Game Restoration - Part 1

December 9, 2001 - Work starts

Here is a shot of the lower playfield where I'll need to do most of the work.  Before starting a project, I usually take a ton of photos of the machine so I'll be able to put it back right way (don't laugh, its an invaluable step!).  You can see the wear in the middle of the playfield, plus the wear near the right slingshots.  Also notice on the apron how there is an operator's sticker over what looks like a black oval covering up the game's name.  This is going to lead to a bit more work later (see below)....f Al

Here is a close-up of the wear in the middle of the playfield.  In this shot you can see that there is Mylar applied over the wear near the Slingshots.  I'm hoping that not too much paint will come up with the Mylar..

Here is the upper playfield.  Its in decent condition with little wear.  The rollover lanes are clean and so are most of the areas in front on the targets.  The only significant wear is at the upper right by the post at the upper roll-under.  One of the pop-bumper caps has a small chunk out of it, so I'll be looking for a replacement.

The first major step is to strip the playfield down.  I start by first removing all of the plastics and then take more photos of the playfield from every angle.  These photos will be used when putting the posts back on at the end of the process.

Here is the stripped playfield.  I still need to remove the pop-bumpers, targets, flippers and side rails.  I'll dump all of the metal pieces into the tumbler for about 24 hours to be polished.  

I also remove all of the roll-over switches and dump them into the tumbler also.  You'll be amazed at the difference when they're shiny also!

The playfield posts will get a couple of go-rounds in the dishwasher to clean them up, and a wiping with Novus 1.

As I said earlier, the playfield apron will be a small challenge.  The original operator of the game had applied a decal to the apron with their name and phone numbers.  They used about the strongest adhesive I've ever run across!  

The last operator of the machine put the typical decal on the apron which came off easily with some goo-gone.

However if you'll notice they painted over the previous operator's decal with black paint.  I figured that a bit of Goof-Off and then Goo-Gone would remove this.... wrong!

This is the original operator's decal that I found after taking off the black paint with some Goof-Off.  

After working on the decal some more, it became quite apparent why the second operator had painted over the original decal.  This decal was not coming off!  You'll notice that the paint on the apron is coming off before the decal is.

What I'm going to do with the apron is continue to take off all of the decal (and paint) in the center of the apron.  I'll then mask off the sides of the apron and paint the center a gloss black.

I'll recreate the Williams "W" logo and "Blackout" wording on the computer and print it onto decal paper.  Stay tuned!

Go to Part 2 of the Restoration

Go to Part 3 of the Restoration

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