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I decided to completely re-build a pinball cabinet, it's not that hard if you are a little handy, it does however take a lot of thought and concentration.................oh..... and time. Worth it ? You be the judge. My first point of call was a trip to Mr Plywood to get some 19mm 'dressed' plywood, the guy there was surprised, as I was the first person to ever hand him a set of pinball machine dimensions to be cut, anyway about an hour later I left with my 4 x sides cut to shape and enough leftover off cuts to make up the other parts of the machine like the piece along the back that the head box sits on, all the "bracing" parts inside the cabinet and the "rests" that the playfield sits on as well. Even though the main sides were now pre-cut, there was still a LOT to do, and every cut or hole drilled has to be in the EXACT spot it needs to be, so there is a lot of re-measuring and checking before cutting out the door hole and button holes. One of the longest parts of the job, believe it or not was making the backrest that the head box sits on.
After having built the cabinet it is a good idea at this point to make sure the playfield sits in it nicely, it is the time to double check that you have left the perfect clearance at the back of the playfield and the precise amount of room at the front to allow for the lock-bar that the playfield hooks sit into. When you are satisfied that everything is going to fit OK and the playfield can be lifted up and down freely then it is time to start the paint job.
As I had never re-spayed or done any type of artwork before I thought I would start by just doing the front of Gorgar to see if I could do it or not, this build and spray was an experiment for me and I was willing to ditch it at any point if I decided I was not happy with it and go back to the original crappy box. I sprayed 3 coats of black first and let it sit for a week before I made the stencils for the white skulls. When re-spraying be very careful to check what colour "sits under" which other colours, I was very lucky with Gorgar that I could spray all the black then all the white and then the red over the top of both. I managed to successfully spray the front panel so I kept going with the whole box. In the next few shots you can see some stencilling that I make simply using a good quality Clear Contact Paper available for about $3.00 a roll at most supermarkets- I use Nylex brand as it is thick and has a low enough tack not to rip off any prior paint, but tacky enough not to lift during spray time.
In this shot above I am preparing the side of the cabinet for spraying all the white images, I have sealed all the joins in my stencils with tape so there would be no " white leaks". You can see the old banger in the background and you can see the front of the new box all finished off.
Obviously the shot above was taken after the white was sprayed and the stencils have been removed, there is a bit of tape still stuck at the back which was removed later. White is a hard colour to re-spray, to get it right I used 5 light coats - MAKE SURE you do light coats otherwise the colour coats will be way too thick and will possibly gum up when removing the stencil. I wait a day or so after my last coat before I remove the stencils so that all the edges are totally dry.
It's starting to look really good here, I was honestly surprised at actually how good it was coming up, remember though, this took me about 4 weekends to spray, even though the head was saying to rush it to get it finished I just took my time. In the end I had given it 3 coats of black, 5 coats of white and 3 coats of red and now all I had to do was the lettering.
There was no way I was going to attempt the word Gorgar as a spray on so I spoke to my mate Glenn at Coleman Signs who had done some Mame graphics for me in the past and what I did was I took a close up photo of each letter and emailed them to him along with a sample of the red colour, I also supplied him with the top to bottom and left to right size of each letter and from there he had his staff make me up the extremely thin stick on letters you see in the photo. Considering that the original Gorgar font is no longer around I think they did an exceptional job.
And here's a close up for any of you sceptic's out there. Nowadays I have a Gorgar that looks new out of the crate which is exactly how I like my machines to be. I know some people think they should be kept in old shitty original condition but I am not one of them, I much prefer them this way. I hope this may help some of you who are considering a re-spray and give you some idea's how an amateur novice can get a job done with a bit of thought, time and patience. You can now buy Gorgar Stencils from Pinball Pals that allow you to use the stencils once only and get your cabinet looking good again if you don't want to make up the stencils like I did. They also have an image gallery of customers Gorgar machines who have purchased and used their stencils.
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