I have a Gorgar and a Blackout whose playfields I'm thinking of touching up, but I don't know either of their histories in that area. Is there anything I need to do in order to get a playfield to a zero point before applying any kind of new clear coat? That is, do I need to worry about whether or not the original lacquer from the factory might still be on there (or perhaps some other unknown finish)? If so, how can I make sure that it's all been removed, and that any clear coat I apply will get a good bond with the playfield?

Page 2 goes into detail about how to use an airbrush to great effect, which is cool for more geometrically-themed playfields. But what about something like Gorgar? Is this something that has to be done by hand, or would you figure out a way to airbrush it because you're awesome?

IMG_1234.JPG

For applying the clear coat, people are recommending a 600 dollar air compressor. There's no way I'd come even close to working on enough machines to justify that cost. However, if the compressor I'd need to use when doing paint touch-ups doesn't need to be as powerful, I could at least do that part and try to find someone else to do the actual clear coat. What kind of air compressor would be acceptble if I were just wanting to use it for applying paint touch-ups?

EDIT: Already answered way back on page 2!

"You can use a regular shop air compressor (like a Pancake or 120 gallon garage monster), a dedicated "air brush" compressor, or even just canned airbrush air."

In this thread are two people whose work I admire greatly - Vid and Whridlsoncestood. The problem is that Vid recommends automotive clear coat and Whrid uses Varathane by the gallon.

Now, Vid's right. We humans love easy. But we also love returns on our investment - either money or time. Varathane is considerably cheaper, money and effort-wise if not time-wise, to apply to a playfield than automotive clear coat. But Vid makes a pretty strong case for why Varathane is a bad idea for a playfield.

I'm wondering if any actual science has been done to compare playfields finished with Varathane veruss ones finished with ACC and how each of them holds up over time. I'm less concerned about the ultimate victor, since I'm pretty sure that ACC will win out. But I'm more concerned about the conditions under which Varathane would make someone regret not putting in the effort to use ACC (whether self-applied or paying a local business to do it). What kind of degredation have people started to see after two years? Five years? Ever?

Has anyone done such science?

Much like the agonizing wait for the next book in a certain sweeping medieval fantasy series, I'm on the edge of my seat waiting for Vid to get to the part where he tells us how long to wait after a given coat before we can sand it down and apply the next one.

I've been calling around and most auto body shops here require a 2-hour minimum charge for labor and materials, and they all seem pretty insistent that sanding in between coats is highly inadvisable.The spec sheet for the JC661 says that new coats go on about ten minutes apart, but polish time is recommended to be 6 to 8 hours.

So, how should the actual application and in-between-coat sanding go? Do you have to wait six hours before sanding, or can the whole application/sanding/application process be done over a short period of time?

So, it looks like if I'm going to do this, I need to find someone willing to work in short bursts instead of charging me for two-hour minimums. Maybe Craigslist can help me out.

The alternative is buying a big compressor, building a collapsible paint tent in my garage and buying all the safety gear I need to not turn my lungs into solid blocks of urethane.

What, whaaa? /mindblown

It's possible that I've been conflating the Varathane clear coat process with the 2PAC process. With Varathane, you need to sand in between each coat, right?

Meanwhile, I have also seen the video of the guy using 2PAC to coat his playfield with a ten-cent dust mask. (If it's the guy I'm thinking of, he's a big fan of "Noovis 2".) He puts down, like, five coats with copious amounts of wet sanding in between. Are you saying that I might not need to do all that work? That a single coat (after that initial light coat to lock down wood fibers and lay the touch-ups on top of) would probably do it?

I'll just wait for your next update and see how the pro does it.

I have a Taxi playfield I'm restoring that had mylar on the lower half for a long enough time that there's a very clear split between the grimy and non-grimy parts.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/yo-another-taxi

To quote my own thread:

"I can either delicately trace around the various taxis and such on the road and shoot the whole thing with grey, or I can cover the entire thing with grey and apply decals afterward. Both choices have their pros and cons, and to be honest - I'm leaning towards the latter."

I really feel like trying to delicately trace around a giraffe riding in a taxi with a swivel exacto knife on frisket is a recipe for disaster. How would you proceed with a playfield like mine?

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IMG_1736-918.JPG

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So you think I should go the hand scanner, Photoshop and decal paper route?

Would I be able to use the HF Airbrush with this compressor, or will I need a smaller, lesser-powered one? Not excited about needing to own two compressors. :/

Somewhere in this epic Victor Hugo-ian thread, VId floats the idea of $15 a day to rent an air compressor. Perhaps that's the case in certain parts of the country. Here in Seattle, though, the lowest price I can find for a suitable compressor that may or may not even have the right gallon size is 30 to 45 dollars a day.

