How does the new PF layout shoot on the re-theme? Does revamping the left orbit make it difficult to hit now?
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Dr@No's fun filled (and often long-winded) restorations
- Thread starter DRANO
- Start date
Funny enough, it feels way better now. It used to have a massive opening and produced sloppy shots, now it really motors through the orbit and feels super smooth. So nice in fact, that we're planning to add a spinner there.
There was a ton of space to add the vari-target and it has provided another shot and more dimension to the game. Under the playfield is a different matter. It is super crowded and these modifications are really crammed in there.
The gameplay is tough and ball control is really hard when you have no in-lanes to feed the flippers. Also, a massive gap between the flippers doesn't help matters. The pop bumper at the drain provides some cool action and 'death saves', but I still find the game a little unforgiving. I'm playing with some simple adjustments to make ball times a little longer and to make the ball saving features like the kickback easier to engage.
That being said, the game is rough and hacked up at the moment. I have no doubt that once the playfield is smooth and all the tweaks made, it will play much better.
Once again, nice work Drano and looking forward to this re-theme.
Kudo's to the EM re-design guru as well. This pin looks "tougher" now...
Kudo's to the EM re-design guru as well. This pin looks "tougher" now...
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HIGH SPEED STIFF
Part 2
These two projects have been moving along at anything but high speed.
HS cab is done and has been sitting in my garage for weeks now awaiting me gettng off my butt to start the CPR playfield swap.
Scared Stiff, on the other hand, got a little love over the last few days as I moved all my woodrails over to the big shop and decided to focus on finishing up a couple of these smaller projects before I jump into anything else.
The sad truth however, is that I cannot keep shuffling games back and forth for space, so something will probably have to be sold sooner than later. I hate having stuff folded
All parts needed to shop/repair the game have arrived and I've finally gotten back to completing the cabinet 'refresh'. The front panel had some pretty deep gouges so I filled those in with epoxy putty and liughtly sanded them flat. The colour pallet for this game is very smple and it wasn't hard to make everything look sharp again.
Black and red marker and some grey and white acrylics; thats it!
Here's the front panel with plenty of fade and some putty applied to fill in some damage:
After carefully sanding, sometimes wet in order to prevent further damage, I started outlining the black areas and filled in missing colour. All areas that appear yellow were once red. Surprisingly, a red Sharpie pen is providing the best tone and even coverage
Sorry for the blurry shot. Here's the whole front with several other small repairs done and all the red replaced.
Lastly, I started moving to the left (and final) side. This close-up shows the stippling effect that exisited on the hands and how I have to do the same with the pen to get a close approximation. You can see the original fade on the right:
And one last shot of the entire left side in progress.
It's tedious work, but if you have an otherwise nice cabinet and don't want to blow your brains out on a full cabinet redo, this works very well.
Thanks for following along.
Will post more soon.
Part 2
These two projects have been moving along at anything but high speed.
HS cab is done and has been sitting in my garage for weeks now awaiting me gettng off my butt to start the CPR playfield swap.
Scared Stiff, on the other hand, got a little love over the last few days as I moved all my woodrails over to the big shop and decided to focus on finishing up a couple of these smaller projects before I jump into anything else.
The sad truth however, is that I cannot keep shuffling games back and forth for space, so something will probably have to be sold sooner than later. I hate having stuff folded
All parts needed to shop/repair the game have arrived and I've finally gotten back to completing the cabinet 'refresh'. The front panel had some pretty deep gouges so I filled those in with epoxy putty and liughtly sanded them flat. The colour pallet for this game is very smple and it wasn't hard to make everything look sharp again.
Black and red marker and some grey and white acrylics; thats it!
Here's the front panel with plenty of fade and some putty applied to fill in some damage:
After carefully sanding, sometimes wet in order to prevent further damage, I started outlining the black areas and filled in missing colour. All areas that appear yellow were once red. Surprisingly, a red Sharpie pen is providing the best tone and even coverage
Sorry for the blurry shot. Here's the whole front with several other small repairs done and all the red replaced.
Lastly, I started moving to the left (and final) side. This close-up shows the stippling effect that exisited on the hands and how I have to do the same with the pen to get a close approximation. You can see the original fade on the right:
And one last shot of the entire left side in progress.
It's tedious work, but if you have an otherwise nice cabinet and don't want to blow your brains out on a full cabinet redo, this works very well.
Thanks for following along.
Will post more soon.
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One thing I have noticed hanging with Drano over the last few years is that he makes it look "achievable to do" too.
He puts a lot of thought and an abundance of wisdom (from experience) to good use in everything he does. Tres kewlio.
It is amazing to learn from this thread and it encourages me to do more myself. Thanks.
Keep it coming Drano. Always a great read, learning experience and inspiration to do more.
