Here’s the playfield removed, and just before every part is stripped from it to prepare for the playfield swap. As mentioned, this playfield was pretty decent, but as a NOS one was within reach and together with the cabinet respray and the game is a keeper, it made sense to me to go for the NOS playfield.
And here is the NOS playfield.
The two playfields side by side. Although the original looked good on its own, you can now see the difference. The most notable difference is around the pop bumper area.
From here the playfield swap process I have covered in previous restoration threads. But I captured a few images of the process. All parts first removed from the top of the playfield, then to the reverse side. And then the cardboard swap routine. This was now my 4th playfield swap, so it was becoming second nature to me and going quicker. There is not alot on the back of the Power Play playfield to swap, so it was pretty straightforward.
The restored playfield got the usual treatment of alot of replaced parts – flipper rebuilds, plastic parts (flippers, pop bumpers, all targets, posts, etc. Some of these parts were replaced earlier on, so that is why they look new in the before images of the playfield.
When it comes now to the cabinet restoration, I always seem to find a way to procrastinate. While I love the end result of the respray, I do dread a bit the creation of the cabinet stencils and the work involved. It’s always enough to “put me off” for a bit. But then once I get into it and make progress, it gets the momentum going.
I can now say that Power Play was a beast of stencil work – hands down the most enduring and time consuming stencil set I have done. I still believe creating your own stencils gets the best results (if you are up to it), because you have every opportunity to recreate original down to the last bit of detail. I guess you could say I am a bit of a stickler for the detail ensuring originality of the artwork is maintained when it comes to stencils.
Here is the early stage of the blue stencil for the side of the cabinet. All tracing had already been done, and this image was after cutting out some of the artwork with the xacto knife. There are actually two stencils being cut here once at the same time. You can only see the top one, but underneath is the second one. One cut, and two stencils created in the one go.
Here is the completed blue stencil for the side of the cabinet. Alot of work at this point, but very happy with the stencil work so far.
Here is the red stencil for the Indian head. For this section I found it easier to “break up” the red stencil for the cabinet side. Separate (small) stencils were done for the other parts of the red stencil for the cabinet side.
The stencil is actually being supported to hold its shape by a cardboard “frame”, which you can see about an inch outside of the perimeter of the stencil. I find that for stencils with large openings (such as this one), it is necessary to provide the frame to ensure that when the stencil is applied to the cabinet, it will all go down flat and not wrinkle upon itself.
The cabinet was prepared as others before it – filled, sanded, and primed. Then the base colour of white. I usually let at least one week pass between prime and base colour, then another week until the first colour goes down. In this case, red was the first colour to be applied, and here are the results. I sometimes get a bit of paint bleed on the edges, which are touched up later.
