Spiroagnew's GTB World Fair
I took a break from the Six Million Dollar Man refurb (because I hate working with sticker stencils) and jumped into repainting the cab on my GTB World Fair. Pretty straightforward stenciling on this one—ninety and seventy-five degree angles all around and no coin door art! It would be my first attempt at cabinet webbing, all the other re-stenciling I’ve done to this point has been spatter. Instead of using Molotow rattle can paint for the white base, I laid down the white in a cabinet grade
waterborne alkyd by Dulux with my LVLP spray gun. It is a process I’ll be doing from now on as the Molotow seems to mark up way too easily...whereas this alkyd is manufactured to withstand bumps and rubs a little better (being kitchen cabinet grade paint). I stuck with Molotow rattle can paint for the coloured stenciling, because my cut-and-weighted-down stencils probably couldn’t withstand the air pressure shot from the spray gun…and would yield far too much overspray.
As for the webbing process, it was met with a ton of research before deciding how to proceed. Old master Clay Harrell covers webbing in his EM repair guide, and uses a $2 wire brush (he’s proud of his $2 wire brush, let me tell you) to fling lacquer on the cabinet. The pictures in the guide are low resolution, and, frankly, did not depict the desired result. Canned Krylon webbing spray (direct from the can) was out of the question, as I’d seen way too many good cabinet re-paints ruined with strings of the thick canned sludge laid upon them. Two discussions on the subject of webbing are worth a look:
- The first is on rec.games.pinball where Mr. Harrell chimes in to defend his $2 wire brush technique against those that suggest using a spray gun and high quality lacquers. In the end I was convinced by EM-veteran “Marvin G” and his mini-tutorial (in the above thread) of using lacquer shot from a spray gun at a very high pressure.
- Studying paint choice was next…as finding true high-quality lacquers is a bit of a chore. The Pinside thread here pointed me towards a very high quality lacquer used to paint (or dip) archery arrow shafts. Also suggested, was spraying the Krylon webbing-in-a-can into a secondary jar, thinning it with lacquer thinners (as it is a lacquer), and spraying that concoction through your spray gun. That Krylon canned webbing is a regularly stocked item at Michaels, however is only available in black (the Krylon website lists grey and white as well but looks to be unavailable at Michaels).
In the end, I got myself a cheap spray gun from Harbour Freight, a ten-dollar syphon feed touch-up jobber with a 1.4mm tip, and sourced white and black lacquers mentioned in the Pinside thread above from
3 Rivers Archery. Shooting pure black onto the white cab doesn’t really give the same effect as the original webbing; it was more of a grey, so I mixed a custom shade from the two paints taking the edge off of the stark black against the white. Darkness of the webbing seems to depend on the era of game…or what they had lying around at the Gottlieb factory at the time! I cranked the pressure way up on my compressor and laid the webbing down from the gun from about a foot away. No thinning was needed. Since the lacquer is so thick, it sputters and webs as it exits the gun…giving the desired effect, and one that I think is pretty close to original. I did the whole cabinet using only a teaspoon of the paint, so given the two pints I got from 3 Rivers Archery, I should be good for webbing lacquer for about twenty more years! Stencil cutting and painting was a relative breeze considering the simplicity of the design, a welcomed way to finish up this cabinet project.
I’m indebted to user “4star” from Aurora for sharing his restoration techniques on this era of games. His restorations are top notch, I’d argue some of the best in North America, and if I can get my games to look half as good as his, I’ll be satisfied. He is a World Fair owner as well, and sent me quite a few measurements of the cabinet art to help recreate a stencil—some of the art of my game was whitewashed over with latex, and lost.
Now that the spring has sprung, I can start painting cabinets at a better clip. Lined up in the queue for friends I have three Volleys (!), a Melody and maybe a GTB Soccer. I need to wrap up my own Six Million Dollar Man cab, and, time permitting, start on GTB 2001, GTB North Star, Bally Hotdoggin' and any other games with trashed cabinets I foolishly buy.
Side head, original finish.
Side body, original finish.
Webbing detail, original finish.
Head with missing art.
3 Rivers Archery Lacquers.