I have to buy a pancake compressor for my airbrush and staple gun anyway, which is 60 bucks. That only 100 dollars difference if I want to go with the HF one. I think that's worth it to be able to clear my own playfields with a DIY paint tent instead of trying to ask someone else if I can borrow theirs or drive all the way out to their house. Even if this thing only lasts five years, 25 bucks a year is much better than 45 a day.

Much like Kirk's faith in Spock's educated guesses, I'll take a "Looks good enough" from Vid any day as the OK to pick this guy up.

There's a lot of back and forth and this and that over the suitability of a cartridge-based respirator for use with isocyanates like the JC660 clear. OSHA/NIOSH have said that the "smell test" is not an acceptable way of telling when it's time to change your cartridge, because by that point you've alreayd inhaled too much of the stuff.

3M lists the basic use life of their 6001 series cartridges thusly:

1. Cartridge service life should be at least eight hours if:

the contaminant has a boiling point greater than 70 degrees C (158 degrees F);
the concentration is less than 200 parts per million (ppm)
the relative humidity is less than 50%.

2. If the concentration is reduced by a factor of 10, the service life increases by a factor of 5.

3. Service life is inversely proportional to flow rate.

4. Relative humidities above 85% reduce the service life by 50%.

Do you have any input on how any of these variables might be different enough to effect the shelf life of cartridges? I'm fine with using them for even as little as four hours if it means I'll stay safe. From what I can tell, this stuff goes on so easily that it's not like I'll be creating a hot-box full of the stuff for hours at a time.

That's about what I was expecting. I live in Seattle, and our humidity is usually between 45 and 60 percent, but as I said - I'm fine with only using four hours of the maximum possible eight under perfect conditions. I'd probably be OK with two hours, considering how little time I expect I'll be in the middle of a clearcoat cloud.

I'm picking up a mask and a pair of cartridges:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008MCUULW/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000XBKLLE/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2

Do I need the pre-filter and pre-filter retainer as well? Or is the cartridge good enough? I'd Google it, but pretty much every place that sells these says that a half-mask and cartridges aren't acceptable for use with Isocyanates in the first place, so they're no help.

I'm thinking of getting this instead, which is a mask that isn't quite as fancy but comes with everything it looks like I need.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00004Z4EB/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1

Vid, can you comment on the difference between these two? It looks like you've used both.

http://www.harborfreight.com/deluxe-airbrush-kit-95810.html
www.harborfreight.com/quick-change-airbrush-kit-93506.html

This might be beyond the scope of the guide, but can you give us new sprayers some general advice on how to actually lay down a coat of clear? How do you make sure your playfield is level? How much back-and-forth do you do? Do I need to replace my Tyvek suit every X number of sprays? That kind of thing.

I'm having a hell of a time finding PPG Shopline anywhere in the Seattle area. Can you recommend any other clear types? The places around here offer PPG Omni. Do you think that'll be good enough for a beginner and/or a playfield?

The Shopline brand has a fast, medium and slow type of hardener, whereas the Omni brand has fast, slow and very slow. The guide on Pinrepair says to use the fast type if using the Omni brand . Do you concur, Vid?

That's what she said.

OK, I'm about to shoot my first fine mist of clear on this Taxi playfield. My first layer will be the one that goes down to lock dow loose fibers before touching things up. I've run the magic eraser all over, but I'm not sure if I need to sand the playfield first. This thread is packed with details for each step, but is there anywhere in it that gives a real high-level overview of the steps to take from start to finish? Something like: Magic Eraser -> Light Sanding -> Mist Layer -> Touch-ups -> First Real Layer of Clear, and so on.

OK, I've put down the first light coat. As you suggested, it was nothing more than a fine mist. I can see that there's something on the playfield when I look at it in the light, but it's not anywhere close to shiny.

I think I mixed up too much of this stuff, though. How do I dispose of it?

Even if this is the first coat prior to touching up?

Also, how do I clean the HVLP gun? Do I just run some lacquer thinner through it, or do I have to take it apart and soak everything?

It's been about two and a half hours since I put the light coat on, and the playfield still feels a bit... sticky. Is this normal? Also, the leftover clear hasn't really hardened in the metal can. I'm concerned that I didn't get the mix right. I did two parts clear to one part hardner in a glass measuring cup, so either I'm being impatient or I did something wrong. Any advice?

I know I read somewhere in this thread about how decals can end up with a kind of milky appearance once a layer of clear is on them. I think I just learned that the "Ride Again" insert that was under the mylar is actually a decal - unless this is extra mylar under the original mylar. Vid, can you confirm this, based on this picture? If it is a decal, is there anything to be done about it?

