Williams A-Go-Go 1966

Okay, so one of my biggest concerns is the state of the back glass. So I've been looking at options this week for it. However over the last few days I've also been toying with Photoshop. Grabbed a really nice image off the net of a NIB (personal not commercial) but it was taken at an angle, perspective was off and the resolution was pretty low. Photoshop has a perspective warp feature and I managed to convert it successfully.

Original:

Perspective Warped and Resolution increased

Cropped

I then ran it though Vector Magic and vectorised it so that I could re-touch all the colours. There's a fair bit of work in that but the real issue are the words. They came up pretty poorly at full size and the only real option is to recreate them. I just need to identify the font. So with that WIP I proceeded to have a close look at the headbox today and took it apart

Check out front and back. Faded all over and most of the skin tone is gone =(

Now looking at it closely I think if I can match that skin tone I "might" be able to bring this up to semi-decent shape. I bought some Krylon Triple Thick (Spotlight stock it and so do a LOT of art stores). Got mine from the local Art Shop planning to do it this weekend. Closer inspection has be tempted to wait until I try and repaint before using the Triple Thick. Before I do that I'll be taking it to work to scan the glass on one of our A3 scanners. I can then stick together and see what result I get.

Started scraping the gunk off the top of the unit:

Much better, bonus is its taking the paint off too!

The back cover is in pretty good shape. Will clean, paint and replace lock.

A few bulbs missing but overall in pretty good shape. Some yellowing on parts of the score reels.

Innards

Oh god why oh why. I mean these unplug. Fortunately the harnesses are in tact and wire colours clear and easily seen so repairing this will be easy.

About 8 of these bulbs have slivers of wood against them. I'm assuming to keep them off the sides of the insert but it's also wood :unsure

More to come.

Cheers,

Brad

Thanks to @ajfclark and the suggestions from the rest of you guys I bought some Evaporust today. SuperCheapAuto stock it also that name is a misnomer for this product 😮

Parts at Bunnings cost me $10.00 and $5.00 for the glue but now I have to wait for it to cure overnight. So behold the Leg Restore Station! 😄

Brad

- - - Updated - - -

wiredoug said:

matches to keep the bulb pushed up hard against the crappy corrodeded socket

 

if you need to fix them you will be wanting this https://www.bunnings.com.au/dremel-rotary-tool-accessory-carbon-steel-brushes-443-2-pack_p6280099

 

and your choice of dremel ( the little cordless ones great)

 

but replacing them is nice if you can.. http://www.pinballspareparts.com.au/a-8262.html

 

i suggest you get it working before you worry about making it look pretty.. play it a bit first

Thanks for the suggestions!

Ultimately I want to replace the bulbs with LED's although for some that's sacrilege. I'll wait and see.

Sure I should get it going first and in fact, once I've traced the artwork (bunnings didn't have rolls of tracing paper), I'm going to fix the harness, check the unit all over and see if it powers up. I'll then see what needs to be done. Irrespective of any of that, I still want to restore the old girl. She deserves it and I find this will be a rite of passage for me 😉

Cheers,

Brad

If inside the cabinet looks anything like inside the backbox, it should be a very easy job for you. Everything looks clean and complete..

(except I noticed one minor thing missing in the backbox, you'll have a very quiet game, its missing the part on the match unit to hit the bell..... quick fix though, just make a plum-bob out of a bit of wire and a nut.)

 

Cant' wait until you've reconnected the wiring harness so you can fire it up to see what's working.

Okay n00b time. Could you possible circle inside that picture what part you're talking about? :confused:

Cheers,

Brad

Yeah I've been reducing the pic sizes so they fit and load okay. Thanks a bunch for that! I need to pick up a few parts so I'll see if I can source that as well. I need Leg Bolts, Leg Plates, Protectors, some bulbs and now this. Of course the list will only grow ;)

Cheers,

Brad

Okay, since I don't have time during the week for painting and all the other stuff I've continued toying around with scanning and retouching using Adobe Illustrator.

