Planking will not be removed by grinding down the paint.

It will have to be sealed with clear and then re-painted.

The dulling is normal. My understanding is that the magic eraser is like a high-grit sandpaper but with fibers that can reach into microscopic cracks normal sandpaper can't. Applying alcohol will show you what it will look like after clear coat.
More magic eraser cleaning won't remove the cracks that go deeper. You'll just remove more paint.

Thanks for the information, I'm more assured i havnt damaged anything but I wont keep going at the cracks.

If you start seeing color on your ME piece , then you have gone too far.

Well ready to give it a go hopefully the first of many..

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#GarageEnvy

I've loved the discussion about painting, stencilling, rub-ons, frisket, etc.!

One option I haven't heard mentioned is screen printing itself. I think HSA used screen printing to add key lines. A nice thing about that is that the screen is reusable, and it is true to the original application technique. So I am thinking about burning some screens to try it for text.

Also looking forward to trying the latest Createx application recommendations.

https://creatextech.com/pdf/app-guides/Createx-Colors_Hard-Surface-Application-Guide.pdf

Good luck with the screen printing. I am sure there is a thread covering this somewhere but i wonder what happened to the original screen printing setups when manufacturers shutdown?

They have full sized films to make as many as they need.

Rick/PPS has those films now.

I have laid down the first coat of clear. Really happy with how it looks considering this playfield was on the scrap heap. Wondering if the attached pic is whats called "fish eye"? Or maybe just some contaminant i missed on the final clean. Only in one area and i can live with it. Also wondering if sanding the 1st coat before 24hrs is OK? Very keen to flatten out and get a 2nd coat down. Thanks for any advice.

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Clearcoating over Cabinet Decals

I have not read anything about this in the topic but hoping someone might have some experience/advice with this? I have seen some pictures that look great of freshly decal'ed and cleared cabinets but have a few questions. If there is a better thread for this i will remove and put the question there.

Surface tension. Is this only an issue on small decals for a playfield or still true on large cabinet decals? Is just going over the top of a decal OK or should the decal be between clear coats?

Decal shrinkage. I have noticed a back box i decal'ed has evenly shrunk over the past year (1-2mm). Would this be an issue if it was clear coated over the top after install? Would clear lock it in and stop shrinkage?

For context, the machine I am working on isnt a collectors pin or anywhere near a redeemable condition to keep stock. Personally, I think where possible machines should stay true to the original. Everyone is different but I have seen some refurbs where the original pin looked great beforehand only to be poweder coated, decal'ed & modded. I am hypocritical as i am changing this LW3 but it is a good candidate given the poor condition.

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Always mylar over damage while waiting for restoration.

CryptKeeperAUS : do you have a water separator on your compressor?
Looks like a couple of drops of water.?.?

Yeah I got 2 installed. If it's water, probably just the swet off my forhead or a small couple of droplets past the exhale valve on the full face resperator. Very hot in those things. Seemed to sand out OK. Havnt been able to get a 2nd layer down as my touch up paint didnt arrive as planned.

If it sanded out it was likely water.
I spray outside because of the toxicity and because i do not want to roast in a booth.
Good luck with project!

Yes it's a good point about toxicity, especially for new people like me. Outdoors isn't an option for me and my setup would be fine if i had an air supplied mask. I have only done one coat and stopped for now as it was full of mist for those 5-10 minutes and although it was a full face sheild my filters were only P3 (not chem), not enough airflow in the both so not happy to continue until i sort it out, especially as i am planning to clear the cabinet too.

I hadn't done enough research on the filters prior but Im happy i atleast had a good fitting P3 but and it was only the once but it would be foolish for me to keep using it now knowing i am exposing myself. I may set up an extraction fan and tube it well away along with better filters.

Looking for advice on best course of action to repair the gouges/missing wood in this bare wood section of my playfield. I'm guessing the only option is to fill with wood putty and paint with wood tone but happy to hear other suggestions. My after pic is after I touched up with wood tone paint. I've still got a bit of a wood look but I'm afraid putty and more paint will ruin the look.

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That job is a big one. You are on the right track, bondo and stencils, airbrush for the entire playfield.
Lots of damage.

Everything can be fixed, just time and money.

See if you can find another playfield in better condition, or another game, might be better and cheaper.

Bare wood looks good. How are you going to proceed with the rest of the missing artwork ?