IMG_1856.JPG

Mea clupa, here. That orange peel might be the results of my first layer of clear. Since I didn't notice the decal until just now, I don't know what the playfield was like when it was put on and then mylar put on top of it.

Did I screw things up with my first coat? There have been so many mentions of first layers and light layers and fine mists that I may not have laid down enough clear on my first pass.

OK, I've been using the airbrush to lay down some white on a few areas. Either I had some inaccurate expectations for how much coverage I'd get out of this Harbor Freight airbrush, or this paint isn't coming out as heavy as it should be. I had to make six or so passes over any given spot to really feel like I was getting good coverage. This is using 50 psi, which is 20 beyond what HF recommends for this airbrush.

I know these paints are supposed to shoot fine coming out of the bottle, but it seems Iike I'm having to work awfully hard to lay down a substantial amount of paint.

I've heard that Taxi is a tough playfield for a first-timer to restore. I haven't had too much of a problem, but I can see one problem: the nearly-covered silk-screened rectangular passenger inserts. Mine are currently very slightly bowed in the middle. None of them have a severe "lip" or anything - they're mianly just higher int he center than they are than the rest of the playfield. Every other insert is just fine - it's just these five passenger ones.

Santa Claus:

IMG_1865-202.JPG

Marylin

IMG_1866.JPG

If I pull them up, sand them off and fix them, I have to figure out how to re-paint them. Decals are the answer, but what would be the best way to lay those down? I figure I have three options.

1) Paint over the inserts completely once they're back in, and then figure out how to smudge enough off so that the "clear" parts of the decals show the light through.

2) Apply the decals over the bare insert, and then trace around then, hoping to get as close to the black lines as possible and then touch-up the leftover gaps where the black lines meet the surrounding color.

3) Include a surrounding color as part of the printed-out decals, and match to that color around it, well away from the black border lines.

Vid, have you ever restored a Taxi playfield? How did you handle this?

I tried heating them up to push them down, but the sides were all the way down in the socket. They were pratcially up against the wood. I decided to risk heating up the middle of the inserts to at least see if I could reduce the bow-up, but the paint started to bubble. I figured "in for a penny, in for a pound" at this point and just removed all five of them.

I sanded the Marylin one flat with 100, 220, 400, 800 and then 1000 grit sandpaper. Here are some pictures.

IMG_1870.JPG
IMG_1873.JPG

It certainly smoothed out and, with a little grinding-out of the leftover glue, seems to fit flush (or just below) the sides of the socket. My questions are thus:

1) It's still a bit cloudy. Do I need to get anything to get it even clearer before putting it back in?
2) How thin is too thin for an insert? Do I need to go buy some calipers? Or should I not even worry about it and just buy all-new ones?

So in either case, I'm going to need to apply decals over the inserts that go back into those spots. Because the colors surrounding the inserts bleed over into them, I can't just airbrush around the insert and then put on the decal like with the arrows or the circles.

With Marylin, for example, I'm thinking of airbrushing around the open insert slot (or frisketing over it with the insert in) and leaving a rectangle of unpainted area. Then, I'd put the decal on and try to manually fill in the paint as best I could with a brush. I'm not sure I could trace around the decal well enough with an X-acto knife to do a good enough job with the airbrush. I dunno, maybe I could.

How would you do it if you were in this situation?

I've given up trying to find replacement clear rectangular inserts for my Taxi playfield, so I guess I'm going to just sand them off and put them back in. The problem is that they're all kind of cloudy. The cloudiness mostly goes away when they get wet, so will a thin layer of clear before applying decals have the same effect?

I got myself an HP 4600, and I've prepared some decals to go over the clear inserts on my Taxi. If I print these up on clear decal paper, will the color underneath them on areas outside of the decal show up through the color? For instance, will the blue color behind Marylin bleed through the yellow of her hair? If so, then I have a few options.

I can lay white down around the border, trace around with frisket and then lay down the surrounding color. This seems OK. Or, I can print on white decals and then cut the clear parts out before or after applying them. This seems harder. If we want to get truly ridiculous, I can print two copies (one on white and one on clear) and figure out how to combine the two so the clear one's in the middle with the white one surrounding it. Like doing some kind of weird decal gut replacement on Santa.

I know earlier, I said that tracing frisket around art is kind of a pain, but I might have to make an exception here for these five decals.

But speaking of decals, it's also time to confront this issue of what to do about the art on the grey roads. Do I shoot grey over the whole thing and use decals, or do I trace around every little thing on the road and then touch those things up later?