Scanned, stitched and test colour replacement. I've done the green and red so far. The colours are off as the source images I'm finding aren't great. I'll adjust the shading in the proper work file after a bit of practice. Here you can see my test image. Left is working file, right is reference image.

Once you get into rhythm you can get through it pretty quick. I wasn't happy with the scanner result so took a decent resolution photo with my trusty Canon 60D. I'm going to take a proper one over the weekend in RAW format and try a more accurate image capture

Autosteve said:

The green may be a tad darker but I think it will blend nicely when all the other colours are in place. Actually I think the slightly darker green will suit better.

 

Amazing job you are doing on it I think. Are you going to turn it into a translite or paint onto glass?.

Thanks! 😃

Yeah the green is a little too fluorescent in my opinion but I wanted to wait until I had most of it filled as the other colours will tone it down. Hard to get accuracy when the only image sI can find are rendered from the Web and so reduced. Like you said though I think with a little tinkering it'll come up nice if not 100% faithful to the original.

My plan is to get is reverse printed on a new piece of glass to replace the old one completely.

I tell you what though. Learning a lot about Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. Never done anything like this before.

Just finished the blues!

@illawarra_steelers and @thejudge

Great information right there! Fortunately no mirror here. I like the reverse printed on vinyl, certainly maybe a better approach. Like you guys I'm not paying almost $500.00 for a repro backglass. Sure I'll put some hours into this but I'm learning something new AND enjoying it and I think the end result should come looking okay.

cheers,

Brad

Okay people who know me well know that I'm a bit on the obsessive side. I've powered through and semi-completed this. It's a proof of concept to see if I could do it and this test had given me the confidence that I can. Before and After results below. Note I have not cleaned up ANY of the black,or text nor touched anchors so a quite a number of the lines are not correct but no bad.

Starting this week I'm going to take a RAW high resolution image of my original backglass with my DSLR, and then go through the motions to do a full re-colour. Wish me luck =)

Cheers,

Brad

Post everything you can @Brad, I'd love to see how this is done from start to end. :)

Will do, this can be a learning experience for us all :D

Okay Tutorial 01 - Backglass Restore - Image Capture

Heed the advice of those much wiser than you like @millsy56 I've tried a number of methods to get a decent capture of my backglass and by far THE best is to scan it at high resolution. Hands the down the most accurate and BEST quality. It will help you immensely when it comes time to re-touch colours etc.

Don't worry that the glass is too big for your scans as you will take a scan of each part of the glass (don't worry about overlaps) and then stitch them all together.

Some examples:

Image "borrowed" from the internet.

Note the quality looks okay. Until you have to scale it up for printing, then all of a sudden you have a mess of pixelation that will look like arse when printed. See comparison below

High Resolution Photo with DLSR.

This is not a bad option if you have no access to a scanner but it means more work in restoring. Now I tried taking a RAW format image but this is next level stuff processing and I had no idea so I ditched it.

High Resolution Scan - I've only shown part as the file is huuuuuge.

Note how clear and sharp the edges are! Also the colours are spot on and clearly shows just how faded and ratshit the paint is. Easily the most accurate and best quality.

Side by side comparison. Web Image, DLSR, Scan

Now you want crisp clear edges at high resolution as you will be vectorising the image for repair AND printing. Vector graphics scale without pixelation so your finished product looks great and not like a CRT with 1cm sized pixels 😉

Next lesson will be stitching the scans together. I have to admit to an embarrassing error I made when scanning my backglass. We have A3 Scanners at work so I took it in and took 4 scans rotating corners. I didn't check my work before taking it back home and when I started putting the 4 images together quickly realised that at A3 AND scanning from each corner completely misses a section right through the middle of about 2 cm's :rolleyes

So I need to bring it back in again tomorrow to capture that centre line :laugh:

Cheers,

Brad