I would humbly suggest that you not write on your new Cpr playfield with a marker - possibly use a pencil and erase as you install parts, or write on tape and peel it off. If I was buying a restored machine with a new playfield and it was written on with sharpie, I would pay less.

/end unsolicited opinion.

Good looking playfield swap.

Nice!

Pencil would make more sense but the idea is really smart.
Cyclone had it screened on the bottom of their playfields.
Adding this option to CPR reproductions would be a nice benefit for some.
I personally would pay a bit more to have this sort of "cheat-sheet" on a playfield i was about to restore since my re-populating skills are not as fine tuned as others.
Just a thought.....

Great job seshpilot. This makes me want to get started on my swap. Now if only CPR would email me. 8-(

Me too!

yeah...get started!

Just worry bout your damn snake tooth breaking off "MOTO MAN"

Looks really nice! WW is a beautiful playfield. Great job knocking it out so quickly!

Chris

Here is my original WW playfield. Mine has the right flipper near the guide. image.jpg image.jpg

ummm...wouldn't that be "fang?"

Confirmed the gap is factory. I played a whirlwind last night.

Pictures.
photo_1.JPG photo_3.JPG photo_2.JPG

I can elaborate more, to put this to rest. When the CAD file is done (by Mike P) each hole is programmed individually by hand and micrometer. An initial MDF "test" wood is cut. Then laid over the factory original (out of a game - meaning it had hardware on it and it lived in a real assembled game, with all the parts on it. We don't trust undrilled, undimpled, uninstalled NOS). On a light table, every hole is viewed through by eye. Small revisions are made to move holes to match the underlying original. A second "test" wood is cut on MDF. And so on.

Mike does this meticulously over many many days, slow and precise (It's crucial) and ends up doing 7 to 8 "test" boards, with smaller and smaller moves each time. The final board is so precise, you can clamp it together with the factory original, and look through every hole and they are perfectly matched, top top bottom, left to right, and the entire edge all the way around. Essentially, a perfectly matched clone. Only then is the cutfile considered official and final. Then it is passed on for production cutting on gameboard wood.

Any variations are with your original board. All our repro's are identical. Remember, originals were made by Lenc-Smith, Churchill, TAG, and Sun Process. Each had their own character with slight variations.

Swapping can be done by first-timers and novices, but it's not going to be flawless and easy for any virgin attemptors. People say it usually takes until your third time (or so) until it becomes a little breezier. All I can say is, accusing our holes of being in the wrong places really makes us shake our heads, knowing what is involved and how we develop the cut. Let's not go there, folks. Be patient, go slow, make judgment calls, and assemble thoroughly and carefully. Remember, on the factory line, your originals were manually drilled and thrown together very very quickly. It doesn't mean a swap is going to happen like that - especially when we PROVIDE the holes and don't sell you a board with no holes (which we can switch to if y'all want them that way, but I highly doubt it.)

Seeing as how this swap in this thread came together, it proves that you WILL be able to swap your Whirlwind. Thousands and thousands of playfields over the last 8 years, I haven't seen one of our playfields that couldn't be swapped. So don't garner any "fear factor" from any tribulations that may be mentioned by those meeting difficulties. It's not scary. It's part of swapping. Your game WILL go back together, and be gorgeous. That's the whole point.

Truthfully, everything discussed here could also happen with an NOS playfield swap, it just rarely (if ever) gets posted about because nobody pokes at original playfields. There's nobody to blame, be responsible, or read about it, because the factories are dead/history. Their work is considered official and biblical. The statement "the holes are in the wrong places" and NOS would never be uttered in the same sentence. Odd, isn't it.

KEVIN
Classic Playfield Reproductions
http://www.classicplayfields.com

I've picked up a WW plastic set and can confirm the font differences on some of the plastics (sorry I don't have side-by-side comparisons). It looks like the signs with the patterned backgrounds were the ones with the "lighter" font. Also noticed that the lightning panel insert has a noticeably different shade of blue (much more royal). Not saying any of this is bad but it does present a choice to make when deciding whether or not to replace an original piece that's in otherwise OK shape.

IMG_0003.jpg

Here are the side-by-sides. For the lightning panel the original insert is on top; for all the signs the originals are still installed.

IMG_0001.jpg
IMG_0005.jpg
IMG_0006.jpg
IMG_0007.jpg

The bold font of the original plastics looks a lot better, but what can you do? My original plastics are beat to shi* and I was missing a bunch for that matter. A complete set of "not quite right" is better than "nobody makes them" any day in my book.

Unfortunately we were working with 'borrowed" film positives, we did not have the oportunity to do New "digital" art, had we done new digital art we would have matched the art perfectly......

However, keep in mind that once you replace your "old" plastics with the New ones and put the old ones away you won't really notice the differences at all......

Ugh. I would clean and polish the originals as nice as I could and stay with those. No offense to anyone, but that's a pretty big deviation from the originals.