I've heard that doing it the decal way runs the risk of it never looking right, no matter what I do. I've asked the guy who said that to elaborate on why he thinks so. In the meantime, I'm wondering if you can offer a bit more advice on why you think the decal route might be a good idea.

Basically, I have one chance at this and need to know what I'm getting into when I finally make my choice.

It's not so much that I need white printed (although, now that I think about it, Santa has a lot of white in his outfit). It's more that, unless I'm wrong, the color underneath a the color on a clear decal will bleed through. If I put marylin's yellow hair over the blue background she sits on, it may come out green. Unless the colors on a waterslide decal are pretty opaque.

I know I'm not the first person around here to have difficulty finding 3M Plastic Primer, so I was hoping we could settle the question of where to actually find it at a consumer-level price once and for all.

3M's website has a document that goes over all of their Adhesion Promoter/Primer products.

http://multimedia.3m.com/mws/mediawebserver?66666UuZjcFSLXTtNxf2LXf_EVuQEcuZgVs6EVs6E666666--

They have a listing for Plastic Primer P591 and Adhesion Promoter AP596. The Plastic Primer is listed as being black in color, but the picture of Vid applying the primer all the way back on Page 1 of the thread shows him applying something clear.

The Adhesion Promoter is listed as having a water thin viscosity, but the Plastic Primer says 12 - 15 seconds (Ford Cup), whatever that means.

Finally, the Adhesion Promoter is listed as working best with a wider variety of materials than the Plastic Primer, though they both have a "Best" rating with PVC and PMMA. What are inserts usually made out of?

Vid, can you comment on the specific material you use when you refer to 3m Plastic Primer? I want to make sure I get the right stuff. Thanks!

I was hoping for this answer, but I wanted to make sure. Thanks!

None of it seems to be in a paint-on form, though. It's all spray-can based. In fact, I can't find paint-on plastic primer anywhere. I'm not convinced that Grainger actually stocks it. Their photo is a stock item, and it's marked all over their website as discontinued.

I couldn't just spray the spray-can stuff into a puddle in a glass container and then paint out of there, could I?

At the low price of $106.45? Sign me up!

However, I did find Loctite 770 on sites like Amazon for around 20 bucks with free shipping. If it's good enough for you, then it's good enough for me.

Back on page 20, you mention clear-coating both sides of a playfield. My Taxi playfield has grey paint on the back side. I've already stripped 99 percent of the stuff off of it. Do you recommend pulling the rest of the stuff out and clearing that side as well?

Vid, earlier we talked about how I should handle repainting the grey road on my Taxi playfield. It's two-toned due to years of the non-mylar'd paint getting dirty and yellow. I figure the best approach is to re-paint the whole road. The problem is both with the art assets on the road (I'll use the Tow Truck as an example) as well as the passengers on the clear inserts (such as Gorbie).

Laying frisket on top of them could result in a bunch of valleys where the grey dips down onto the original art, so I'd need to knock down those edges to make sure the transitions are smooth. After that, I'd need to lay down more frisket for each color inside the assets I want to air brush, creating more little valleys, until it becomes a big, valley'd mess. Even if I chose to forget the airbrush and use a regular paint brush, there's still be a mess of valleys and brush strokes to deal with for each and every little art asset on the road.

The alternative is to paint the whole road grey and then apply decals. You had already mentioned that this was probably the way to go, but I wanted to see if you could think of any reason not to do it before I started covering everything up with grey.

On a related note, I'm still trying to figure out how to deal with the clear inserts that the passengers sit on. I can't just cover those up with paint and then put decals over them, otherwise the light from the clear inserts won't come through. I've considered trying to use a printout of each decal on hard card stock to act as a "stencil" for some underlying frisket. This would allow the grey paint to cover up part of the decals (such as around Gorbie's body) but that would lead us to the valley problem mentioned earlier. Maye that wouldn't be so bad with just five passenger-shaped valleys that I'd come along and put decals inside of later (with some clear on top to even the valleys out).

So while I think I know the path to take with the road and all the little taxi cabs on there, how would you handle where the road and the passengers meet over the clear rectangular inserts?

Really, you could probably ignore my babbling and just talk about how you would approach restoring a Taxi playfield with each of the passengers missing from their inserts and a road that needs to be complete re-painted.

I have some Loctite 770 I ordered from Amazom coming to me this week. I can report back on how it works. It's about 17 bucks for a 2oz. bottle, which should be all you need for a long time.

At some point in the last few weeks, the conversation moved to wet sanding, but I don't see wet sanding as a prescribed action by Vid anywhere in the thread. Vid, when would we wet sand versus dry sand during the restoration process?

I just put down my first real shiny layer of JC661 clear, and 45 minutes later it's still a bit tacky to the touch. Is this normal?

