The Addams Family Pinball

It’s always struck me as funny, why the bookcase and bookcase base are blue. The blue just doesn’t suit the game in my opinion – especially the base.

There are of course, decals which you can buy to stick onto the base to blend in with the playfield. But based on my experience, the colours are all wrong and/or the size of the decal is wrong.

Typical example of a decal attached to the bookcase base

So I decided to paint my new bookcase base.

As I have a scan of a bookcase decal, I used it to separate the three colours (grey, yellow and black) in Photoshop, create some masks with my CraftRobo plotter and paint the base using these masks and my airbrush.

Prior to spraying the base, I sanded it down with 1200 grit wet and dry sandpaper. I then spray-painted the grey colour and left it to dry.

Bookcase base painted grey

In Photoshop it was quite easy to separate the colours. Having got the yellow and black shapes separated, I increased their size by four pixels in order to help me prevent having grey streaks between the black and yellow shapes (which could always happen if the masks weren’t aligned properly).

Before cutting the yellow mask, I decided to simplify the masking process by joining up as many of the yellow “islands” as possible, making sure I joined these islands underneath where the black paint would be applied. Without this, or so I thought, applying the mask would be very difficult. I then cut the mask.

Using the raised ridge on the bookcase base as a guide, I placed the yellow mask onto the base. This wasn’t as easy as I had thought, as the fact that I had joined up all of the “islands” actually made the process even harder! However, I perservered and using a ruler I managed to get the mask applied to the base.  Spray time!

Yellow lines applied to base

Finally, I repeated this procedure with the black mask. This was, however the most difficult as the mask was made up itself of little masking islands, which are very difficult to apply. No wonder no-one else does this on their bookcase base!

Having applied the black mask, I noticed that the alignment with the yellow wasn’t perfect, so I made a few manual adjustments to the mask before spraying the black paint.

Finished bookcase base

I now just need to apply a clear coat to this and then I’m done!

I intend to attach as much stuff under the playfield first, as I don’t like the thought of all of those bits and pieces dangling under the playfield, potentially shorting something somewhere. So today I reattached all of the rollover switches.

Unfortunately the shooter lane switch was broken. Actually, it was the metal wire which was broken. So it was time to either get a new switch or repair the existing one.

Well it so happens, that I had already bought some stiff wire exactly for such a repair, but now that it came to using it, I noticed that the replacement wire is actually thicker than that of the existing switches. Nevertheless, I decided to attempt a repair – even with this thicker wire.

Now the formed wire is attached to a blade which is then attached to the switch housing. In order to replace the wire therefore requires the broken wire to be removed from the blade. The blade has two arches formed in it through which the wire passes and secured (quite possibly using heat treatment). Then the wire is spot welded to the blade – a very secure and stable set-up. Unfortunately replacing the wire therefore is nigh on impossible!

Original rollover switch wire attached to switch blade

So, with a Dremel (equivalent) I cut along the length of the wire at both arch supports and at the spot weld until the wire broke free. I had to be very careful here, so as to not damage the blade. I then formed the new wire to the right shape and was able to use the cut arches (which now had a “U” shape) to position the wire. Using superglue, I stuck the wire to the blade and once dry, used an epoxy glue to secure the wire in position.

Repaired wire and blade

There are two pivot points moulded onto the switch cover. For the shooter lane switch, the one furthest from the edge should be used. Having mounted the blade/wire onto the switch body, I reassembled the switch onto the playfield.

Shooter Lane switch repaired

I started with the rebuild today and first-up were the targets.

I first removed the old foam from between the target and its metal support with a sharp knife, making sure that I removed all of the old adhesive also, cleaned up the metal support and cleaned and adjusted the switch contacts. Finally, I cleaned the target faces with Novus 2.

I then applied the new foam pieces which I had bought over a year ago, making sure everything aligned correctly.

Cleaned targets with nice new foam

Finally I replaced the broken “Bear target” with a nice new one.