He puts a lot of thought and an abundance of wisdom (from experience) to good use in everything he does. Tres kewlio.
It is amazing to learn from this thread and it encourages me to do more myself. Thanks.
Keep it coming Drano. Always a great read, learning experience and inspiration to do more.
Seriously guys what I'm doing here couldn't be easier and anyone should be willing to try this stuff.
Yeah, I can go all nuts and do an almost HEP quality restore but I reserve that for grail type games that I know I'm going to keep for years. SS is just something I want to try out for a while. I still want it to look and play great but I don't need to sink another $2000 into it. Even for a container pin, it was already pricey.
My goal here is to make it as nice as I can for under $500 of additional investment.
The hardest part for a newbie would be filling in damaged wood and learning how to sand it smooth without damaging the rest of the cabinet. But, with patience and asking people for some simple advice, the rest is just colouring and staying inside the lines
Thanks for the kind words!
Chris Bardon
Well-Known Member
If you're just using sharpie to fill in the colour, are you worried that it'll smear easily? Not sure how well the marker would stay on top of the old paint. Are you finding that the colour fades at all as the wood absorbs the ink? It's definitely an interesting way to do touch ups if it works though-much easier and faster than painting.
Where the cab is likely decaled from the factory and not paint on wood the sharpie is probably working out well. As for smearing, I guess there would be concerns about cleaning the cabinet going forward?
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I think we've all joked at one point about guys doing 'hack' touch-ups with Sharpies
I got in the habit of using acrylic or acrylic hybrid markers/pens for most cabinet touch-ups if I wasn't planning on a whole cabinet redo with new decals or stencils.
The funny thing is that the WPC-95 cabinets (which, Doug pointed out, are more like decals) did not absorb the acrylic paint pens very well. I was getting very inconsistent colour coverage and lots of visible strokes. This was a surprise because I had used the exact same product on a badly faded BSD a while back and it looked great... even with the large areas that I had to cover in the DRACULA text.
I did a test on this SS and quickly wiped it away before it dried.
Just for fun I grabbed a red sharpie and, to my great surprise, the smoother material on these WPC-95 cabs takes the marker much better than older games. It seems to absorb easily and i can blend it in nicely with almost no sign of pen strokes. I draw it in with tiny circular motions to make this even less noticeable. The added benefit of the sharpie in this case is that the artwork behind the red comes through... just like if it were original. The acrylic would have covered up any transparency.
So, at least for SS and maybe a game like TOTAN, Sharpie seems to be an okay option if you don't want to strip the cab.
As for smearing; yeah... it'll smear if you wipe down the cabinet with windex or something.
I make sure the cabs are super clean ahead of time and don't plan on putting them on location again, so I shouldn't have any cuase for cleaning them with anythign wet unless someone is very careless.
If I was really concerned I'd have to shoot a layer of clearcoat onto the cab. I'm not
Fifty
Active Member
This is just plain cool. My only question would be how do you colour match a Sharpie? They come in many colours, but some colours even Sharpie does not make.
Simple, you don't.
That's why I stated that I may only use this for SS and TOTAN as they both have the same or simlar red and the Sharpie gets very close to it.
Also, they are both WPC95 and the cabinets seem to absorb the Sharpie well without really visible streaks or stroke lines. I would not use these pens for much else to be honest. It was just a fluke that they really seemed ot suit these two games. Maybe there are others I have not come across as well.
Normally, if I was doing any sort of pen touch-ups, I'd be sticking to my MOLOTOW paint pens
NO SLEEP TILL A-TOWN!!!
49 days left
It's been almost a month since my last update. How time flies!
I recently posted some work done on my latest acquistion in another thread for anyone interested in seeing how to 'un-fade' a TOTAN.
However, for this latest installment of the thread I am going to start a day-by-day account of my race to complete my recently acquired 1960 Williams Official Baseball in time for this year's Pinfest in Allentown PA.
Last year a couple of us brought games down to the show and it was a great and rewarding experience.
With so many vintage machines at this event, I think it would be a blast to have a refurbished pitch and bat of this cailbre there.
Of course, the bad news is that this pushes all my other projects back, but it'll be worth it.
So, strap in and let's see if I can get this sucker ready in time. I will try and post regular updates.
I do have a back-up game I can bring, but let's stick with plan A for now.
Last night was my first day working on it and I managed to get most of the playfield top stripped and removed the man-running unit and backglass.
Here's a shot of where I stopped last night.
Just 49 days to go!
If anyone wants to see all the pics as I add them, here's a link to the Flickr album:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/129813506@N07/sets/72157648936017453/
Thanks for following along
Dr@NO
49 days left
It's been almost a month since my last update. How time flies!
