Final Cabinet Painting

Flash caused me more trouble on the cabinet and backbox painting effort than he should have. There are only four colors involved: a black background, with white and dark red accent colors. After painting the solid black background, I made plastic stencils for each of the remaining colors, for each side of the backbox and cabinet (10 total stencils). Then, I spray painted all of the white, and followed up with all of the dark red. Easy.

But. I started making the stencils using a .003-inch thick polystyrene plastic. This plastic worked pretty well, but it was just thin enough to allow a little peeling up of the stencil around stressed corners or tight curves, and allowed too much overpainting. So these areas needed to be touched up. Later, I found that using a .005-inch plastic worked much better as the stencils tended to lie much flatter (especially after being sprayed with repositionable adhesive, and applied to the cabinet with a rolling pin).

But the damage had been done, and I ended up painting each color multiple times before getting it right. Anyhow, the final results look really vibrant and clean, and should make for a nice dramatic backdrop for the playfield and backbox artwork.