I scanned the entire playfield, and now I'm going to try stenciling/frisket/airbrush. This is my first restoration, first time using an airbrush, etc., but this seems like a good playfield to learn on. I can't screw it up much worse than it already is. My repaint of the shooter lane has given me confidence. This will only ever be a player's game but I think I'll be happy enough with the end results.

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If you have a good scan and can clean it up, you can make paint masks with a cameo. It works great and you can do pretty fine lines. Most of those areas are big blocks of solid color, perfect for masking and painting.

This is the path I am taking. I did two sets of scans on the playfield - one set that covered the entire playfield, the other set is specific areas that need the most attention. I decided to scan them separately as some of the areas that required attention spanned a couple of the overall playfield scans, and I did not feel like dealing with the overlap. I've imported them into Gimp for cleanup; that effort is mostly complete, though as I've learned more I have started over on a few where I wasn't happy with the results. From there I'm using Inkscape to correct for any scaling issues and to export to svg format, which I will then import into the Silhouette software for actual cutting.

My Little Chief has some fairly large areas of solid color that will just get frisketed and airbrushed including (most likely) the background colors of the areas I'm detailing above. At least that's the plan for now; I'm still in more of a learning than doing mode.

I scanned my playfield one section at a time, squaring up the scanner to the plywood edges with a long framing square. I was pretty meticulous about it but my scans still don't 100% line up and oddly, when all joined together they are a little short of the total length of the playfield. Still, after messing around in photoshop and illustrator I was able to get nearly perfect masks with my cameo. The cameo is a bit of a pain to use and the instructions are terrible, but when it works it's pretty amazing.

Can someone in this thread post a # of a post that explains best technique to repair my Fish Tales inlanes where the ball drops? There is a "crater" at both inlanes that needs to be filled/leveled/touched up. So far, I have purchased a can of 2 part automotive clear, with (so far) what I have learned, is to spray some clear into a container, suck up some clear with a dropper, then apply. Just having trouble finding the post that goes into more detail.

The above is a perfect response... even for the knowledgeable/talented vet, you've got tons of hours of work, and I wouldn't tackle that as a first time restoration candidate, unless you just want to practice. They made a ton of TAs, you should be able to score a better playfield.

yes, it's mostly practice but I think it's going to come out pretty good. The cameo will help a ton with masking. Airbrushing is easy and I was able to put together a decent playfield scan for the masks (tested a few cuts with frisket but the cameo chews it up a bit). It won't win awards but I'm only doing it for my own use anyway.

I'm not necessarily "restoring" this Eight Ball Deluxe playfield, rather prepping it for a hardtop installation "refurbishment". The playfield was loaded with gouges, missing artwork, and the like so a good candidate for a hardtop. It was also full of mylar....everywhere....I guess in an effort to preserve what was left of the deteriorating artwork.

I used light heat to pull up the tons of mylar...that came up ok but left behind tons of adhesive. I used Goo Gone to remove the adhesive, then sanded down the playfield to bare wood, and wiped clean with Naphtha. Next steps were to wet sand the inserts to a nice shine, put on a few light coats of clear to seal the playfield, and then lay down the hardtop. But after wiping with Naphtha, I caught a view of the playfield from an angle and see spots all over (both on the wood and the inserts). It looks fine when staring straight down from above, but from an angle (with appropriate lighting) I see these spots.

What could this be? Leftover Goo Gone residue (even tho I sanded 800-1000-1500 after wiping it up)? Advice on removing it (sand with lower grit, maybe 200-300)?

This is my third hardtop install (and my 2nd EBD) and I've never seen this before.

Thanx....

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Curious, did you use an airbrush to apply the clear coat?

I haven't applied the clear yet. This condition is after (in order):

- Mylar removal with light heat gun
- Adhesive residue removal with Goo Gone
- Sanding 800-1000-1500 to remove the remaining artwork
- Wiping down with Naphtha

I was going to prep the inserts and apply clear next, but I'm stopping to figure out what this is and correct before advancing.

Hard to tell from the photo but two things come to mind.
1. If you used an airbrush to apply the clear coat without a moisture trap in the line ,it could be condensation in the line contaminating your clear.
2. If you super high polished those inserts they may be too smooth, you may want to dial them back just a little bit so the clear has something to bind to.
Just thinking out loud.

Hard to tell from a picture, but it looks like it’s not sanded dead flat yet. I’m reading cloudy areas as higher than the areas that look more clear in the inserts.

