Yet another restoration, and yes, this one also includes a full cabinet respray. As a mad ice hockey fan (it’s in the blood), I could never look past Bally’s Power Play. A bit of history …..
The backglass features none other than Bobby Orr. Orr was the “Don Bradman” of hockey back in the late 1960’s and 1970’s. He played almost all of his career for the Boston Bruins in the National Hockey League (NHL). As a very young lad growing up and starting off playing hockey myself around 1970, Orr was almost every young fan’s idol. He was an incredibly talented player. He was traded to the Chicago Black Hawks in 1976. I realize that Orr is virtually an unknown here in Australia, but back in Canada and the US it would be almost unheard of to not know him.
I suppose his moving to Chicago, being the home of pinball, was something that Bally wanted to capitalise on. Not sure though why the machine seems to be a “Canada versus Chicago” theme.
Anyway, onto the resto ……..
Having at this point already finished the Delta Queen, Six Million Dollar Man, Star Trek, and Freedom, I suppose I was building up a big of experience by now. However, just looking at the artwork (especially the Indian head), I knew I was in for a challenge for the creation of the stencils.
With this machine, similar to a few before, I was also fortunate enough to come across a NOS playfield. I knew that CPR were coming up with one, but I always prefer NOS/original if I can find one. The backglass was in excellent condition, so the main focus was on the cabinet respray and playfield swap.
The cabinet was not too bad, but had alot of scratches and dings. Also, there were the “nice” bolt holes in the front of the cabinet for the extra security days of past to fill in. But at least the cab was in great shape structurally, like all the ones I had worked on in the past.
Here’s a few images of the before look.
The playfield was in fairly good condition, but it had a lot of ball swirl and wear in the upper part. Once I knew I had a lead on a NOS one, I had to jump on the opportunity.
The backbox had an unusual finish around the lock – I’ve never seen this before, as almost all Ballys from this generation had the traditional “wedge” cutout around the lock area. I would eventually cut out some of the side to create this look later.
The following image shows just how much fade there was in red – look at the top of the front of the cabinet! And there are those four holes to fill in.
Some more images of the cab. The neck on the main cab was pretty rough, but would be filled in and painted satin black.
Here are images of the sides, after getting the siderails off. Now there’s the red the cabinet is meant to have – under the siderail. It was interesting to note that it looks like the cab may have been sprayed at the factory with red as the base colour, but I did mine in white and worked from there.
I always have a hit and miss experience with removing the nails with the siderails. It all comes down to how flush the nail head is with the rail. I use sidecutters, and put a couple layers of masking tape down on the rail first to minimize damage from the sidecutter as I try to grip the nail head and slightly turn as I am lifting it up. I find this works well.
Here’s a close up of the Indian head. A fair amount of detail here to copy for the stencil, and those scratches just had to go.