I recently posted some work done on my latest acquistion in another thread for anyone interested in seeing how to 'un-fade' a TOTAN.
However, for this latest installment of the thread I am going to start a day-by-day account of my race to complete my recently acquired 1960 Williams Official Baseball in time for this year's Pinfest in Allentown PA.
Last year a couple of us brought games down to the show and it was a great and rewarding experience.
With so many vintage machines at this event, I think it would be a blast to have a refurbished pitch and bat of this cailbre there.
Of course, the bad news is that this pushes all my other projects back, but it'll be worth it.
So, strap in and let's see if I can get this sucker ready in time. I will try and post regular updates.
I do have a back-up game I can bring, but let's stick with plan A for now.
Last night was my first day working on it and I managed to get most of the playfield top stripped and removed the man-running unit and backglass.
Here's a shot of where I stopped last night.
Just 49 days to go!
If anyone wants to see all the pics as I add them, here's a link to the Flickr album:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/129813506@N07/sets/72157648936017453/
Thanks for following along
Dr@NO
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NO SLEEP TILL A-TOWN!!!
48 days left
I didn't get too much time with the game last night, but I did manage to finish getting the last couple of bits off the playfield and then taking some magic eraser + alcohol to it and polishing with Novus.
These Formica playfields are the best. Almost no wear after 55 years!
Once cleaned, I popped the playfield out of the game and tried to get some of the wood trim off.
I knew I was going to have a tough time with the right woodrail because it had been heavily nailed down and there was even, what looked like, a huge spike nailed into the end of it.
I very gingerly pried the rail, not wanting to break it. I finally managed to lift it about 1/8" where the 'spike' was and took a peek underneath.
I saw threads
So... now that I knew this was a screw I just twisted it out. I've never seen one with a square head like that... must be 1960's tamperproof technology
I'm so glad I didn't really force it.
Well... it was getting late at this point so I'll get back at it tonight and try to get all the wood off. I'm hoping that I can empty the head cabinet mechs by the weekend and get the steppers and score reels onto my bench for disassembly and cleaning.
48 days left...
48 days left
I didn't get too much time with the game last night, but I did manage to finish getting the last couple of bits off the playfield and then taking some magic eraser + alcohol to it and polishing with Novus.
These Formica playfields are the best. Almost no wear after 55 years!
Once cleaned, I popped the playfield out of the game and tried to get some of the wood trim off.
I knew I was going to have a tough time with the right woodrail because it had been heavily nailed down and there was even, what looked like, a huge spike nailed into the end of it.
I very gingerly pried the rail, not wanting to break it. I finally managed to lift it about 1/8" where the 'spike' was and took a peek underneath.
I saw threads
So... now that I knew this was a screw I just twisted it out. I've never seen one with a square head like that... must be 1960's tamperproof technology
I'm so glad I didn't really force it.
Well... it was getting late at this point so I'll get back at it tonight and try to get all the wood off. I'm hoping that I can empty the head cabinet mechs by the weekend and get the steppers and score reels onto my bench for disassembly and cleaning.
48 days left...
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NO SLEEP TILL A-TOWN!!!
47 days left
Time to examine my head
Last night was time to get into the upper cabinet.
I unscrewed the white face panel with all the score reels and bulbs and it popped out very easily.
However, all the wiring was still connected to the two player steppers at the back and the female Jones plugs.
Luckily, all of these were screwed down to their own panel, 3 more screws and that panel came apart too. I guess someone was thinking when they designed this thing. The whole assembly came out nicely and I was even able to use the large rear door pael to carry it all off to my work area (aka the kids' train table)
First I tried to finish up removing the wood trim from all around the cabinet so I could strip, repair and refinish it separately. Unfortunately, in some places the trim is very thin and has been glued. I got most of it off but it was just safer to leave a couple of other strips attached. All this means is that I will have to refinish them on the cabinet and then mask them off before I re-paint the cab. It'll slow me down a little, not being able to do the two steps independently, but c'est la vie.
The majority of the evening was spent on taking apart the Player 2 stepper unit.
This unit was totally seized and preventing the 2nd player score from advancing. I even had a hard time rotating it by hand. This is caused by the old grease hardening and getting saturated with carbon dust.
With so many small parts I had to be careful in taking it apart and not breaking anything.
For re-assembly, I knew I'd have an identical unit right next to it for Player 1, so I wasn't too concerned about taking pictures.
Several orange cleaner wipes, a Scotchbrite pad and 10 black fingers later, all the parts were pretty clean.
I lightly sanded the contact plate and applied some new di-electric teflon grease. I also applied a little teflon oil to the main shaft. I have to replace one missing spring, but it is working beautifully and smooth now.
I also took this opportunity to file and adjust all the switch stacks on the stepper. It should be good for years to come.