Two questions!

1) Earlier, you have a section on post-coat sanding, and you don't mention wet sanding anywhere in there at all. When do we wet sand with 800 + grit, and when do we dry sand with 800+ grit? Can we avoid having to know when to do what and just wet sand at 800+ all the time?

2) Do we still need to wear a Tyvek suit and respirator while wet sanding?

Now that I've put the first layer of clear on my playfield, I've wet-sanded it with 800 and then 1000 grit paper. I can see the shiny spots all over the playfield where there are little dips that the flat sanding block didn't get into. Do I need to fill all of these little spots with small amounts of clear coat from an eyedropper? And if so, do I need to rough them up as well right before dispensing it?

I could probably sand some more to get to a few of these spots, but there are definitely spots that just can't be sanded into. I'm pretty sure I did a lousy job of keeping level the five clear inserts that I replaced. The only way forward is through, though. So, I think I need to drop some clear in there to get things nice and level before applying decals and.or painting around them.

IMG_1922.JPG
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I got some of the 2PAC on my garage floor, and I'm not sure if my landlord will take kindly to it when we move out. Is there an easy way to remove it?

Yeah, these are just a few dime-sized drops. There might be an area the size of a lid of small mixing bowl lid outside, but I won't know until it dries out from the rain we've been having.

For the passenger inserts on my Taxi, I'm still trying to think of the best way to handle the combination of airbrushing, decals with white backing, decals with clear backing, and the possible use of white paint under the clear decals for the spots where they aren't over a clear insert.

One possible method involves putting decals down first, and then using frisket around them so I can spray grey up to the edge of them. Is frisket on decals a good idea? If not, then perhaps I can do all the decals I need, shoot a thin layer of clear (which would make it my second total layer) and then continue with applying the rest of the paint on the playfield.

Hey Vid, you may have missed my post earlier. Two questions about decals. First. If I had an air brushed area, and a non-airbrushed area, would you recomment laying a decal across the two? I'm trying to figure out my options for my Taxi playfield where the road grey meets the passengers over the clear inserts. The other option is to lay the decals on the currently-flat playfield and then frisket over them in order to lay down some grey right up to them. How do frisket and decals interact? I guess I can always apply new ones if they get peeled off. Or I can lay down the decals, shoot another layer of clear and then lay down some paint with the airbrush. Do you have any thoughts?

The only thing I can think of is if the airburshed paint creates enough of a "curb" that the decal ends up not making 100% contact with the surface. Maybe knocking the edges down with some fine-grain sandpaper would help. But then I'm applying the decal directly over paint, which is something you caution against. Ugh. Why is it so difficult for me to figure out how to approach this?

I'd like to talk a bit more about this. The lowest average high in the winter in Seattle is about 47 degrees. It's usually about five or so degrees warmer in my garage than outside, so if 60 is the threshold, then I only need to heat the place up about five to seven degrees. It's a a standard 400 square foot garage, so maybe I can pick up a space heater on craigslist. Is sixty degrees a good threshold, or is that some kind of Absolute Bare-Bones Minimum That Still Probably Isn't a Good Idea?

Does frisket lift the Createx paint from an airbrush? I ask because this is my Taxi playfield:

IMG_2432.JPG

My plan is to lay down frisket, print up my decals on some sticky-backed shipping labels and then trace around the spots I want to leave clear, peeling up the label/frisket parts that I want to lay down white on (within the confines of each passenger insert). If the paint is safe from being lifted by the frisket, then I can go right ahead and frisket the whole of each insert so I can spray grey and other colors before clearing the whole thing and starting the decal process.

If the frisket isn't guaranteed to leave the paint alone, then I'm going to need a layer of clear for the whole-insert frisket to sit on before I lay down the other colors.

So, assuming you don't see an immediately better way to restore the art on these inserts, am I in danger of having the frisket lift off white paint that's been heat set on the inserts?

Could I sandwich the layers of paint in between some coats of clear? Is there such a thing as too many coats? How would you tackle this playfield?

Sounds like what I have planned. I either have to lay down clear inserts over chunks of white paint so the clear parts aren't washed out, or I have to figure out a way to use white-backed decals in combination with clear ones through some kind of surgical cut-and-align operation. Not looking forward to that.

Vid, can you comment a bit more on what to do with the underside of a playfield? There's been a few comments scattered here and there, but I'm not sure what to do with a playfield that hasn't been painted. Do I need to use a dome punch set to flatten all the screw holes out and sand the whole thing before clearing it? Or can I just power through with some 60 or 100 grit paper to flatten it all out?

