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Now it's time for the playfield...
On this page, I describe using various products made by various companies. I mentioned them
simply because 'they worked for me', not for any other reason. I'm not paid to sell this stuff.
Sooo... if you try these products yourself and you don't get the same results I did, I can't be liable.
Good Luck anyway... - Ken
simply because 'they worked for me', not for any other reason. I'm not paid to sell this stuff.
Sooo... if you try these products yourself and you don't get the same results I did, I can't be liable.
Good Luck anyway... - Ken
My poor Airway's playfield was really a mess.
Not only was the raised areas of the playfield painted a strange greeny silvery color, the actual playing area was changed by time to a weird almost olive color. I don't feel too bad about this, as the IPDB's photos of the Airway they have in their photo collection show the same weirdo paint problem.
Here, in the photo at right, you can see some of the original dark sky blue paint from under the raised areas I removed. I was able to take some paint samples of the playfield's blue, and the cabinet's red and yellow paint for future color matching. I also tried some different cleaner mixtures to see what would work best to get all the dirt off the playfield, and found diluted Mean Green and warm water worked the best here. My son Adam and I cleaned a small area at a time, and used lots of clean damp paper towels.
I removed all the screws, metal parts, springs, etc.
from the Airway's playfield and cleaned them in a rock tumbler with
walnut shell media for a weekend to get all the rust off. Once they
were cleaned, I wanted to keep them that way. So, I got some
Birchwood-Casey 'Dri Touch' chemical metal treatment and treated my nickeled parts with it. This
is a clear, petroleum based liquid chemical that is usually used to keep steel parts which have been treated with a black
oxide decorative finish from ever rusting. We use it on gears and
shafts where I work, and many gunmakers use this on 'blued' gun parts. I wanted to
see if it really would work, so I took an old pliers, derusted it,
treated it with this, and left it outside for a month. When I checked
on it, it hadn't rusted at all. (I bet member 'Art' would just LOVE
this stuff!) So now I treat all my metal tools with this.
Anyway, I got an empty gallon paint can from the hardware store and some steel window screen. I put the 'Dri Touch' in the can, made a bag out of the window screen, put the parts in the bag, and dunked the whole deal in the Dri Touch. Then, I let the parts soak for ten minutes, took out the bag, and let the parts dry for an hour. Once they 'dried', I wiped them all with more clean paper towels, and put them aside for reinstallation.
I spent some time studying the Airway's playfield,
and due to all the paint fading and general damage, I decided to just
preserve the playfield 'as it was'. So, following member Michael S's
instructions, I gave the Airway's entire playfield board six coats of
Johnson's paste wax, letting each one dry between coats, polishing it,
and adding another coat. When I was finished, except for the color of course, I had a beautiful playfield.
Once I removed all the metal parts from my Airway's playfield and got it cleaned up , I now had an even bigger problem to solve,,, delamination. The upper left side of the plywood playfield from the corner almost down to the #6 airplane (or an area about 12" x 6") was coming apart, and the only thing holding it all together was the tiny nails holding the raised parts on the playfield. I cleaned up the plies as best I could, glued all the plies together with Elmer's carpenter's glue, and clamped the plies together again with some wax paper, clamps and aluminum sheets.
Here is a closeup of a 'normally' covered up area on the 'Number 5'
airplane - the lower hole is the one for the brass-and-carbon bumper
ring. You can see the playfield's color shifting closely here, as the 'sky' in the circle around
the airplane is still blue, and the airplane itself is really a darker blue
shade. I knew no amount of
retouching would restore this playfield, so I decided to try something
radical... the HP Scanjet 4600 scanner at right. It was on sale at my
local office supply store, and I had heard of others using these to
make cabinet side stencils, so I bought one. I will tell you that I
used it to copy all the artwork from this playfield into my computer at
1200 dpi before I reassembled the playfield so I could maybe make a set
of repro playfield stickers. It worked GREAT!
