Playfield prep continues...
These playfields for whatever reason always seem to be faded and trashed. Elvira's face is super washed out along with all the fluro colours too.
To start though, playfield has its mylar removed and glue cleaned from the playfield...
Getting there now...
Another shitty thing to deal with on playfields of this era are the inserts. They nearly always fry up when the first clear goes down. We have a better process to deal with that these days, but here i removed all of the insert artwork and lettering, before the initial clear went down...
It took a while to get to this point but the playfield is in the booth and ready to clear for the first time!!...
In with a few client jobs from back in the day. Can anyone see theirs in there?...
Playfield is cleared and let to fully cure. You can see how much the initial clear sinks back into the timber grain and leaves a tightness to the finish. This is very much a sacrificial coating as most of it is removed during the next stage of the process...
While the playfield gets worked on, all the metal and associated hardware is hand polished and cleaned...
Same goes for the cabinet. It is fully stripped and restored while the playfield is being chipped away at... It was a HUGE amount of work to restore the playfield on this machine...
Cabinet ready to be stripped here along with a few other games. Back when i did this one, i chemically stripped the art from the cabinets. It was quick but messy...
Fast forward a little cabinet is painted and ready to decal... The old man came over to see how things were progressing...
Looks much better for some colour...
Lower completed...sweet
Back to the playfield, this is about half way through the process. I still had to repaint Elviras skin tone, most of the fluro and all the black keylines. In this photo it looks like i had sprayed out the purple area up the back, and the full playfield gradient that goes from red to orange to yellow. Everything was masked so these colours were super sharp and much much brighter. You can also see the insert decals were installed but needed another sand and clear AT LEAST before they were suitably level for play...
The apron fluro also faded... and the aftermarket ones are colour matched to the fade, so i hand painted the art on this apron and cleared it so it tied in well with the playfield...
After. I still needed to tighten up some of the red and keylines but looks heaps sharper...
Unfortunately at this point I basically stopped documenting the project. It really shits me, as i thoroughly enjoyed every stage, but i was buying my first house around this time with my partner, and any time i had to work on the game was in tiny little bits and pieces. An hour here, 15 minutes there. Not enough to really get a good run on.
I have a Funhouse of my own to restore one day soon, and i WILL attempt to document it FULLY! I think it would be really interesting.
Anyway... I moved the game to my home workshop to finally complete the project...
Here it is when i first moved it in...
This gives a good idea of the playfield work. You can see Elvira looks alot healthier, and the surrounding colour is much brighter and matches the new plastics etc...
Next update will be the finished photos!
Tim