I'm pretty sure the answer is "yes" but does the playfield need to be flat before putting down insert decals? If so, then it sounds like I have double the anticipated sanding to do. Looks like I'll be picking up a pneumatic sander after all!

Is that a Harbor Freight sander in your picture from way back? It looks like this one:

http://www.harborfreight.com/jitterbug-orbital-air-sander-90115.html

IMG_2475.JPG

Is that a Harbor Freight sander you've got, there?

If there are little dips on an insert that need to be filled with clear coat, but they're too small to hand sand is there anything wrong with just filling them up anyway? Or is it absolutely required that anything that new clear sits on needs to be sanded first? Because if that's the case, then I've got a whole lot of sanding down to do to get back to those little dips.

IMG_2475.JPG

I guess what I mean is that in the time since that picture was taken, I filled all the little shiny spots on the inserts with clear, let it cure, and sanded everything on those inserts back to flat. Do I need to worry about little chips of clear coming out at some point in the future because I didn't get in there with a small enough triangle of sandpaper?

I have what I think are some decals ordered from DecalPaper.com about a year ago. I remember you cautioned against using "old stock". Is a year too old? Do I need to throw these out?

Also, they caution against using them in a laser printer that's been powered on for too long. They suggest I use them only immediately after the printer has been turned on. Do you have any experience with decals from DecalPaper.com melting onto the fuser? That sure would suck.

Done! They've been on my shelf in their bag, unopened, since I got them.

Never put any decals in a hot printer.

Hmmm. There goes the idea of using the one at work, I guess. I should investigate its sleep mode settings. If it cools the fuser off while in sleep mode, maybe I can go in on a weekend.

angry_video_games_nerd_by_lecjacks_(resized).jpg

If I'm going to be doing a small bit of screen printing onto the playfield, do I want to go with the Speedball acrylic inks or the fabric inks?

Why is that?

EDIT: I mean, the obvious answer is "because that's what I see". But do you have any insight into why nobody uses Speedball Acrylic ink on playfields?

Maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about, and your condescension is deserved, but I'm not sure acrylics are as water-based as you seem to think they are. I understand why the water-based fabric paints are a bad idea. Createx paints are acrylic, though, and Vid has no problem using them.

To answer Vid's concerns, the only colors I'm planning on using are black and white, and in very small uses. I don't really have to worry about black fading. Right now, the plan is for the white to be covered up by a laser-printed clear decal (with a layer of clearcoat between the ink and the decal) to make the colors pop more. I'm less concerned about aesthetics and more about unforseen reactions with clearcoat and the like.

I certainly did not. I was asking for more information beyond "I've never seen anyone use it". That could mean anything from "I don't have any information" to "dear God, never use it".

I know a guy who screens quite a bit, and he didn't seem concerned with using Speedball ink. I'll pick his brain more and find out what he does and the results he's had.

If I'm going to go with Nazdar ink, what type? Is the multipurpose UV good enough, or do I need a specific ink line?

Fair enough.

My Taxi playfield has had the passenger inserts replaced, so my plan is to spray the area around the inserts with the gray road paint, and then push white ink through a ~220 mesh screen in the shape of the passengers, minus the parts that are clear. For instance, I'd put Gorbie's body down, but leave his head, chest, and tie missing.

Gorbie2_(resized).jpg

Then, when I'm done with everything else, I plan on clearing the playfield. The thinking is that I can then put a clear decal on top of the white silhouette.

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Why clear decals? Because the passengers need to be partially opaque and partially clear. If I put clear on gray, that would suck. If I try clear over a clear insert, the colors will be faded. This was the best idea I could come up with, after asking a bunch of questions last year in this very thread and getting a lot of "Hmmm. Yeah, you've got your work cut out for you. Good luck!" in response.

I suppose I could try to print part of Gorbie on a white-backed decal, and the clear part on a clear decal, and then try to splice the two parts together on the playfield. That seems really easy to screw up, though. I guess I could try practicing with paper and transparencies.

Anyway, there you go. I don't plan on doing a ton of screening, and the only color(s) I plan on using are white and possibly black.

I'm about ready to re-paint the road on my Taxi playfield. I'm assuming the gray they use can be had by mixing some white, some black, and some... other color(s). Any suggestions on what color ratio I should start with?

Some of my plan involves putting white paint or ink on top of the grey road paint after it's set. Is that a bad idea? Should I put a thin layer of clear on top of that grey road paint before putting anything on top of it?

Is screening opaque white Nazdar 550 ink on top of heat-set Createx airbrush paint a good idea or a bad one? I don't think I ever got the official Vid answer, and I'm at the point where I need to figure out if I need to mask over the existing letters or not before putting grey down. If I don't mask over the letters and cover them up with grey, then after the grey is heat-set, I'll screen ink on top of the grey.

