Been a while since I posted an update so thought I would share how the last 3 odd weeks have gone.
Here is my DIY spray (well roller) booth. Was $12 from Kmart
Although it actually worked pretty well
Obviously after cleaning the surface as well as I could I gave the first light application of the KBS. I used it with about 30% thinners. The first coat I did was really light. I applied it with a small foam roller which appeared to go well. After it was touch dry the one thing I noticed was it looked heavily dimpled in some areas. These areas seemed to be ones that were particularly "thirsty". Most of these thirsty areas were ones that I had sanded back heavily to try and get rid of the ball trail as it goes up the shooter lane and around the top. I have tried to show this below. There were some other areas like that on the playfield but I wasn't too worried yet as it was only a first coat and I did it very lightly.
So the following weekend I put a second coat on a bit thicker (again with the roller) this time on the Saturday then another on the Sunday and this seemed to get rid of most of those areas except for a few indentations/dimples that didn't seem to want to fill in. But over all it was starting to look pretty good.
Fast forward to this weekend and on the Saturday I put another coat on this time using a brush so that I could target a couple of areas that simply didn't seem to want to fill with the foam roller. This worked really well. I also used the brush to drop extra bits of clear on any cupped inserts or other oddities I could see when looking at the playfield on an angle.
I just put a light finishing coat on with a brush again this morning (Sunday). I started with the foam roller but it seemed to leave a funny finish (like the finish you would get on a rollered wall) that wouldn't self level, so I switched to the brush and that seems to allow the liquid to settle better for some reason. Here's a photo after applying the final coat. Although it doesn't really show much. I took some close ups but was basically getting all blue reflection from the "spray booth" and your can see the reflection of my white t-shirt in the shooter lane (I suppose that's a good thing). So I will get some better ones in due course.
Next weekend I plan to start cutting and polishing it to see how it finally finishes up. I will post pics once that's done.
So far I'm very happy with it and the clear really makes the playfield and my touchups looks heaps better!!! It really eliminates any differences in thickness/height between brushstrokes that you could see in some spots where I had touched it up.
