Lines and Lettering on your playfield - A MUST READ!

[Romano]

Greetings Friends,

I just wanted to share with you a significant discovery I recently made with respects to restoring crisp lines and lettering on a playfield. I am currently restoring a Bally 1969 "Bowl-O" and I have done some major repainting of the playfield artwork. I knew that at some point I was going to need to redo some lines and lettering on the game and I also knew that mine is not the steadiest hand for doing either; masking with tape helps you in doing large areas and long lines, but have you tried doing this with detail? Trust me, my first restoration was tediously painting each individual line for a hand of cards by masking the edges... not fun!

I gave it some thought, and remembered that growing up as a kid, before everyone was putting a laser printer in their home for under $100.00, the closest "joe ordinary" on the street came to being able to do laser quality with printing on projects, etc, was with a system of transfers. These you could buy from your local newsagent and they came on a transparent plastic film. The idea was you place the sheet matching up the letter you wanted with the spot you wanted it on your paper, and using a pencil, you would rub over the letter. Pull the sheet away, and voila! A crips clear letter (took a whole night to do a heading!). some of you remember these I am sure. I havent seen them since leaving school, I think it was around 1856... feels like that anyway!

So I said to myself "self, if these are still available today, you may be onto something"... I was, it was too much caffein! But the following day I went to around half a dozen newsagents, most of them knew what I was talking about, but hadnt seen these for years. I went to one more newsagent and this guy took me to the back of the shop, opened a draw, and there they were. He had them in storage for almost fifteen years, nobody was asking for them anymore. I bought a pack from him, took it home and gave it a try [PLEASE SEE TEST BOARD PICTURE BELOW]. As I usually do, I took a piece of scrap wood. painted it with some paint that I will be using on the game, did some lines with paint, free hand; and then some using the characters from the transfer (these are the '%' signs on the test board). Now the real test, if the clear top-coat did not lift the transfers OR 'fry' them, then I had a breakthrough!

You can see the sample board survived the test, YES! I have included a shot of the actual playfield; look at the bowling score card; the border and every line you see is laid using these transfers. The numbers on the pins are also from the transfers. I went back to the shop and cleaned the guy out of every pack of every font he had for 20c per pack, BARGAIN! Now it would be cruel of me to post this and be the only man in existence with this product. So, the internet came to the rescue. THE COMPANY IS ALIVE AND WELL AND YOU CAN ORDER ONLINE!!! The link is here: http://www.decadry.com/En/default.asp

I am a little while away from clearcoating the actual playfield but if the test is anything to go by, then there wont be a problem. I will let you know how it goes when the time comes.

I hope this helps you guys. Sorry for the long post, but c'mon, it was in interesting read, right? This will be out in paperback soon....

Thanks Guys... and Gals... (do we have any Gals here???)

[Mr Pinbologist]

Man thats some nice work there on that playfield  

I do remember these rub on transfers from years ago.. i used to use them on the control panels of guitar amplifiers i built many years ago.. different brand names to the ones in your pics but were the same type of thing.

And when i got into restoring pinball playfields a few years back i searched for them but had no luck. Although i DID use some of these on my home made pinball when i built it about 15 years ago, but since then have been unable to find them again.

[pinballist]

Oh yeah, I remember now, I think they were called Letraset or something similar.

[pinball god]

It's great hearing about people ideas and finds. Always handy if ever I need to do something like this. Thanks

[MrMaloo]

My missus is into "scrapbooking" . I'm sure I've seen these or something very similar in the scrapbooking shops she's dragged me into . I think they call them "rub-ons" or something ....  .

Do they leave the numbers / letters raised slightly off the PF ??

[bossninja17]

I knew these rub-on letters as Letra (or Lettra) set. Great idea. Thanks

[Romano]

Oh yeah, I remember now, I think they were called Letraset or something similar.

Correct, that was the brand name they used to sell at our school resource room.

[Romano]

My missus is into "scrapbooking" . I'm sure I've seen these or something very similar in the scrapbooking shops she's dragged me into . I think they call them "rub-ons" or something ....  .

Do they leave the numbers / letters raised slightly off the PF ??

Hi Cruiser, no, I am so impressed with these they are so flush to the playfield I reckon they would compare in height to the original screened on details. That was the worry for me, I honestly thought that being so thin, the clear-coat was going to fry them off the surface. The result on the test board was excellent.

[Strangeways]

Amazing tip ! That playfield looks awesome..

more pictures !

[Replicas]

Cracking idea, Love the way you have done a really wobbly line to compare aganist. We all know you are much better at doing a stright line than that.

[chris288]

Great idea
Thanks for sharing

[hamish_nz]

We used to have them custom made for packaging mockups for TVC's

$2000 a pop 

[ktm450]

Looks great, and yes we do have a regular female member 'peach'

[ajlaird]

Good tip, I guess if you can't get the font you want you can always resort to a print-yourself decal instead, but these would be considerably easier to work with.

[Caveoftreasures]

Excellent tip.The wife has all this stuff in her scrapbooking hobby, and til now, i wasnt interested, but after reading this post, i will be raiding the scrapbooking room...thanks for a great tip.