I suppose I could lay down a thin layer of clear to lock the grey in before screening. Vid, what say you?

I did that last night on some scrap plywood, and aside from my terrible screening technique, the ink seemed to dry just fine on top of the airbrushed Createx.

What would I be looking for to see if it wasn't as successful as it appears?

Well, the Nazdar white didn't come up. Oddly enough, though, the black Createx did. I'm not sure what to make of these results, but I'm pretty sure this ink is OK to put on top of Createx, and is also OK to put clearcoat on top of.

Also, this Nazdar ink is solvent-based. Does that matter at all?

It dries up so fast that it effectively destroys the StencilPro screens I use. I don't like the idea of one-shot-better-get-it-right-the-first-time screens. Any tips on how to clean it up easier?

Once the retarder and the ink are mixed, and I push it through the screen, there's still the matter of cleaning it up. Water doesn't seem to have much effect on this stuff. I can barely even rinse it off a metal spoon. What can I use to clean the screen up? Do I just soak it in acetone or something, rinse, and hope it works?

Ugh. That stuff only comes in gallons. And for that reason, I'm considering trying the Speedball acrylics. I know you said that nobody uses them, but I know a guy who does. I'm going to take a look at his work. I don't have to worry about fading since I'm only doing blacks and whites. If water-based acrylics are good enough for airbrush paint, they should be good enough for a small amount of screening.

I picked up an Iwata gravity feed airbrush and small compressor off of Craigslist, but I'm having a hell of time figuring out how it's supposed to work. All the videos and guides I've read have said that you push the trigger down to start airflow, and then rock the trigger back to introduce paint. But I can't get this thing to actually shoot paint unless I'm rocking the trigger forward from all the way back. Rock the trigger back, then rock it forward to introduce paint until the trigger reaches the front. Then do it again. It makes for really inconsistent paint application.

I also have a Harbor Freight single-action siphon-feed airbrush. You press the button, and it's on. Let the button go, and it's off. No fading or anything. Would this be a better airbrush to use for laying down large swaths of color?

That's the other one I've got. The siphon-feed makes it a bit more likely to waste some paint, but I think it's better suited for large blocks of single colors.

In spraying all the grey for my Taxi's road, I realized that I'd masked an area of the road I didn't mean to. Now that it's dried, there's a hard line where the masking was. I've tried various methods of smoothing out the straight line between the old coat and the new, but it still shows up.

Do you have any handy tips or tricks for something like this, or I do just need to decide between living with it and re-doing the whole top half of the playfield (since there aren't any hard borders I can run up against)?

There's not much to see anymore. I think I've done the best I can with it. The best way to visualize it is almost like a flat sheet of paper with a score mark on it. I got the tip of my finger slightly wet and tried to smooth the line between the two coats, but then it got a bit runny, so I had to blot it. That caused the dimples from the paper towel I used to show up in the paint. It's kind of in an out-of-the-way place, and it doesn't look terrible, but if there's a way to make the two separate coats look smoother together, then I'd love to try it. Otherwise, I'll just call it a lesson learned and move on. I'm sure there are going to be way more oddities about this job that I'll be annoyed with.

Vid, I think I may have done something wrong a year or so ago when I last sanded this thing after putting a thin layer of clear. Maybe I didn't sand enough of it off, or maybe I sanded too much. In any case, some of the blue Oramask I used during the spray looks like it's pulled some of that old clear coat up. It's not that big a deal - I can do some sanding in the areas that will be visible where the clear has flaked off, with the thought that the new layers of clear will spray fine on top of it. But I'm worried that the paint I've laid down might be sitting on unstable clear coat.

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I wouldn't necessarily mind taking a bottle of 99% isopropyl to this thing to get all the paint off, giving it another good sanding with some fine grit and starting over from scratch if that's what it would take to make sure this thing is done right. What would you suggest I do from here?

Here's a better picture of what's going on. I ran some 400 grit sandpaper over the spots where it looks like the Oramask pulled up some clear coat. I'm not sure if this is my clearcoat from last year, or the factory's clear coat (assuming they did one).

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If it's my layer of clear that's not fully adhered, you're saying that I need to pick my way through anywhere it's flaking, and keep picking until it stops coming up? What about areas that don't look like they're flaking? Should I assume they're OK?

If I keep picking at it with an X-Acto blade, it keeps coming up. I could theoretically spend the next 20 hours picking this stuff off of the entire playfield. Would it be this easy to pick off if I had done a better job of clearing it in the first place?

