Pinball Laundry: Cleaning the Apron

On a pinball machine, the pinball rolls on a surface that is called the playfield. At the bottom of the playfield, closest to the player, is part that holds the instruction cards. This part is called the apron.

Here's an example of an apron that is in very nice condition (it's not mine).

I'm pretty sure my Royal Flush pinball machine spent a lot of its life in a bar. There's a phone number scratched into its head, it has been played so many times that some of the playfield's paint is worn away, and the bottom of the apron was really rusted - most likely from beer that had been spilled on it.

Last winter I used sandpaper to get rid of the rust. I covered the bare metal with white Testors paint and then put a sticker on to cover up my poor paint job.

The apron didn't look too bad, but I decided it was time to do the repair correctly. My first step was to order a new decal from pinballrescue.com.

Pinball Rescue is located in Australia, so I had a couple of weeks to get the apron ready before the decal would arrive. The next step was to strip off all of the old paint. I used a chemical stripper that we had from a previous wood project. What a messy job. I didn't take any pictures of because I didn't want to get corrosive material all over our camera.

I installed the bare metal apron, so I could keep playing my machine on school nights.

Next I sprayed painted the apron with gloss white paint. I let the paint cure for a couple of days. Then I installed the apron again while I waited for the package from Australia to arrive.

On Saturday night I got up the courage to apply the decal. It wasn't difficult. All you have to do is spray the apron with a mixture of water and dish soap, slide the decal into place, and then squeegee the bubbles out.

I downloaded some free images of the instruction cards and used a laser printer to print new labels on recycled manila folder stock. I cut the old folders into sheets the size of typing paper (A4) and ran them through the printer one "page" at a time. I think they look pretty authentic.

Overall, that's a big improvement! And I only messed up a little. On Sunday morning I used my finger to work a bubble out from under the left blue arrow. I must have been too enthusiastic - a bit of the blue ink rubbed off. The ink isn't gone; it's just a bit lighter in that one spot. I should have been more patient, the bubble dried up on its own later in the day.

That's disappointing, but I won't make that same mistake again. Besides, if the apron looked perfect it wouldn't look right on this machine.

I bet I forget about it in a couple of days.