The Addams Family Pinball

After months and months and months of working on the cabinet and backbox, filling dents and scratches and getting the edges sharp, it was time to spray both parts black with Rustoleum Painters Touch – Silk Black paint (which had been recommended on RPG – albeit in paint form and not in the spray can – as it is a good match to the original satin black colour of the cabinet).

Rustoleum Painters Touch

So having isolated an area in the garage and layed down plastic sheeting to form a “spray cabin”  I got Tim to help me transport the cabinet from the cellar to the garage. I then sprayed the backbox, cabinet and backbox screws.

My spray cabin in the garage

The inside of the "spray cabin"

Unfortunately, I’m not the most experienced of sprayers and after my endeavours I had some serious paint runs. So having waited 48 hours for the paint to dry, I rubbed the paint runs down with normal 400 grit sandpaper. Unfortunately, the paint got stuck on the sandpaper, meaning that instaead of sanding, I started scratching the painted surface. So I decide to use 600 grit wet and dry sandpaper instead, wet, which worked much better.

But as I was sanding, as I hadn’t used an undercoat and only had sprayed a thin layer of paint, it didn’t take too long until I had successfully sanded through the paint to the wood. And as I was using water to lubricate the sandpaper (and take the paint dust away) the wood became wet and swelled creating some serious planking. Fortunately as the wood dried out the swelling went down, meaning that the surface wasn’t as rough, but it still wasn’t smooth, with planking, and I couldn’t rub it down further….

Rubbed down cabinet

Back Box after spraying - top unfinished, as I ran out of paint!

So what I should have done is to respray the cabinet again with more coats of paint and then rubbed it down again, this time ensuring I didn’t rub down to the bare wood. But unfortunately time  wasn’t on my side and I was running out of spray cans, so I had to leave it and hope.

In hindsight, I should have:

• used normal paint (ie not out of a spray can)
• used an undercoat
• applied a number of coats sanding down between coats

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 19th, 2012 at 19h06 and is filed under AFM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.