I'll close up with a quick shot of the two steppers. Player 2 is on the left and a lot cleaner. Player 1 is working but its getting sluggish too. I'll take that one apart tonight and give it the same treatment. These two are the most complicated parts I should have to deal with on the machine.
Afterwards I'll move onto cleaning the score reels and their associated steppers as well as the credit unit.
47 days left!
Thanks for following along
Dr@NO
47 days left
Time to examine my head
Last night was time to get into the upper cabinet.
I unscrewed the white face panel with all the score reels and bulbs and it popped out very easily.
However, all the wiring was still connected to the two player steppers at the back and the female Jones plugs.
Luckily, all of these were screwed down to their own panel, 3 more screws and that panel came apart too. I guess someone was thinking when they designed this thing. The whole assembly came out nicely and I was even able to use the large rear door pael to carry it all off to my work area (aka the kids' train table)
First I tried to finish up removing the wood trim from all around the cabinet so I could strip, repair and refinish it separately. Unfortunately, in some places the trim is very thin and has been glued. I got most of it off but it was just safer to leave a couple of other strips attached. All this means is that I will have to refinish them on the cabinet and then mask them off before I re-paint the cab. It'll slow me down a little, not being able to do the two steps independently, but c'est la vie.
The majority of the evening was spent on taking apart the Player 2 stepper unit.
This unit was totally seized and preventing the 2nd player score from advancing. I even had a hard time rotating it by hand. This is caused by the old grease hardening and getting saturated with carbon dust.
With so many small parts I had to be careful in taking it apart and not breaking anything.
For re-assembly, I knew I'd have an identical unit right next to it for Player 1, so I wasn't too concerned about taking pictures.
Several orange cleaner wipes, a Scotchbrite pad and 10 black fingers later, all the parts were pretty clean.
I lightly sanded the contact plate and applied some new di-electric teflon grease. I also applied a little teflon oil to the main shaft. I have to replace one missing spring, but it is working beautifully and smooth now.
I also took this opportunity to file and adjust all the switch stacks on the stepper. It should be good for years to come.
I'll close up with a quick shot of the two steppers. Player 2 is on the left and a lot cleaner. Player 1 is working but its getting sluggish too. I'll take that one apart tonight and give it the same treatment. These two are the most complicated parts I should have to deal with on the machine.
Afterwards I'll move onto cleaning the score reels and their associated steppers as well as the credit unit.
47 days left!
Thanks for following along
Dr@NO
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Fifty
Active Member
That last photo is incredible. You could tell someone it was the engine out of a time machine and they would believe you. So complex, yet so simple. It must have been awesome to design things like this back in the day.
Yes!
I was marvelling at the mechanism to my wife last night (as her eyes rolled
) and how cool it must have been to engineer these things.The theory of operation is so simple, yet the application looks so complex. All this thing is really meant to do is move up in single increments and then release it all the way back to start; hence the two coils and the cog.
I didn't take a picture of it, but I love the simple 'circuit' on the back-side of these made with fibreboard and printed copper traces/contact points.
Reminds me of 1950's sc-fi films and movies like Rocketeer.
They are fun to look at and work on... usually
That's the fun part about EM's. All the "logic" is laid out right in front of your eyes mechanically, and the schematics explain it all pretty clearly.
Drano, that probably wasn't the type of foreplay your wife was hoping for...
D
Drano, that probably wasn't the type of foreplay your wife was hoping for...
D
NO SLEEP TILL A-TOWN!!!
46 days left
Posting a day behind but attempting to catch up.
During the day I used some free time at work to start tracing up the cabnet art and will attempt to make some stencils for the eventual re-paint.
Later in the evening I got the Player 1 run unit taken apart and running smooth and free again.
After that I motored through most of the other key stepper units in the head; match unit, credit/replay etc...
I even got to start tearing into one of the score reels.
Unlike the much more delicate plastic reels with heat stamped numbers I'm used to from Gottliebs, these metal Williams reels were a treat.
The screened numbers stand up to a lot of cleaning and these were filthy.
Tomorrow I'll ty and get through the score reels.
46 days left
Posting a day behind but attempting to catch up.
During the day I used some free time at work to start tracing up the cabnet art and will attempt to make some stencils for the eventual re-paint.
Later in the evening I got the Player 1 run unit taken apart and running smooth and free again.
After that I motored through most of the other key stepper units in the head; match unit, credit/replay etc...
I even got to start tearing into one of the score reels.
Unlike the much more delicate plastic reels with heat stamped numbers I'm used to from Gottliebs, these metal Williams reels were a treat.
The screened numbers stand up to a lot of cleaning and these were filthy.
Tomorrow I'll ty and get through the score reels.
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