New bear target (that's not my foam alignment)

Now you may think that I’ve been up to nothing since my last post, but that’s not entirely true. In fact I made (yet another) mistake:

Even though I was so happy with how my playfield had come out, there were still indents around some of the inserts (for example the lightning bolts and the mansion inserts) where the clear just didn’t appear to take and/or had sunk. So, thinking I could repair these small indents, I used the “thin superglue” trick to fill out these indents and to sand them down flat with 2000 wet-and-dry sandpaper.

Unfortunately, in so doing, I managed to sand through my clearcoat on the mansion and on the right in- and outlanes. Even after polishing with Novus 2 and Finesse-It the clearcoat holes were still visible.

Now knowing that these holes would quickly deteriorate in play, I decided to repair these two areas of the playfield. Of course, I should have gone for a complete clearcoat of the whole playfield again, but decided not to, to save time and to not have the bother of the fumes in the house again.

So for the mansion, I decide to build up the clearcoat in two separate layers and (hopefully) feathering the clearcoat edges of each so that the repair wouldn’t be too obvious (and hopefully flat). For the right in- and outlanes (which are more hidden from view) I only used a single feathered layer.

Mask for the repair to limit the amount of clearcoat falling on the playfield

Second layer mask for clearcoat, elevated from playfield (by underlying mask) to create feathering effect

First layer mask for clearcoat, elevated from playfield (by underlying 2 masks) to create feathering effect

After two coats of the first layer and two coats of the second layer (with 5 minutes of breathing time in between) – both in a criss-cross pattern, I left the repair to dry.

After 24 hours of drying time, I noticed that once again, the insert edges (which I had originally tried to repair) were once again indented. This is soooooo frustrating!! This time however, I took my clearcoat, sprayed an amount directly into a plastic beaker and then used a brush to drip the lacquer into the indents. And then I waited……

After Easter (10 days later) it was time to sand down the new clearcoat. In order to prevent a repeat of the issue which caused this whole debacle, I used masking film to protect the untreated playfield, starting the film from half way in the outer “feathered” region of the repair. I then used 1200 grit wet-and-dry sandpaper to flatten the clearcoat. Once I was happy with that I removed the masking film and blended the edges into the playfield, first with 1200 and then with 2000 grit wet-and-dry paper.

For all of the sanding I used water with a little washing-up liquid in it (to help the paper to glide over the playfield) and hardly applied any pressure (as the water made the paper “stick” to the playfield thereby applying its own pressure – one of the benefits of capillary action).

Once I was satisfied with my results, I polished the area with Novus 2 and Finesse-It to bring out the shine in line with the rest of the playfield. Job done!

I did notice, however, that despite all my efforts there were still small pin-head indents around some of the inserts. This time, though, I’m going to leave them as they are.

Incidentally, I have recently bought some Carnauba Wax for the playfield. Even though a clearcoated playfield doesn’t normally need extra wax, this wax can (apparently) fill any imperfections in the surface, which might just help me with my pin-head indents….

Mansion after "repair"

Having left the playfield to dry for over two weeks, it was time to polish the playfield today. Before I started, however, I had to repair the dents around some of the inserts (especially in the mansion). So yesterday, I took some super thin superglue and used a fine syringe to drip the superglue into the crevices. Having left the superglue to dry overnight I wet sanded them down together with the whole playfield with 2000 grit wet and dry sandpaper until the whole playfield was even and had a matt finish.

I then used a 3M Roloc polishing system in my electric drill at 1200 rpm to apply Novus 2 to the entire playfield to polish it up and then followed this with 3M Finesse-It polishing compound.

3M Roloc polishing system

I was very happy with the outcome:

The finished playfield showing the level of shine achieved.

My perseverance had paid off and at last, I can move on to rebuilding the playfield. Yippee!

With two thick coats of clear-coat on the playfield, I felt confident in sanding the surface flat with 1200 grit sandpaper. As the previous clear-coat had raised the touch-up aroud The Power insert however, sanding down the surface actually removed the some of the orange colour, meaning I had to re-touch it up. I therefore took the opportunity to make a few other small touch-ups particullarly around the inserts.

I then applied another two coats of clear-coat to the playfield as before, applying them wet in a criss-cross pattern and leaving 10 minutes between each coat. The results were much better and definitely something I could live with. There were, however, some significant spots around the inserts – especially in the mansion – where the clear-coat had sunk.  I intend to fill these small dents with superglue prior to the final sanding, once the clear-coat has fully dried out.

