New Page 1

1967
Williams

JOLLY
ROGER

Repaint / Re-stencil
by: Rich Castline

(Click on PICs to enlarge)

I picked up this machine for $100 some time ago, someone had painted the cabinet an ugly beige color with a brown stripe, the back-glass is fair with some paint loss but still usable. The game had a few problems like it wouldn't start because it didn't want to reset to 0..... you know... score reel stuck on '9'. It wouldn't go to player 2, 3 or 4, most likely the player unit needed adjustment, flippers were sluggish and a few other issues. I opened it up and new right away what it needed.... HELP!

Started by taking all the stepper units apart and cleaning and adjusting them properly, most where all gummed up as someone had used oil to try to lubricate them.... that's just wrong, you never use oil on a pinball machine. Rebuilt the flippers, adjusted the score reels and everything else that goes with Shopping out a machine. The game now worked and played beautifully.

So now it was time to do something with the cabinet, since I couldn't stand the ugly paint-over anything I did would be an improvement, started by using paint remover hoping to find at least part of the original stencil underneath, I was amazed that the original stencil was almost completely intact.... don't understand why anyone would paint over it. Since the stencil looked fairly simple I decided to redo it, I sketched out new stencils out of cardboard then removed the rest of the paint down to bare wood, sanded it smooth and painted the whole thing in primer, matching the yellow was pretty easy since the original color was still under the side rails, the blue (aqua) took several tries after comparing it to others I'd seen on-line I think I got it pretty close.

Overall the whole project took me about 6-months, I had it set up in my garage and plaid it for the next two years, after that I broke it down and stored it for the next three. After a period of time I decided to set it up again and was horrified to find that termites had destroyed the back-box and started getting in to the cabinet, I had no choice but to gut the back-box and get rid of the wood, most the cabinet was fine and every now and then I set it out in the sun to cook the termites that may still be present along with spraying the machine. I'd really like to get the game up and running again so I'm in need of a replacement back-box. If you know of one you can contact me at piclic4u@aol.com.