I guess what I'm wondering is: how much work am I going to have to put in before this thing is ready for me to airbrush on again? The Oramask I was using tends to pull up the clearcoat, which I guess means I need to use Frisket and hand-trace everything. I really don't want to have to spend tens of hours picking clearcoat off the playfield by hand beforehand if I don't need to.

If I put these two together, it sounds like I need to go over the whole playfield with an X-Acto knife, picking away at the loosely-bonded clear until it's all gone.

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I considered this, but I figured it was pretty crazy. Maybe I'll give it a shot anyway. What's the worst that could happen? I ruin my playfield?

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I went to Blick, picked up a #2 knife and some #18 flat chisel blades and went to town on my playfield. I hit all the spots where the masking had pulled up clear, which was mostly the lower third of the playfield. There were three layers of difficulty in getting the clear up.

It either:

- Came up in sheets really easily, leaving little residue behind. This was definitely the least bonded part of the clear, and the part most likely to give me problems. When pulled up, it's almost like it was never there.

- Came up with a little more effort, leaving a glittery layer behind. This was likely clear that was a bit more bonded to the playfield, and probably wouldn't have given me problems in the future. I probably pulled up more of this than I should have. It tended to leave a hard line where the chiseling stopped, so now I have to go back over those with some fine grit sandpaper and smooth those lines out. If I'm not careful, I end up wearing through to the art, and that sucks. Good thing I'm re-painting 70 percent of the playfield.

- Didn't come up without some really hard shoving. Even I'm smart enough to know not to mess with this.

The end result is that I have a playfield with some high and low spots all throughout the lower third. I'm doing what I can to make sure the transitions between these spots is as smooth as possible, because I certainly don't think sanding all of the clear off the playfield is the best approach.

Vid, what's next? Should I throw down some clear to get everything as flat as possible before moving on to airbrushing? My gut tells me that's what I should do next. From there, I could proceed knowing that my clearcoat is a strongly bonded to the playfield as possible.

Vid, what's the best way to clean the glass Pyrex measuring cup I use for mixing my clear? I gave it a good scrub down with some lacquer thinner and a rough sponge, and rinsed it heavily with water. Is that good enough, or is there a chance some lacquer thinner could be left over to contaminate my next mix?

I'm airbrushing two colors right next to each other in a pretty intricate pattern. The frisket I bought seems to pull heat-set Createx up pretty easily, and I can't trace the masking pattern by hand anyway.

The Oramask 813 is great with the Silhouette cutter, but it also can pull up airbrush paint, though not as often as the frisket. I'm not willing to take a chance, though. I don't want to have to do this airbrush work a second time.

Assuming the Oramask won't pull it up, is there any reason I can't use the Createx Top Coat Gloss finish on color 1 before moving on to color 2? Is that going to be a problem with the 2-part auto clear down the line?

It's kind of a weekend-long affair to get my spray booth set up in the garage, and summer's pretty much over here. You've said in the past that shooting clear at less than 70 degrees runs the risk of it misting up. I can't find any place that will let me use their facilities, so, I don't have much time. I'll see if I can get by with just masking over color 1 and hoping it doesn't pull up.

How much clear should I use for the final spray-down? I've used about 4 oz of clear plus 2 oz of hardener, with as little waste as possible. If you don't respond in the next ten minutes or so, that's OK. I'll figure something out.

OK, so I actually would like to know if I need more layers of clear on this thing.

How much do you put down on your final coats?

Four millimeters? Like, those little lines on a metric ruler? Holy crap. I'm not even close to what I need, am I?

I feel like I went through quite a bit of clear coat for this final coat. How far away from the playfield should the HVLP gun be? I was probably about a foot away, and maybe a lot of it ended up in the air.

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Oh. Whew. Mils. I'll have to look that up.

So, based on my pictures, are you able to tell if there's enough on there?

The more I think about it, the more I think I'll leave it alone. I'm afraid something will happen, and I'll need to put another layer of clear on it. We just had our last day over 70 degrees, and I've heard you say that anything under 70 means the clear will come out misty. I don't want that. I think I might just have to be fine with this - or sit on it for another eight months and work on it again next year.

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It's definitely dimpled, but it feels like a new playfield that's been dimpled after some use. I don't think this is the kind that will mess with the ball too much. And Taxi's all ramps and locks anyway. It's not like PInbot where there's a big wide open space with tons of inserts to mess up the ball's roll.

What do you think?

I would, but I just found a problem. There's a spot where a decal has folded under itself, so it's raised just a bit above the rest of the playfield. I don't know if it'll ever be rolled over by a ball, since it real close to a border, but I'm worried that if I sand it, that part will get snagged and that spot of the decal will be ruined. I suppose I could lay another decal on top of it to try to make it look OK, and then put another layer of clear on it.

What do you think?