Here is a small sample of the scans at a much lower resolution...
the 'real' ones are very highly detailed and HUGE. Now if I can only
figure out how to restore these scans to their original colors and
appearance, I'd be a happy camper indeed. If I could figure out how
to make an all new playfield someday, I'd be all set.
Not only was the raised areas of the playfield painted a strange greeny silvery color, the actual playing area was changed by time to a weird almost olive color. I don't feel too bad about this, as the IPDB's photos of the Airway they have in their photo collection show the same weirdo paint problem.
Here, in the photo at right, you can see some of the original dark sky blue paint from under the raised areas I removed. I was able to take some paint samples of the playfield's blue, and the cabinet's red and yellow paint for future color matching. I also tried some different cleaner mixtures to see what would work best to get all the dirt off the playfield, and found diluted Mean Green and warm water worked the best here. My son Adam and I cleaned a small area at a time, and used lots of clean damp paper towels.
I removed all the screws, metal parts, springs, etc.
from the Airway's playfield and cleaned them in a rock tumbler with
walnut shell media for a weekend to get all the rust off. Once they
were cleaned, I wanted to keep them that way. So, I got some
Birchwood-Casey 'Dri Touch' chemical metal treatment and treated my nickeled parts with it. This
is a clear, petroleum based liquid chemical that is usually used to keep steel parts which have been treated with a black
oxide decorative finish from ever rusting. We use it on gears and
shafts where I work, and many gunmakers use this on 'blued' gun parts. I wanted to
see if it really would work, so I took an old pliers, derusted it,
treated it with this, and left it outside for a month. When I checked
on it, it hadn't rusted at all. (I bet member 'Art' would just LOVE
this stuff!) So now I treat all my metal tools with this.Anyway, I got an empty gallon paint can from the hardware store and some steel window screen. I put the 'Dri Touch' in the can, made a bag out of the window screen, put the parts in the bag, and dunked the whole deal in the Dri Touch. Then, I let the parts soak for ten minutes, took out the bag, and let the parts dry for an hour. Once they 'dried', I wiped them all with more clean paper towels, and put them aside for reinstallation.
I spent some time studying the Airway's playfield,
and due to all the paint fading and general damage, I decided to just
preserve the playfield 'as it was'. So, following member Michael S's
instructions, I gave the Airway's entire playfield board six coats of
Johnson's paste wax, letting each one dry between coats, polishing it,
and adding another coat. When I was finished, except for the color of course, I had a beautiful playfield.Once I removed all the metal parts from my Airway's playfield and got it cleaned up , I now had an even bigger problem to solve,,, delamination. The upper left side of the plywood playfield from the corner almost down to the #6 airplane (or an area about 12" x 6") was coming apart, and the only thing holding it all together was the tiny nails holding the raised parts on the playfield. I cleaned up the plies as best I could, glued all the plies together with Elmer's carpenter's glue, and clamped the plies together again with some wax paper, clamps and aluminum sheets.
Here is a closeup of a 'normally' covered up area on the 'Number 5'
airplane - the lower hole is the one for the brass-and-carbon bumper
ring. You can see the playfield's color shifting closely here, as the 'sky' in the circle around
the airplane is still blue, and the airplane itself is really a darker blue
shade. I knew no amount of
retouching would restore this playfield, so I decided to try something
radical... the HP Scanjet 4600 scanner at right. It was on sale at my
local office supply store, and I had heard of others using these to
make cabinet side stencils, so I bought one. I will tell you that I
used it to copy all the artwork from this playfield into my computer at
1200 dpi before I reassembled the playfield so I could maybe make a set
of repro playfield stickers. It worked GREAT! Here is a small sample of the scans at a much lower resolution...
the 'real' ones are very highly detailed and HUGE. Now if I can only
figure out how to restore these scans to their original colors and
appearance, I'd be a happy camper indeed. If I could figure out how
to make an all new playfield someday, I'd be all set.
