Taiyo Zodiac Restoration

[emmadog]

The old, yellowed number plate in front of the lower pockets didn't fit in once the machine was restored to it's original appearance. The yellow square backgrounds behind each number were almost indistinguishable from the surrounding yellowed plastic. I was going to leave it alone but I knew I could knock it out over the weekend plus I was familiar with the techniques and materials required. I decided against using the retr0bright process since I wanted the whites of the machine to match the number plate. Retr0brighting works great but I was skeptical about it attaining the color I desired.
So I went with white enamel paint after sanding the plastic, using plastic cleaner, and then applying an adhesion promoter. The pink, green, and blue areas were masked off and airbrushed on to preserve the texture beneath, I used acrylic paint for that. I used acrylic for the other areas and was applied by hand. I could have airbrushed it but to mask off those minute areas would have taken forever. I also used metallic leafing pens.
The pics are of closeups of the plate after and before and of the entire machine.

[JamesM]

Just beautiful work

[mxfaiman]

looks great. Can't wait to see what you decide to clean up next.

[emmadog]

Not sure what I'll tackle next. It will be pinball related though. I've got replacement playfields for 5 of my pins so I'd like to do one of those next. But then I have several other pins in my storage unit that need to be shopped and I'm looking forward to that too as well since a few of them are 50's woodrails. I've got more pins than my signature on here will allow so there's plenty of projects. I plan on taking some leave from work soon and doing a playfield swap, either the Diamond Jack or Kings & Queens, and shopping one machine. Either the Flipper Parade or the Around the World.
I mostly do pinball projects these days with arepachi related stuff thrown in as a nice diversion. The one thing I haven't done on these two Taiyos is to make new number matrixes. I need to figure out the method first. I can make waterslip decals but I really don't like cleaning up the images digitally. I could also airbrush and then clear it but that requires lots of stenciling or I can silkscreen it with a kit I have. I'm leaning towards silkscreening but have just been putting it off.

[mxfaiman]

sounds great. I'm sure what ever you choose to do it will turn out looking great.