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Firewood to (Fun)ctional: Journey of a 1947 Flipperless Woodrail - Pinball Expo 2025 - Pinball News

Pinball News (Pinball Expo 2025)·video·50m 58s·analyzed·Oct 18, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.022

TL;DR

Detailed restoration guide for 1947 flipperless woodrail pinball machine with technical DIY tutorials.

Summary

A detailed technical presentation at Pinball Expo 2025 documenting the multi-year restoration of a 1947 flipperless woodrail pinball machine (Nevada theme) from severely deteriorated condition to functional state. The speaker covers extensive cabinet refurbishment, playfield restoration with LED modernization, and provides detailed DIY tutorials on creating custom leg bolts, bumper skirts, and reproducing backglass artwork using modern printing techniques.

Key Claims

  • This 1947 Nevada machine was released three weeks before flippers were introduced when Humpty Dumpty was released

    high confidence · Speaker directly states historical fact about flipperless game timing relative to Humpty Dumpty release

  • The machine was originally retrofitted with flippers by a previous owner non-destructively, allowing complete removal without damage

    high confidence · Speaker describes the flipper retrofit details and removal process with specific technical observations

  • The speaker acquired the game for $125 after initially being asked $250 by the homeowner

    high confidence · Speaker provides detailed narrative of the purchase negotiation with the homeowner's wife

  • Standard leg bolts available from pinball suppliers come in 2.5, 2.75 inch lengths, but 1947 woodrails require 3.5-4 inch custom-made bolts

    high confidence · Speaker provides detailed technical specifications comparing standard parts to custom requirements

  • Backlit film printing through posterprintshop.com costs under $35 for a full backglass translite, using modern solvent-based UV-stable inks

    high confidence · Speaker provides specific vendor recommendation and pricing information

  • The restoration project began in late 2012 and remains ongoing, with work completed incrementally rather than full-time

    high confidence · Speaker directly answers question about timeline in closing Q&A section

  • The machine uses 1.125-inch diameter balls (bingo balls) rather than standard pinballs

    high confidence · Speaker describes mechanical specifications of the 1947 flipperless machine

Notable Quotes

  • “well, he saved another one from the dumpster. So hence the name of my seminar today, Firewood Functional.”

    Presenter @ ~12:50 — Origin story of seminar title, illustrating community culture around saving and restoring abandoned machines

  • “you have not looked at this game in 20 years, and this will not be going to our new house. And we have a buyer right in front of us.”

    Homeowner's wife (quoted by presenter) @ ~14:30 — Memorable negotiation moment demonstrating how personal circumstances drive machine sales and pricing

  • “I just use a very small, like a Brad hammer, and I just tap these in. And what we're going to do is we just tap the wire in just so it sits a little bit more than flush beyond the top of this.”

    Presenter @ ~28:45 — Technical detail for DIY bumper skirt construction using music wire press-fit method

  • “With threaded rod, yes, you can buy a long piece of it... The only problem is, is as you're making these, you're going to have two bad cut ends. Whereas when we take a stock carriage bolt, we're going to have a good factory quote end that's going to go towards the machine.”

    Presenter @ ~43:15 — Practical DIY guidance explaining material selection rationale for accessible restoration

  • “This new backlit transparent film, it's actually better than Duratran. These are, they're printed with a solvent-based inks, and they're also UV stable, which is very nice.”

    Presenter @ ~50:30 — Technical advancement in backglass restoration technology compared to classic Kodak Duratran process

  • “using a macro lens because that's your key because it's maintaining that proper scale so when you put it in there it's gonna the stuff's gonna match where it's supposed to go”

    Presenter @ ~54:20 — Technical photography expertise applied to accurate backglass restoration achieving 1/16 inch precision

Entities

NevadagameHumpty DumptygameWilliams Blue ChipgamePinball Expo 2025eventposterprintshop.comcompanyMartinpersonPinsideorganizationKodak Duratranproduct

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Pinball Expo 2025 featured dedicated restoration seminars for vintage flipperless era machines, indicating growing community interest in pre-1960s game restoration and preservation

    high · Presenter references '30s and '50s seminar from yesterday at same event; multiple seminar slots dedicated to restoration topics

  • ?

