I picked up this 1954 Williams Spitfire from an antique shop in Montreal for $500 CDN. Sounds like a lot to some folks but it is slim pickings up here.
The cabinet had been repainted by hand with latex:
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I was able to remove the latex, the original paint wasn't in that bad a shape really -- looked better than the repaint attempt. I scanned the cabinet with my Doxie Flip. I do have an HP 4670 but often use the Doxie as it runs on batteries which makes it super convenient. After stitching the images, I brought them into Inkscape and redrew them vectorized. The vectorized images are used to laser cut stencils out of 1/8" MDF board at my local library.
My coin door was not original, it was made out of plywood. I bought a used coin door for another Williams machine and repainted it. Here you can see the laser-cut stencil I used. I based the artwork on a picture taken for me by Odin of one of his machines.
As is typical for an old EM it was very dirty. Here are some shots of the mech panel.
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The playfield only had a few bad wear spots. Flipper drag here:
Bumpers worn down:
"Midget playfield" worn:
There was also a lot of pitting where tiny chunks of the original artwork were missing.
Also, someone must have sprayed something all over this playfield in a vain attempt to improve it. All they did was make a mess:
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Most of the inserts were yellowed, warped and sunken.
This is really the first game I've tried to restore. Not everything went as well as I had hoped but I learned a lot!
I replaced all of the inserts. For the 1-2-3-4-5 inserts, I scanned and redrew the artwork in Inkscape. Using my Silhouette Cameo vinyl cutter I cut paint mask and airbrushed the artwork. Turned out very well. In fact all of the touchups were done with the Silhouette Cameo. I got better at colour matching as I went on. The paint is Createx AutoAir. It is not as easy to level inserts as I thought, this is definitely an area I'd pay more attention too next time.
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This is one of a handful of "Star Feature" Williams games, where by playing an extra nickel you can in theory win up to 200 free games! The credit counter:
The game came with metal legs. I could not find a set of 32.5" woodrail legs so I had a set made at a local carpentry shop out of maple.
My shooter gauge was broken; I bought a rusted out but intact one off eBay. Chris at Pinball Plating nickel plated it for me. I had a dry rub-down transfer made and it worked awesome!
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In terms of painting the cabinet, it is done with Molotow paints.
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I am lucky that the backglass is in pretty good shape. A bit of ink loss but not in the detail areas:
Someone drilled holes through the lockdown bar, I filled with maple plugs and tried to line up the grain lines:
Playfield is clearcoated with SprayMax 2k. Next time I would consider getting some non aerosol 2K for insert filling. That is something I could have done better.
Here are a few other shots of the machine cleaned up:
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