got it, Time Warp was mostly dead. Debugging the electronics really wasn't too difficult, but in that aspect, it was more difficult. Time Warp was a complete cabinet repaint/stencil, where the S&S cabinet just needed some touch up. Overall, they were both quite enjoyable. Not sure which one I enjoyed more since bringing these things back to "new" status is quite gratifying

Jeff

Aside from some minimal touch up that is inevitable, the front of the back glass is complete. I'll be starting the light mask next. This is a good feeling

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Jeff

Light mask is finally complete. This image is a representation of what it will look like when it is installed in the machine.

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Jeff

The vinyl prints are actually quite durable, so I don't anticipate any problems with a lift channel. I don't sandwich the print between layers of glass... It's just a multi layer vinyl print adhered directly to the glass (I have others that I have done). As far as the score windows go, you are correct, I base the dimensions on the existing glass. Photoshop makes this very easy to do and so far, I haven't had any problems. I'll post detailed pictures of the finished product both out of the machine and installed in the machine when I get it back from the print shop.

Jeff

I made a trip over to the print shop yesterday to proof the print.... I'm quite happy with the way this is turning out. Here is a shot of the print coming off of the printer that I took with my phone. You will see that it is printed in reverse. This is printed on clear vinyl and will be adhered to the glass so that it looks correct when viewed from the front. After this is applied, a white diffusion layer will be laid down, followed by a final black layer which is the light mask.

The smaller print of the BG coming off of the printer is one they are doing to put in a light box in their shop for display purposes

I'll take comparison shots of the original and the reproduction glass and post them when I have everything back from the print shop.

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Jeff

Ok... Here are the pics of the back glass. Please keep in mind that this isn't a screen print. It's a vinyl print applied to glass, so the colors aren't as "punchy" as a screen print.... It's also about 1/10th the production cost of a screen print. I'm willing to deal with the trade off. The nice thing is that if the printing technology improves, I have the vectorized artwork

Original glass. Look closely and you will see that much of the yellow and red is missing. There are also gobs of electrical tape on the back of the glass to outline the score windows. If it comes off, so does all of the ink under it.
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Vinyl print replacement
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Light mask of vinyl print
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Glass in the game
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Jeff

I made the stencils with a roll of clear acetate film and a hobby knife (x-acto) before filling and sanding the cabinet. It would be rather easy to take pictures of the cabinet and make vectorized versions of the artwork and have stencils made this way. In fact, when I restored my Embryon machine, this is exactly what I did. I found the whole process of making the cabinet stencils with the acetate much easier than reproducing them in the computer first.

Jeff

Thanks Vid. I didn't put the vinyl print on the the glass. This was done by the sign shop. I asked them how they do it and they run the glass and print through a huge rolling laminator. The gentleman at the print shop indicated that it wouldn't be too difficult to apply this print to glass myself... not sure I'm that adventurous

Jeff

I think I'm pretty much calling this one done. Thanks to everyone who followed along and the encouragement and kind words along the way. The next restoration isn't too far down the road.

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Jeff

Thanks guys. I really appreciate it.

Jeff

I want to let folks know that CPR now has reproduction back glasses available. As usual, the quality is amazing and would encourage anyone looking to freshen up that Time Warp to reach out to the fine folks at CPR.

https://classicplayfields.com/shop/pinball-backglasses/timewarp-glass/

Jeff