    community_signal: Strong ecosystem of DIY-accessible restoration resources: hobby shops for specialized wire/drill bits, online printing vendors, 3D printing services, and comprehensive vendor parts lists support home restorers

    high · Speaker emphasizes accessibility for people with basic home tools; provides multiple vendor recommendations and sourcing guidance

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Restoration philosophy prioritizes functional refurbishment with period-appropriate modernization (LED lamps, custom caps, reproduced parts) rather than full historical purity

    high · Speaker states 'I wasn't going for a full on restoration, more of a refurbishing renovation build'; incorporates LEDs while maintaining original mechanical gameplay

  • ?

    technology_signal: Modern solvent-based backlit film printing (UV-stable, under $35) represents significant cost reduction and quality improvement over historical Kodak Duratran chemical process ($200+ for small prints)

    high · Speaker contrasts Duratran historical costs and process with current posterprintshop.com offering; notes Duratran labs no longer operational

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.153

0:00
All right, so I'm just going to show you a few pictures here. I didn't take a ton, unfortunately, over the years, but I did find a few. So this is kind of when I got it. You can see how bad, you know, the bumpers are, especially discolored and kind of a mess. So there's the bottom board. The bottom board was completely delaminated.
0:50
It had pretty bad shape. the front of the cabinet, the bottom half was broken off completely. You'll see the new floor of the cabinet to the left. There's a new floor installed with the parts transferred over from the old floor. And there's the one side there. A lot of the stencils were in Pretty rough shape. There's some repainting going on there. The floor being repainted. Legs being finished. There was no finish on any of the stained parts. And there's the cabinet getting set up there. Still no finish on the wood rails yet.
1:50
There's a tracing of a stencil that I had to create. Fortunately though, one side of the machine was still in good working order for the most part so I could make the stencils. There's a stencil outside after I had completely traced it. Those needed to be cut out and that was kind of fun, some of the detail work. Another old shot of the machine, pretty rough. There's the tracing of where it had been repainted at some time and it wasn't the exact shape, So I recreated the shape of the tail of the horse there. And there's the inside. This thing was really, really dirty so it needed a pretty substantial cleaning and then I simply painted it with some white paint. And there's the other half. coin door had a big chunk missing out of it which mostly got taken care of. And as far as the leg bolt holders there, those were pulled out, repainted, etc. I used screws instead of the nails that they had put in at the factory, make them a little stronger. there we have the finishing of the rails themselves and it's coming along a little better more staining finishing of the wood
Pinball Database
organization
3:57
some of the random pieces that I recreated Here are some of the internals of the game. This game works basically when the nickel goes in and you push forward on the slide. It's very mechanical in nature. So it basically drops all the relays to reset the game. And then it also lifts up the ball catch pan to drop all the balls down into the tunnel to get to the ball lift. Here is a reproduction of the back glass part way through, getting some of the layers put in, etc. Those are the leg bolts that had to be made because there wasn't any with the machine. And there is a copy of the original ad, simply got off the pinball database. And there's a copy of the finished file that was made to create the new back box art. And there's the old back box art, the original glass. And you know that you can see there's some flaking. It's not the greatest. I just wanted to make it look a little more presentable. I wasn't going for a full on restoration, more of a refurbishing renovation build that way.
5:29
There it's a play field, pretty much completed with the fresh rubber rings on it, bumper caps, etc. Kind of shows that. The machine does contain LEDs for the lamps. It's mainly warm white. All the inserts underneath, I did decide to put the frosted red in. Some of the back box has color matching LEDs in it as well. The brand purple and the Nevada wording also in red. Some of the yellows do have yellow LEDs in them. There's the inside of the coin door. And as you can see, how it all connects is there's a board on the inside of the cabinet and there's little fingers on the coin door which make contact. You also see in the left-hand side of the picture that there is a power switch that was added by me, so it has a power switch now. Also that buildup was added as well where the power switch goes, so the switch is recessed just like any other pinball. And there's the door in its closed position. There's the game up in Playfield Up. That is how it came to me, so that was not sanded down. I was hoping it wasn't that bad, but there you have it. Yep, there we got part of the missing animal there. Back end with some new glides on it. There's the underside of the play field in case you're interested. when you play in a game the relay will lock down when you earn a certain target or a certain bumper. There's what the