+1 it's not sanded flat yet. You just started to knock off the high spots.

Thanx, gents. I'll give it a go with a round of lower grit sanding tomorrow.

What does it look like when wet with naptha? That's a pretty good indication of what it will look like cleared.

Applying clear now , will be much easier to get level with block sand. So first clear and THEN block sand.

Thanx, Tommy-dog - I made a couple of orbital sander passes with 400 grit this afternoon and the playfield is much better. Non-glossy and it looks flat...no weird splotchy highlights when looking at it at an angle anymore.

Question on inserts if you have any advice in that area - they all look great after a Naphtha wipe down. After the Naphtha dries off, I've got 4 inserts that show a fair amount of scratches. Will laying down a few light layers of clear before applying the hardtop have them looking scratchless like after a Naphtha wipe down, or do I need to sand the inserts 1000-1500-2000 (especially those 4) as suggested in the hardtop installation instructions?

Going with a grit higher than 600 might prevent good adhesion of the clear. If the inserts look good wiped with naphtha (while it is wet), they should look good cleared.

If you’re doing a hardtop, just follow their instructions. There’s also several threads where people documented their install.

I've been working on this EM Joker Poker EM on and off for months now. What initially looked to me like a fairly doable restoration turned into a full on reconstruction, involving tons of scanning, painting over large swaths of the art, and restoring damaged art digitially so that it could be printed onto decals. It was basically a way for me to learn more about pshop and Illustrator, both of which were employed mightily.

The playfield art was incredibly delicate, and removing ball swirls with ME + alcohol was out of the question. Are would just start flaking off the surface instantly. Even the mild naptha on a rag to cut through the lousy sharpie "touch ups" that had been done around the keylining was a dicey proposition. I had to repaint all of the red on the playfield. The whites were such a darkened, ball-swirl disaster, it meant the only way to address that was to repaint everything with a yellowed white, then decal the art back down. The face cards were a miniature eternity of mouse clicks in pshop (Illustrator's Image Trace tool just couldn't make fine enough details at that tiny scale, to me consternation.) I used the pantone color book in the Adobe suite to print out samples and see how they looked on the actual playfield. Short of spending an enormous outlay of $ for a very fancy monitor and calibration setup, I opted to just figure it out the hard way - by printing out 1" squares on decal paper, labeled with their pantone value, and placing them on the playfield itself. The yellowed white means you can't judge the match until it is on the surface, as that casts the color slightly warmer. Then, lots of hours of printing and placing decals, plus having one of them glue itself to the printer's innards, requiring a surgery which may have damaged the printer permanently, but for $200 I'm trying to shrug that off.

This is ready for clear, after which there are just a couple of small details to wrap up that I couldn't do in this layer.

I will be doing a separate post/topic on this project as there is a lot to say about it, and I will be doing the cabinet over as well, but for now I figured I'd dump a handful of photos here.

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Looks great Benjamin. You do great work. Shooter lane looks great too.

I'm curious if it's been discussed anywhere in this thread how to get out the fade surrounding the flippers?

Excellent work. I know first hand how hard it is to do all that work and all the effort required. Very nice looking result.

First off, thanks.

Unpainted wood stuff I just accept as being what it is. There's a wear line at the top of the playfield from the ball travel that you just can't get rid of, so it's just part of the game's character at this point.
With plywood, you can only do so much before you burn through the veneer layer, so I'm inclined to draw the line at the stuff I can fix and make my peace with the stuff I can't. It's a 40 year old game, after all. The shooter lane already is cutting across layers of veneer, so on that I just used sandpaper on a dowel until it looked more presentable.

I've seen some people paint the wood grain a light brown, but that doesn't appeal to me. I suppose someone who knows the technique of graining could actually faux paint new wood grain, but the labor involved would be intense. Unless you can really pull that off, better to put the labor in where you can make it count. I like my work to disappear, as though this was an original playfield, albeit one that mysteriously got clear coated. Fake wood grain would look phony and labored over if I tried it, so I just let the game have some history.

You could try to darken the questioned area with multiple , light , layers of shellac. I did this on one of my restorations and you have to look for the touch up.
With a weak solution of shellac you can get to the desired tone with precision.

Fine work Benjamin ! Lots of love there !!

That’s an interesting idea, I’ll have to experiment on one of the machines in my “bone yard”.

Wow! That's a lot of work. Nicely done!

If only they’d had the electronic version, I could’ve just done a CPR swap and had done with it!