Not wanting to damage my touch-ups and decal, I gingerly sanded down the playfield with 2000 grit sandpaper (dry).  I then cleaned the playfield thoroughly firstly using a small vacuum cleaner to remove the dust; then a damp cloth to remove any other dust and finally a tack cloth. I applied two coats of 1K clear-coat  from a new spray can – each coat consisting of one horizontal and one vertical layer criss-crossed – moving the spray head much slower than for the first coat. I left at least 5 minutes before applying the second coat to let the first coat breath.

I was happier with the results even though they weren’t perfect, showing a so called “Orange Peel” effect:

Playfield after a second (wet) coating of clear-coat

Obvious Orange Peel appearance of second coat

It turns out that this Orange Peel affect was as a result of the uneven first layer. This was evident, as I had also clear-coated part of the playfield this time which had been protected during the first clear-coat:

Clear-coated section of playfield not spoiled by uneven first coat

So, having ruined the playfield (see previous post) I opened a thread on flippermarkt.de to find out what the “experts” thought of my situation and how it could have happened (and how to repair the problem).

The main possible reasons given were:

1. a dirty playfield
2. the spray can or playfield were too cold
3. a lack of pressure in the spray can
4. a reaction to the original Diamond Plate
5. clear-coat applied too wet

1 and 2 were definitely not applicable in my case. 3 might have been, but I doubted it. Because of the actual 1K used, 4 should also not have caused a problem. 5 I’m sure wasn’t the case.

So no help there then.

As a solution, nearly everyone recommended I remove the far inferior 1K clear-coat from the playfield and to use 2K instead. This would mean me having to either sand down the clear-coat to the original Diamond Plate, or (preferably) to use a solvent to remove the 1K. This would, of course, affect all of the touch ups I had done up until this time and would therefore not only take a lot of time, but cost me a lot of time already spent. So I decided not to follow these recommendations.

Instead, I decided to follow the advice that I let the clear-coat harden and then sand the playfield down slightly and then apply fresh coats of clear-coat. Through additional research, I determined that maybe I had actually sprayed the clear-coat on too dry (ie moved the spray can too fast across the playfield) which could easily be remedied by spraying a little slower. However, when spraying wet it is important to have a horizontal playfield (to prevent runs in the paint) and to ensure that each coat has a chance to breath (to let the solvent out) otherwise the solvent will be trapped and eventually force its way out as the coating dries resulting in small holes in the clear-coat surface.

In order to prepare the playfield for clear-coating I started by dry-sanding the exposed area with 1200 grit wet-and-dry sand paper ensuring the whole exposed playfield was “roughed-up” and dull in appearance. I vacuumed up the resulting debry from the playfield before using a damp cloth to remove any dust remaining and just to ensure there was absolutely no bits left on the playfield, wiped it down with a tack-cloth.

I then took my spray-can of 1K clear-coat varnish and applied four light coats of clear-coat, each coat consisting of both a horizontal and a vertical spray pattern in a criss-cross pattern. I left 5-10 minutes between each coat to give each coat an opportunity to breath. This methodology was chosen having read many different guides on clear-coating on the internet.

So it came as a big surprise when the resulting clear-coat came out disappointingly:

First clear-coat covering

Time to turn to one of my local forums (flippermarkt.de) for help.

In order to prepare the playfield for clear-coating I needed to cover the pop-bumpers in the graveyard. And as the playfield is still in the pinball machine I had to protect the cabinet also.

For the pop-bumpers, I constructed a custom box cover which fit snugly over the pop-bumpers and held it down to the playfield with masking tape, using the stand-up targets as anchors:

Graveyard cover

The cabinet was then protected with newspaper:

Playfield ready for clear-coating

Incidentally the photos above show that I had originally protected the rear of the playfield as I only wanted to clear-coat the visible areas of the playfield. This, however, would have have made sanding the exposed areas of the playfield harder than it needed to be, so I removed it again, thereby exposing the entire top half of the playfield.