bumper looks like from the underside right in the center of the picture. You're going to see that there's some special bumper skirts in this game and they also have a metal ring with basically a carbon donut on the inside. There's the front half of the game with the ball lift and the plunger. More of the back door there. That upper switch there, that is what the nickel slide will engage. You'll see the hole on your right where the nickel slide goes in. And then there's a little arm that engages that to trip that coil. And then it also mechanically trips that whole relay bank on the inside. That is the end of the slide show so I'll continue on here with the presentation. All right so story here we've got. up the game for $125 and basically what we have here is I had come to Expo a few years ago with a game, Williams Blue Chip if anybody maybe remembers that in the free play room. That game I picked up for $100. Anyhow, how I got the name of the seminar here, you'll find this quite interesting. When I picked up that blue chip I only had 30 days to get it running and to get it here. The local quote scene found out I was the lucky one that picked up the blue chip and turned out good. A lot of work to get it going because it had been sitting around for about 35 years. Another individual came here to the expo from my local scene.
9:29
A friend of mine was also here. My friend says to them, what do you think of Jay's game? They were unhappy because I had picked up a decent game, a fair price, and they didn't get it. And their response was, well, he saved another one from the dumpster.
9:49
So hence the name of my seminar today, Firewood Functional. This one is still a long-term work in progress and it will be. I've got some small other details to complete on it but there we have it. This game just to make it brief a lot of people already discussed this that did the 30s and 50s seminar from yesterday. This is your typical mechanical, it takes a nickel to play, get five balls. The balls are a little larger than a regular pinball They're like a bingo ball. They're a one and an eighth ball.
10:25
Game uses light bulb scoring, as you can see there, where basically once you get done with the game, you add up all your points and get your total score.
10:35
And when this game came to me, by the way, this was three weeks before flippers were introduced when Humpty Dumpty was released. So this was just before that when it left the factory. When I did get this game, somebody had retrofitted it with flippers,
10:55
which they did not do a destructive job putting them in, so I was able to carefully take them back out.
11:04
There's two posts in the game that contain machine screws rather than a tapping screw, and those completely cover up the two holes that were left by the flippers.
11:14
The wires they just put in real quickly, to connect the coils and such. Those were very easy to desolder without leaving any kind of a destructive mess. On the sides of the cabinet, I did use a couple of different size dowels to replug the holes and sand them smooth and refinish them. So there we go.
11:36
Otherwise, the story on how I picked up this game is the owner had their house on the market and it sold immediately. And when I went over there, they had to do the closing in about a week, apparently.
11:54
The nice part is I didn't have to do any negotiating on it. They wanted $250 for it. The owner's wife did all the negotiating for me.
12:05
She says to me that I have been there longer than the last four people to look at the game, and they all walked away. She then says to me that I can have it for $125, and then she sternly looks at her husband and tells him, you have not looked at this game in 20 years, and this will not be going to our new house.
12:28
And we have a buyer right in front of us. So there we go. Okay. So I pretty much covered this in the slideshow. Very rough shape.
12:40
Stencils had to be redone mostly Holes had to be plugged where the flippers once were Power cord definitely needed a replacement It was spliced with a couple wire caps midway through. It was the original cord, I guess.
12:56
Cabinet floor was replaced, obviously. The game, for the most part, was actually complete. There is a linked kick-out in the game. It's the center one. there's a kick out down at the bottom and a kick out at the top. Those are linked together with a linkage. That coil was actually bad. So I'll get into how we did that in a little bit here. And sure. There we go. Yep. Yeah, so how this game works is you spell Nevada with the bumpers, and then United, you will spell with kickouts or those lanes on the left and the right. Bonuses are earned in the game. What's kind of neat is this game, actually for how old it is, it has a collect bonus. So once you get it in the kick out after you've collected a certain amount of bonus, it will actually count down all that bonus for you. And at times you can get a pretty solid bonus on this game. And yeah, basically new bumper assemblies and posts. Mechanically had to be gone through switches cleaned, adjusted, etc. Power switch was added of course. Many dozens of coats of wax were required to bring this thing up to its shine that it needed. And obviously rubber rings like typically normal on any machine that you're going through. So at this time, we're going to talk about making some parts. So if Martin will come up here and he'll set the camera on the table here.
15:03