Now I can put the playfield together again...
The
photos that I took of the Airway's
playfield before I disassembled it are a really big
help... without them I probably wouldn't have been able to put the playfield back together again.As it was, once all the work was done, reassembling the playfield went pretty quickly. The only problems I had was resoldering the brass bumper switch rings to the rest of the assembly. If my soldering wasn't right on, nothing worked. I tested each bumper assembly as I reassembled it by tapping the powered up bumper's spring with a Sharpie. If it worked I went on to the next one.
Once everything was back on the playfield and working
together, I had
a different problem... the original Airways had colored frosted light bulbs
a different problem... the original Airways had colored frosted light bulbs
inside their bumper springs, and each of these bulbs was
lit for the entire game as soon as their airplane's bumper was hit by the ball. For example, the airplanes
numbered 1 to 5 had white bulbs, #6 had a red bulb, #7
had a green bulb, #8 had a pink bulb, #9 an orange bulb, and #10 had a purple bulb. I wanted to have my playfield look as correct as possible, and I also knew that finding original bulbs for my Airway was going to be impossible. So, I tried other ways to get my bulbs colored... Sharpies didn't work, the color either rubbed or faded off the glass. Model paints didn't work either, because the paint was too thick and didn't look right. What I needed was something like a Christmas tree bulb dye, but what? One of my friends suggested 'suncatcher paint' - the dye used by artists to paint colored pictures on glass for the sun to shine through. I went to the local craft store and bought a 'suncatcher refill kit', which had enough paint in eight colors to see if the idea would work. It worked great! I just cleaned the light bulb glass with some acetone, wiped the bulb dry with a paper towel, dunked the bulb in the paint up to the base, and hung it up on a hook to dry. After the dye had dried, I installed the bulbs in the playfield, reinstalled the bumper springs, and played the game with the new bulbs. The game looks great!
numbered 1 to 5 had white bulbs, #6 had a red bulb, #7 had a green bulb, #8 had a pink bulb, #9 an orange bulb, and #10 had a purple bulb. I wanted to have my playfield look as correct as possible, and I also knew that finding original bulbs for my Airway was going to be impossible. So, I tried other ways to get my bulbs colored... Sharpies didn't work, the color either rubbed or faded off the glass. Model paints didn't work either, because the paint was too thick and didn't look right. What I needed was something like a Christmas tree bulb dye, but what? One of my friends suggested 'suncatcher paint' - the dye used by artists to paint colored pictures on glass for the sun to shine through. I went to the local craft store and bought a 'suncatcher refill kit', which had enough paint in eight colors to see if the idea would work. It worked great! I just cleaned the light bulb glass with some acetone, wiped the bulb dry with a paper towel, dunked the bulb in the paint up to the base, and hung it up on a hook to dry. After the dye had dried, I installed the bulbs in the playfield, reinstalled the bumper springs, and played the game with the new bulbs. The game looks great!
Yes, I know that the #8
airplane's bumper has a yellow bulb in it, not a
pink one. I couldn't find any pink suncatcher paint at the hobby shop
when I bought the other colors. Besides, that
certain airplane had color shifted to an almost yellowy color so I left
this one alone. The number 1 through 5 bumper bulbs I didn't dye,
because when I took
those bulbs out of their sockets I noticed they were simply white
frosted. I wish I could figure out how
to frost these bulbs without damaging them,
so I could make the proper opaque colored bulbs. Later, I
found out from a friend who collects Lionel Trains
that there are round bulbs available for their train accessories in
white, red, and green
frosted with screw bases, like
the bulbs in the Airway playfield. I don't know if there are anyother available colors, but it can't hurt to look.
Next in the series... woodworking! The Airway needs a new backbox
top and bottom, a patch to fill a huge hole in its side, and a new
lockdown bar and backbox door.
top and bottom, a patch to fill a huge hole in its side, and a new
lockdown bar and backbox door.