Wms Stellar Wars PF restore

[Mr Pinbologist]

Hi Guys, thought I’d share some pics of the Wms Stellar Wars playfield I’m currently working on.

This isn’t mine, it belongs to AP member ‘howzat’ (Ian). (My own Stellar Wars resto is quite a way off as yet). Ian has asked me to do the pf and backglass for his own SW. His cab is in pretty good nick so it won’t be getting resprayed, but everything else will be tidied up as needed; ie coin door cleaned and regrained etc.

As can be seen in the before pics, it doesn’t look to bad, it was mylared but had a LOT of loose / sunken inserts that needed attention. It had minimal wear that needed to be repainted/touched up.. just around some of the inserts and near the outhole where someone had stuck some vinyl over the wear there.

[Mr Pinbologist]

More pics.. showing some of the wear n tear to be attended to.
Lots of ball swirl and fine cracking, especially above the return lanes where there was no mylar.

[Mr Pinbologist]

Pf being disassembled and mylar removed.

Some paint came off with the mylar as per usual, despite me being VERY careful, and taking several hours to do it. The worst part was around the bonus inserts but at least its all one solid colour so shouldn’t be too much of a problem to rectify (I hope!!)

Most of this was unavoidable due to the paint being loose underneath the mylar, as was the area below the flippers (3rd pic) when the.. what I guess was some kind of red vinyl was removed (stuck straight over worn paint and text).

As mentioned, they mylar took several hours to remove, and the glue residue took probably another two hours to remove. I used Prepsol (wax & grease remover) bought from SuperCheap Auto for this. Prepsol works better than anything else I’ve tried in the past for this, I did try methylated spirits on his pf at one point (picked up the wrong bottle by accident) lol but the methylated spirits would hardly touch it.

[Mr Pinbologist]

Ok. After the glue removal I was onto the touchup work.
 
First bit I tackled was the area to the right of the far left bumper where the old mylar pulled paint off. 1st pic shows the end results (see previous post for the ‘before’ pic). Waterbased acrylics were used for this section. There was still a bit of fine tuning to be done when I took this pic. This was done from a pic taken of my own Stellar Wars pf for a reference.
 
Next I decided to move on to the flipper/bonus insert areas. First thing I did was to sand the entire area with 400 grit sandpaper, which made this area look pretty bad (they always look worse before they can look good again)  

Next I redid the red, followed by the black. I did these in several coats (in automotive acrylic), block sanding (using 400 grit wet&dry and Windex) between coats after the paint had dried to level it out, which meant a lot of remasking after sanding for painting the next coat(s). Doing this helps to fill the imperfections in the surface, filling them with colour rather than trying to fill them with spot putty/primer filler etc.

I did the same for the natural wood coloured area as well using automotive acrylic clear.

[Mr Pinbologist]

Next I created a waterslide decal for the missing text below the flippers, from an image from my own stellar (1st pic pf of my own game, YES I know my OWN SW is in desparate need of a pf resto).  This was printed onto laser printer waterslide decal paper and cut out and applied to the pf.
 
2nd pic the decal ready to be cut out.

In the 3rd pic the decal had been clearcoated and sanded back ready for another coat.

[Mr Pinbologist]

Next job was to flatten, reinsert and level the inserts in this area. To do this for the inserts with text, I used a trick that I used on my KISS pf resto.. spray them with acrylic clearcoat while out of the pf, let them dry, sand them on a piece of wet/dry paper placed on a flat surface, then reclear and repeat until the insert is flat.. takes a lot of time to do but it works well for me doing several at a time. It wasn’t necessary to do this to all of the inserts, mainly the larger ones needed this.

Basically I start with 600 or 800 grit wet/dry paper and windex for the sanding, when the insert is flat I’ll go to 1200 grit and then finish up with 1500 grit and reglue them into the pf. Usually I’ll polish them with Novus2 but I’m not doing that here since I’m clearcoating this entire area when I’m done.
 
In these pics, the clearcoat is being done 2nd pic the end result.. and where I’m up to at this point as of posting this. When this has dried I’ll block sand it out so its nice n level and polish it up with Novus.

Btw this pf will be fully mylared when I’m done as are all of my pf restores.

[Boots]

nice work

[Strangeways]

It is a TON of work, even to get this far. It needs a lot of time and patience. The rewards are always worth it. It is coming along nicely, Mitch. The black areas can sometimes look terrible with ball swirl, as with normal ball swirl, the playfield is a different color with black dirt in the cracks. Black background with white ball swirl is the opposite !

[goodolddays]

Looking great so far Mitch . What sort of clear are you using and how do you apply it ?? (ie compressor/spray gun or ??)

[pinnies4me]

Coming along nicely Mitch!! I really wish I had the nerve (and skill) for playfield restoration.

Well done! 

[Mr Pinbologist]

Cheers guys

Today I did some more insert work, removed all of the red ‘stellar wars’ inserts, flattened them and reinstalled them (no pics as yet of this)

The other thing I did which I got some pics of was to remove the arrow shaped inserts as they were ALL loose and bowed!! You can see this in the 2nd and 3rd pics.
Most of the inserts i’ve done so far I didn’t have to use any heat to remove them!!

[Mr Pinbologist]

Some more pics..

For these I did the usual trick of sanding them to get them flat, but first I needed to scan them to recreate the text later on.
 
Next I sanded them, first with 320 grit wet&dry and windex, followed by 400 grit and finally 800 grit, all the time being careful to hang onto them by the ends so as not to push any weight in the middle if the insert, thus getting them nice n flat.

2nd pic shows the flattened inserts ready to receive their decals for the text.

3rd pic the end result. Again I used waterslide decal paper, once applied I allowed them a few hours to dry then I gave them a quick coat of acrylic clear to seal them. I’ll give them a light sand to smooth them out before I reinstall them into the pf.

Will add more pics tomorrow 

[Mr Pinbologist]

Looking great so far Mitch . What sort of clear are you using and how do you apply it ?? (ie compressor/spray gun or ??)

Acrylic clear from a spray can, bought from Supercheap.. same as all my other restore work ( i dont have a compressor/spraygun setup as yet).

[howzat]

Its looking really good Mitch
Ive been trying to help as much as I can  Ive been doing cleaning of the coin door and any metal parts that I can, to help with the resto.  I do enjoy doing all the small jobs

30 odd yrs of beer and sticky soft drinks spilled on these games takes a lot of cleaning

Mitch is doing a great job and until you see what goes into a job like this its hard to realize the amount of labour involved.
Im looking fwd to playing it again and have new mylar on it will ensure that there is no more wear .  This game is a keeper as its has lots of drop targets and Friends find it easy to play and lots of fun  Also its a game from my past  just like others in my collection

Mitch is also doing some reds and yellows in the B?G     this will complete the game   Im looking fwd to seeing the process  Im sure other guy will be          Howzat
  

[goodolddays]

Looking great so far Mitch . What sort of clear are you using and how do you apply it ?? (ie compressor/spray gun or ??)

Acrylic clear from a spray can, bought from Supercheap.. same as all my other restore work ( i dont have a compressor/spraygun setup as yet).

Thanks for the feedback Mitch .
I actually picked up compressor /guns/airbrush from Wotto a few months ago but haven't tried it out yet . My big upcoming challenge will be touching up all the missing paint (mainly red) on my Thoro Bred BG. Will be rereading some of your resto threads before attempting it and practicing with my new airbrush.