Thank you. Okay, so first what we're going to start out with is our extended length leg bolts that we need to make. And so if you go look commonly at conventional leg bolts, if you go to any of the pinball supplier sites, you're going to see two and a half, two and three quarters. These games generally are going to need about a 3 1⁄2, possibly even a 4 depending on the game. This game needs a 3 1⁄2 to comfortably go through and have some thread exposed on the inside. So what we're going to basically need to buy is you go buy some carriage bolts at the store here. There's three A16 by 4 inches long is the ones I chose here. So then you'll also need some 3-H flat washers.
16:35
The fancy part, which I actually don't have one, to make them look really, really good, you'll get a chrome acorn nut. And there's a place in the vendor parts list there where you can get them. Those acorn nuts, they run about $3 a piece. So, you know, three times eight, you got about $25 in your trim hardware. but it makes the game look really nice rather than just getting plain old hex bolts at a hardware store.
17:08
So first of all, what we need to do is we need to modify the bolt a little bit. So what we've done here is we've taken our carriage bolt.
17:18
We put a couple of 3-16 nuts on it. We want to jam those nuts together with a wrench so they're super tight because you're either going to be taking an angle grinder for speed or a hacksaw if you want to spend a little bit of time on making eight of these things. I chose the angle grinder. So what I did was I brought this down to about a quarter inch of space on this part here. And I took the grinder on the back side and ground it flush. And then what you simply do is after you've ground it flush so you're gonna have this left over which you just pitch we're gonna have a couple of jam nuts here what we simply are going to do is we're going to spin these off Okay, next what we would do is we would grab our acorn nut here. And what we're going to want to use on these, because these are going to technically be the head of our new bolt even though they're a nut, is we're going to... using some thread locker and we want to use the red stuff for the strength because with red thread locker as we all most of us know it's gonna take some heat to loosen that and release that thread locker so really all we need to do is All right, so we're going to have the thread locker and I'm going to simulate the thread locker with this tube here. We're going to put a couple of stripes of thread locker on the opposing sides. You don't need to fully load the thing. Basically when you thread the thing on, it's going to draw all that thread locker around the threads. Once you get it on there tight, what you're going to want to do is put it in some kind of a vice fastener and we're going to just torque that acorn nut really good on there. We're simply going to wipe off any excess. Thread locker basically works when there's an absence of air. Once that thread locker is in there ... There's no air, that's when it's going to start to cure. Otherwise it will stay in liquid form normally. Then we're going to, obviously we have to make eight of these to do our bolts. We're going to want to let them sit for a couple of days before we try to mount them to the machine, put them into use. Once you cut this off and you put the acorn nut back on, it'll start at three and three quarter and roughly with the acorn nut it's going to take up about a quarter inch. So your bolt will be about three and a half inches long when it's all done.
20:12
And then all we simply would do is we're going to add a three-eighths flat washer and mount the bolts to the leg on the machine and go from there.
20:23
All right, so next we're going to go with the making of our skirts, which we need to do. Some people call these a conductive skirt, a stinger skirt, etc. They're a little different than what we see in today's machines and even from the machines of the 60s and such. So what we do on this is we're going to take a skirt such as this, and we're going to clip the end off generally right about where the taper starts there to get it to the smaller part of the pin of the skirt. So as you can see here with this one, that's about how much we took off of that skirt.
21:10
And the next step here is we are going to get a piece of this product here. It's called Music Wire. It's a .047 of a diameter on it. Get it at a hobby shop. It's kind of where you have to get them. Generally, I think RC planes and such use these for linkage and so forth. So what we do is we're going to take a piece of this here, and you're going to need to cut about a, you know, two, two and a quarter inch length. What you want to do, though, definitely is measure in your game how far it is to get to that conductive carbon ring and the steel assembly that's there. And you want to have that pin protrude a little bit so when it's rocked from side to side, it doesn't fall out of the conductive. So mine are, I believe, I think I've got between a half and three quarters of an inch beyond there, just so we don't have that problem.
22:24
Then what you need to do, the next part is going to be, we're going to take this very small drill bit here. This is a number 57 drill bit.
22:34
