TAF Restore

[Crashramp]

  Great stuff! New cab decals will look sensational, TAF is a beautiful looking game when restored. Keep the updates coming.

[skywalker]

No turning back now 

[DSB]

I have had a go at spraying the cabinet with good and bad results. I used Duxone acrylic lacquer primer and top coat which I matted down slightly. The automotive paint store people were very helpful with my questions and lack of knowledge. What a great primer, goes on thick and sands off easy. The primer does fur the timber on the first coat but after a sand and a second coat comes out great. As you can see the head box has come out fantastic. Unfortunately due to me being impatient and ignoring the recoat time it seems the side of the main cabinet has a few shrink marks as you can see in the third picture. Not to bad but I have plenty of paint left over so I will patch them and recoat. I won't move on until I am happy with the paint. A steep learning curve but I feel I could nail it next time. YES! already thinking of the next machine.  

[DSB]

Second go at spraying the cabinet. Why do it once when you can do it twice I say!  Decided to redo the whole cabinet to keep it as uniform as possible. Set up the professional booth again  Managed to get a few undercoats on and sanded to a nice finish. It seems there is no problems this time. The top coats may have to wait til next week.

[DSB]

Its been a long process but I have finally finished the cabinet painting. You don't realise how much difference there is until you look at the before and after shots. Makes the effort seem more worthwhile. If all goes well, there will be decals on in the next post!

[DSB]

Decals are on!  I tried the wet method on one side of the main and the dry method on the other side. For me the dry method was the go. I did the wet method first and though it was pretty good but I noticed some very minor imperfections " ripples" in some spots which were not on the cabinet before I started. So minor that I could not get a picture of them. My guess after much thought was that the water soaked though the paint and caused the wood grain to swell? The ripples came up after 5 minutes after the decal went on. After a about 48 hours the ripples seem to flattened out significantly to the point where I am now happy with the result. Heart in the mouth stuff.

After that I decided the dry method was worth a go. I followed this You Tube pretty much exactly  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azMylV2PAYM. It worked an absolute treat! I would recommend it to any one considering re decaling especially if it your first time and you are not 100% sure if the paint has sealed the wood. A slow method but there was very little chance of a bubble forming. After a while I felt very comfortable with it.

Next thing is to screen print the warning labels. 

[pinsanity]

Looks great, DSB. 

After trying both methods on numerous pins I have found the dry method is the clear winner. The main advantage is that the decals are fixed straight away and you can flip the cabinet over and do the other side immediately. Like the vid shows, just line up the cabinet edge, peel away the backing and lay it down a couple inches at a time.

Fortunately TAF is mostly black artwork around the cabinet edge so artwork decal alignment doesn't present too many issues in that respect.

Keep up the pics. Watching with interest.

[DSB]

Thanks Pinsanity, I spent a lot of time trying to decide which method to use. I'm glad I tried both methods for my interest but I agree with you that the dry is the winner at least for me.

[swinks]

very nice work  , it is looking beautiful and you should be proud.

looking forward to seeing the warning labels on

[MartyJ]

Good work, coming along very nicely.

[Strangeways]

Very nice - well done !

I note you have correctly trimmed the decals on the edges. It is these small details that make the difference. Keep up the good work !

[DSB]

I note you have correctly trimmed the decals on the edges. It is these small details that make the difference

Yes, I trimmed the edges with a super sharp craft knife and a straight edge. Then ran a black sharpie around all the edges wiping off any excess pen marks as I went. 

[ktm450]

Nice work 

[The Silence]

Great job, keep up the good work

[DSB]

  I have had a great day on the cabinet with it being very close to finished now! First of all the screen printing is done with great results. Thanks to Swinks for the AI files. The screen printer had no problem with them. Here is some pictures of the finished prints.