Cabinet Repaint With Pinball Pimp Stencils
This cabinet was not in horrible condition. It was faded, had some areas with no paint, and had a few scratches. I originally thought about not repainting it. But since I was doing the playfield overlay, I thought it needed to be done. On all of the other games that I have restored, I have made my own stencils using this process "How To Make Stencils." Since this cabinet was more detailed than most, and even though I had made some detailed stencils (see Flash Gordon), I decided to use stencils made by Pinball Pimp (hereafter PP).
I will not go into the complete painting process here as PP provides detailed instructions and a video for using their stencils. I just want to go over my experience in using them. PP’s stencils are professionally made and of great quality. If you are doing a repaint and can afford them, I would highly suggest buying their stencils.
I did have one issue during my cabinet repaint. I think sharing it might help others. This era of games usually had three colors on the cabinet: a base color and two applied colors. You paint the cabinet the base color and then apply the two colors one at a time. The stencils have positioning marks. They have a mask with a sticky side you apply for the color. You paint and then remove the mask. Once the first color is done you repeat for the second color. There are stencils for each cabinet side, each side of the head, and the front of the cabinet for a total of ten stencils (5 for each color).
I did the head first and both sides turned out great. The head has a lot of intricate and small areas that can be difficult but the stencils worked perfectly. I then did the front and the left side. Again, everything looked great except I goofed one of the invaders on the fromt and had to touch him up. It isn’t noticeable.
Then disaster struck on my final side. The issue was NOT with the PP stencils. It was either my painting conditions or the can of paint that I had. Here is what happened. When you use the stencils, you spray the paint and then you remove the mask. Here’s the trick and difficulty. If you remove the mask too soon, the paint will be a little too wet and create little “strings” that will fall down and “mar” the edges. If you wait too long to remove the mask, the paint will be too dry and will peel and pull up. On this final side, my timing was way off and I ended up pulling up massive areas of paint. Here is what I think happened. The building I did this in is not well insulated and the heat will come on quite often in winter. The air blows really hard from the vent. My guess is that the heat came on while I was doing this side and the extra air flow caused the paint to dry quicker than when I did the other sides. So, even though I pulled the mask off using the same time frame as the other sides, it was too long in this case as the paint dried quicker. So, now one side is a disaster. Here is the drawback with these stencils. They are not re-usable. Plus, this mask, because of the issues I had in removing it, was no longer in one piece and parts of it had stuck to itself. So, there was no possibility of a re-do. I am not a good enough artist to fix the disaster I created. Fortunately, as I mentioned earlier, I have an artist friend. I gave him a call to see if he could help. He came to take a look and suggested I bring the cabinet to his workshop. I sent him detailed pictures of the cabinet and hauled the cabinet to his shop. In a week he had it looking like new. It's great to have an artist friend! So now I have a great looking cabinet.
Backglass
The backglass on this game was perfect and is still in great condition. I think the double-glass style added more protection over time.
Miscellaneous
Besides what I explained above, I did the following to this game:
- Tumbled all playfield metal parts
- Painted the internal cabinet hardware and lock mechanism
- Painted the neck and grill
- Installed a new heavy duty three-pronged cord
- Repainted the legs gun metal gray to match the originals
- Installed all new plastic posts
- New reproduction bumper caps
- New Bumper bodies and skirts
- New rod and ring assemblies for the bumpers
- New reproduction drop targets
- New coil sleeves on all flippers
- New rubbers and new ball
- I put a new Bally sticker on the coin door. This makes a huge difference.
- I put on new leg levelers. These really add a nice touch to a game.