So once again, Hobby Shop is going to have these. This little drill bit here is .043 of an inch in diameter. So what we're going to essentially do is because our music wire is .047, when we put our skirt in, it is going to be literally a press fit. So what we're going to do is we're going to drill a hole right down the center of the skirt from this side, preferably. That's going to be the easiest way to do it. The best way to do it is use a drill press for accuracy because some you can put a jig in that automatically will center your bit and keep it right down the center there. Once you've drilled the hole, we're going to simply take a small hammer. I just use a very small, like a Brad hammer, and I just tap these in. And what we're going to do is we just tap the wire in just so it sits a little bit more than flush beyond the top of this.
23:36
What my next step was to do is, even though they are pressed in very tightly, is I just take some of this adhesive here. This is like a rubber cement, basically. And dispense a little gob of it out onto here and then flatten it out in there just to kind of seal that in. and then you just set these aside to dry. Once again, probably another 24, 48 hours.
24:04
And the next step we need to do is we are going to need to make this be our conductive piece. So down here towards the base, we're going to need to rough that up a little bit with some sandpaper, et cetera. Some people will use, you know, a Dremel tool with a light disc on it. because we need to clean that up so solder can be accepted to the steel wire.
24:30
And the next component that we're going to need to do is grab some of this desoldering braid. This is a very fine desoldering wick. It's the same stuff you use to pull solder off of a board, but it's a very fine product. It's a .050 of an inch. And, you know, you don't want to be using, you know, solid core wire, stranded wire. All of that is going to eventually break.
25:05
You'll find that this braid is actually, it's very soft and it's kind of wispy. So this will handle the rigors of many years of use. And once we've soldered that to our skirt, what we generally do is we're going to put, I like to put a knot in the braid so we get mechanical and then we get a good electrical connection with the solder And you just going to trim these basically to however long they need to be to get to the point where you need to solder them underneath your game. What I generally do is I kind of figure out which direction it's going to be going so if it's it's heading over to the right what I'll do is I'll try to make that tail so it goes towards the right. And then we leave just a little bit of slack in it for the movement of the skirt.
26:00
But anyhow, that's kind of how they're made. And obviously when we install them, we want to install with our point up so the ball simply can't get stuck on them.
26:12
If by some reason, you know, when you're drilling these and one is a little off-center, which you know you have a couple of those if it's not too bad you can actually kind of give the wire a little bit of a bend to Center that back up again and basically if you're going to the work to do these you're best off replacing all these components so in reality we've got our our base here which goes down into the play field. Then we have the spring component here. A skirt would sit right on top of that. And another thing I might add is when you get the skirts you can get the four hole variety because we don't need the ring and rod for a pop bumper. And you know then we're going to assemble our bumper base, bumper body. The ones on mine were all kind of a dark brown burgundy. They were pretty bad from light bulb over the years. I'm going to simply add a couple of screws here to hold that down to the play field. We're going to put our inch and a quarter rubber ring onto our bumper here. Here's a completed one. Then we add a lamp socket of your choice, whether you want to go with the old style here, the metal ones, or the wedge base. If you use a wedge base, those don't nest all the way down, so if you're using LEDs and such, you may need to remove the upper lens by simply taking it off here like so, so it nests down far enough. And then we just simply reassemble it. The other way you too can adjust it as well is when you get this sticking through here and it's sitting at rest where the platter is completely level, usually you can adjust those carbon rods simply with a screw and then if you need to shift it out of the way or move it around or even bend a different angle to it, you most certainly can. I had one on mine that I had to mess around with a little bit. But generally that's kind of where we have it. Once this is all put together, you're going to simply have some new non-popping bumpers is kind of how these go by. And at that point, we are all done.
29:01
And if we go to our vendor list, you can see a lot of the stuff can be obtained at the most pinball vendors, hobby stores, dollar store, electronics supply.
29:15
But a lot of it we don't need a ton to go on. now on the a lot of people ask me with the back box restoration there I had a co-worker fortunately who is an absolute master at lighting weddings portraits etc and he's also a absolute whiz at Photoshop. So when we went to go and restore the back box art, we propped the glass up and we took a strobe, studio strobe from behind it. So it was lit up really nice and even. And a very important part about it, it is using a macro lens because that's your key because it's maintaining that proper scale so when you put it in there it's gonna the stuff's gonna match where it's supposed to go when it's sized in Photoshop you size it for the size of the final piece of art so the backlit transparency is used to be done years ago as being I'm from the photographic industry I've worked in the photographic industries since about 1990. So I've done it all. I've done a field service technician.
