Prepping the Cabinet

Time to get the cabinet ready for restoration. There are competing schools of thought on this. The cabinet I have is not in terrible shape; not too much fading, and only a little chipping of the paint and carved graffiti on the backbox. Some purists argue for leaving the original paint, and just doing a little touchup job. But I favor the complete overall here; sanding down the complete surface, repairing the chipped wood, and completely repainting. I think a cabinet repainting gives the overall machine a really clean look, and actually doesn't adversely affect the value. In fact, most of time, I believe a fresh repaint, if done well, enhances the value of the pin.

But it's a true pain in the back-of-the-lap, and an enormous time-eater. First, you need to remove all of the hardware from the cabinet (except for the side rails - you'll pretty much ruin these if you take them off, so I just leave them on). The coin door, flipper buttons, and ball plunger assemblies need to be disconnected electrically, then removed.

Pins of this era usually had three separate colors on the cabinet and backbox: a background color, and two design-element colors. The last two colors were sprayed on using stencils, so that's how I recreate the artwork. I like to make my own homemade stencils, even if there are third-party stencils available. I get a roll of .005"-thick polystyrene sheet, fairly inexpensive at art supply stores. I tape a sheet of this to a cabinet side, trim off the edges, and cut out the shapes for the first color. Then I repeat this for all cabinet and backbox sides. And do it all over again for the second color.

After the stencils have been made from the original artwork, the sides of the cabinet and backbox need to be sanded down. Any holes, or carved graffiti need to be filled in with an epoxy compound - I like using Bondo, with the separate chemical activator. Then another sanding, and you're ready to start with the first coat of the background paint color.

I promise, this is all going to pay off.