Stern Dracula restore

[Ballywannabe]

Sweeet!  Hope you get her playing as good as she look

[Mr Pinbologist]

Duuude! thanks for the great comments
this is without doubt the most extensive rebuild i've ever taken on yet.
And im pretty sure she'll play REEEAL NICE!

[Mr Pinbologist]

The playfield is finally finished This afternoon i straightened the top arch plastics and polished them up so they could be fitted. But first i made a couple of small mods... the first couple of pics show these.. originally all these plastics had was a single screw in the middle and one spacer to support them on either side of the PF. Thus when heated by the lamps this makes the plastics warp heaps worse!! So to help support them better i added extra pieces of wood in these areas to screw the plastics to. Hopefully they shouldn't be so prone to warping as much. I used cut off pieces of wooden guide rail from the spare Drac PF i had to make these.

Also i made the decals for the spinner.The backside art was still good enough to reproduce easy so i simply scanned, edited and printed this one. The front side was completely gone so i had to make this one from pictures od IPDB, drawing it onto paoer, same as i did for the kickout hole plastic.

Now this is finally done i'll start on the cabinet restoration, which i'll probably start a new thread for, rather than adding onto this one. Thanks heaps everyone for your compliments and support!! 

Cheers... Mitch

[Mr Pinbologist]

And finally.. a couple of before and after pics!

[SPURR]

Well done Mitch . When you said it was a expensive restore I can see one purchase in one of your photo's the box that the cutter came in. I spent a few hours today air brushing my Bank a Ball backglass the entre pool table has to be repainted, I will take some pix's.

[pinball god]

That is simply impressive Mitch. Only one question though with the plastics that you made. They look great but why didn't you reverse print them and stick them to the underside of the plastic, then put on the white. Or have you tried this in the past and found problems. I figure my suggestion could have saved the need for mylar on top. Interested to know if there's a flaw in my suggestion

[Mr Pinbologist]

That is simply impressive Mitch. Only one question though with the plastics that you made. They look great but why didn't you reverse print them and stick them to the underside of the plastic, then put on the white. Or have you tried this in the past and found problems. I figure my suggestion could have saved the need for mylar on top. Interested to know if there's a flaw in my suggestion

Sorry if i didnt make myself clear in how i went about making the plastics, but they WERE reverse printed and stuck to the underside of the plastic. The reason i used the mylar over the white backing adhesive was because i'd used white laser printer adhesive mailing label for the backing (plain paper labels), as i had shitloads of them on hand! and i thought the mylar might be a good idea to help protect the white, as well as added protection for the art decal.

[Mr Pinbologist]

i just re read my post on the plastic construction, and i didnt make myself real clear... so i've fixed it up.. sorry for any confusion it may've caused

[Mr Pinbologist]

Well done Mitch . When you said it was a expensive restore I can see one purchase in one of your photo's the box that the cutter came in. I spent a few hours today air brushing my Bank a Ball backglass the entre pool table has to be repainted, I will take some pix's.

Actually i said EXTENSIVE restore.. but that ok coz by the time im done it'll be an EXPENSIVE one as well . And yepp, thats the box for my scroll saw i used for the plastics you can see in one of the pics, i've had that for a couple of years now and i bought it especially to cut out the plastics when i have to make them.

You should start a thread with some pics of your Bank A Ball back glass you air brushed.. id like to see it and im sure others would too

[Strangeways]

Great work Mitch - VERY impressive. Thats a totally professional job, and something you should be very proud of.

I can't wait for the cab restore !

 

[ktm450]

Well done mate, the before and after photos say it all 

[Mr Pinbologist]

thanks heaps guys, there are a couple of sections i wish, had turned out a little better, but im really pleased with how this playfield has turned out. Seeing the great work being turned out by other members on here, really inspired me to do the absolute best i could with this game! So much so that im now looking at some of my other games i've done in the past and thinking i could've done much better, especially regarding cab painting. So now im thinking i might re-do some of my earliest cabs.. when i get time of course!

Speaking of cab repainting.. Stay tuned for the Drac cabinet restore, i'm making a start on it this weekend!!

[AskJacob]

Reviving an old thread here for sure, but I wish was here earlier - I could have helped you out with some of those plastics.... I had already made that journey...















had to make this a link - the PNG file had a transparent background, and looked all black on the forum!

http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc5/askjacob/Stern%20Dracula/g3754.png

The files I have are all hand vector traced. Lot of work, but am happy with the results.

Cheers
Jacob

[Mr Pinbologist]

Nice work ther with those plastics  I'd hoped you might come across this thread and have a look see!!

Would've been great to have your help when i made those two plastics for this game. You see, when i made them i had NOTHING much to go off, just an image of the flyer, hence why mine look slightly different to what you have done. I had to pretty much guess as to what they exactly looked like, especially the plastic over the kickout hole and the spinner images.

And BTW.. any chance of a resto thread of your own Dracula?? Im sure others would like to see one as much as i would

[AskJacob]

Nice work ther with those plastics  I'd hoped you might come across this thread and have a look see!!

Would've been great to have your help when i made those two plastics for this game. You see, when i made them i had NOTHING much to go off, just an image of the flyer, hence why mine look slightly different to what you have done. I had to pretty much guess as to what they exactly looked like, especially the plastic over the kickout hole and the spinner images.

And BTW.. any chance of a resto thread of your own Dracula?? Im sure others would like to see one as much as i would

The saucer scoop is the "most missing" plastic on the Drac for sure. I too had to "create" this one from the flyer. I was lucky to obtain a scan of the panther droptarget plastic, the long skinny standup, left sling and spinner. I had the right sling, but I also re-did this so both left and right would match colour wise, plus it was a good idea to recreate an existing plastic to see how the process went.

As always, while the results are OK, but I want GOOD. Just got some stuff in the mail this week so I can have another crack at them. That will be attempt #5 at these plastics

I'll get to posting a restore thread - sometime soon the mylar/contact is coming off, so I'll do it then.

I think I'll post about the plastics too, so people can see what did and didn't work for me. There are so many ways to tackle the problem!

I have a set of spinner decals and drop target decals I made if you are interested, let me know and I'll post them.

I also have the art files as vectors and they are available to any member who has a Drac. (Usual disclaimer - only non commercial for existing owners for the purposes of restoration)

Cheers
Jacob