30:43
I've been everywhere. I've printed pretty much on any material you can imagine. And so this backlit film used to have to be a chemical process. I worked for a lab that did Duratrans years ago. Duratrans is a Kodak trademark, much like Kleenex is a trademark of facial tissue.
31:07
But Duratrans was a chemical process, very, very expensive. We would do menu boards and such. So when you see those menu boards with the meal or whatever lit up on there, that was typically Duratran film. And I mean, for us just to do a small Duratran was, at the lab I worked at, was a couple hundred bucks for like a 14 by 17 inch. This new backlit transparent film, it's actually better than Duratran. These are, they're printed with a solvent-based inks, and they're also UV stable, which is very nice. So having these lights shine on it It should last for a good amount of time.
31:54
And where I have this done is a gentleman who used to run a printing lab out in California. He's since moved to Utah, posterprintshop.com. And it's one of the best deals where you can get this backlit film for, you know, any kind of art that needs to be backlit of any kind.
32:17
Just basically upload the file to him. I can tell you that piece of film there, to have that printed and sent to me was under $35.
32:29
Basically, you're going to go into the site, and you're just going to type the dimensions that you need.
32:35
And then have a file ready to send, and you'll get your quote right online before you even have to place an order with him. So, and he's done many other backlit films, not just pinball stuff, but other stuff where I've needed a transparent film. And there's obviously not many labs that do the Kodak process anymore because it's just, it's too expensive, doesn't really exist. Most labs don't even want to do it anymore. So, but this is a completely new process. And as you can see, it does very good. It's very similar to kind of our new Translites of today. It's a thicker mylar type of material. One thing I can tell you is it's very fun to cut.
33:27
You have to cut through it a couple of times to score it to get it to open up. On mine, I had to cut open where the credit window was in this particular one, so it would shine through. If some of you saw the file, you would have seen there was a white box, and that was my key word to cut out to make for the credit window, make that happen.
33:51
And how that's all put together is that's actually a sandwich of sorts. So the front we have glass, double-strength glass, and then we have our art in the middle. and then the back for a little bit more rigidity there is actually a sheet of acrylic behind there to finalize that out and then you just take some tape and you very carefully tape the edges there's a little bit of margin in these games always so you got about an eighth on each side to play with so by putting the tape on the front side just that little bit amount you just wrap it around to the back and the wood behind it sticks out even further so you generally won't even see it um when you follow all those things correctly when you have to re-photograph it uh that as far as alignment with the original glass we are just about a 16th of an inch off so scale wise we did pretty good. And that pretty much is about what I have to say here. We've seen these parts.
35:09
Anybody who needs some handouts that came in a little bit later, we have these available up at the table here. Other than that, I'll open up room for questions. On the leg bolts, did you look for a continuous threaded stock of 3816? Because I think I've seen that around. Sure, absolutely. So one could most certainly use threaded rod and I would have actually brought that up. The reason why I wanted to try to keep this for more of a person that you maybe has simple hand tools at home and maybe doesn't have access to all the fancy stuff. With threaded rod, yes, you can buy a long piece of it. You can buy a six foot chunk of it if you want. The only problem is, is as you're making these, you're going to have two bad cut ends. Whereas when we take a stock carriage bolt, we're going to have a good factory quote end that's going to go towards the machine. Our cutoff end is going to accept that new acorn nut and cover up. And other than the acorn nut, you never have to, everything else you can just come from the other end if you had to run the washer on it or nuts or anything else, you're coming from the good end. Correct, correct. And, you know, you can certainly make these leg bolts deluxe if you'd like. So there's a couple thoughts there when it comes to making those. You put the acorn nut on.
36:43
What one could do too is if you're good at, you know, possibly welding and such, you could take a couple of washers two or three of them you could actually tap those washers to 3a16 draw those on and you could even loctite those on if you'd like the other option that is you know makes it easier in case you need to replace it would be is you could put the washer on you could center it and you know some people might just use some hot glue in the void because a 3a washer will give a little bit of play on each side So if you want to have a bolt that's all ready to go with the washer on it for a little bit more ease of assembly.
37:23
Questions? When you did your back glass artwork, how did you accomplish the backside masking that's normally there? Okay, so there is no backside masking. When we initially created the file, myself and the co-worker, we did actually do two files. So we did the original art layer and then we also did, this one happens to be the areas that aren't illuminated. On this particular original glass which I don have with me today they actually black rather than that silvery material that you see on more of the you know 70s 80s type back glasses As it turns out with how good this material is this material does have kind of a silvery layer on the back that standard with the material We ended up not having to add the black layer that we actually had in Photoshop ready to go in case we needed to overlay it. So we didn't even need to overlay it, it works so well. Any questions?
38:43
Could you just repeat what you were saying about the 16th inch difference? I didn't quite catch. Did you say that the entire piece was just a 16th of an inch smaller than the original? So in alignment process, if we were able to kind of put a hole in there and see, literally my art is only a sixteenth of an inch off of where it should be because that was using the macro lens and getting that exact scale that we needed to, which generally a regular camera lens is not going to accomplish due to the scaling of that lens. Could you repeat the name for that site you had for the printing?
39:32
Oh, sure. For the back box art? So that is posterprint.com or posterprintshop.com. Excuse me. It's in the handout, right?
39:52
Anyone else? Last call for questions. from the time that you originally acquired the game to the state that you have it in now approximately how long um did you work on it and is it more like how long did it take you to get it from there to here so certainly um i bought the game in late 2012 and um this by no means is a full-time project. This was, you know, working on little bits and pieces as I could and going with it from there. So the game still has a few more things yet to do on it. I have to still put the reproduction placard down by where the catch pan is for the balls that the factory had originally in the machine. I told you where your bonuses would be and such. so I got to put that on yet and you know a couple small things on the inside other than that it is actually pretty functional so if you'd like to if that camera can point over at the machine I can come down real quick and we'll we'll just start it up I have another question for you before you do that. I noticed on there the illuminated triangular bumpers, the foremost number 12, and a discussion has flared up again on Pinside about how you get those. Those look like they're 3D printed. Yes, that is a portion I missed here in my outline but um fortunately a friend of mine has a small 3d printer and i actually sent him one of these here um there was a few of the original caps that came with the game but it wasn't complete set um so i sent one of these bumper bodies to him and after a few tries he did get it so um and the uh the triangle ones yeah i sent him an original triangular guide too because luckily those were both on the machine.
42:10
And we weren't able to create it as ornate as the original, you know, the deco caps. The other thing that I might have noted in here too is the art deco caps. They're pretty expensive if you can find them. I mean, $17 to $20 a piece, and they're not going to come labeled at all. that's another thing that I've got to do too is label all my caps you know with one dash and 500 or 5000 etc so when you buy those even the reproduction art deco caps you know 17 to 20 dollars a piece this game's got 12 on there so we do some some quick math here it's a little bit of a expenditure the triangular guides and some of those diamond guides that are on some of the earlier wood rails yet, those big diamond guides. We don't see those very often anywhere, you know, unless somebody's got them used. A couple years in, I'd been looking on, you know, various times on eBay. I did find somebody that had parted out a United game that was a year newer than this, and he had a bunch of coils and some of the armature pieces that go on the main relay bank.
43:33
I spent $25 on it, and I think that's great. With these kind of machines, you want somewhat of a survival kit to have. So I have those parts tucked away in case I need them. And then lastly, which I almost forgot to touch on, is the bad coil that we were talking about, the linked coil that's up at the top and connects to that middle kick out in the bottom. That coil was extremely weak. The ball would get in there and it would just kind of push on it and it would never push it out of the hole, no matter which one it went into. So fortunately with that is I was able to find, the key thing is finding the right physical size coil that's got the right core in it and stuff that'll fit the existing. So I ended up finding a, it just so happened it was a Williams coil, which I think United actually kind of morphed into at a later date, that was physically the right size, fit into the existing bracket. And you want to make sure you choose a coil that's got equal resistance or higher resistance than the original. So what I had to do was carefully unwrap that Williams coil and I had to unwind some wire off of it and then measure it as I went. You don't want to take too much off but I think I took on that stock coil I have it written down so if I need to get another coil and make another one I can do so. And I think I took 150 winds off of it or something before I got it just where I wanted it for its kick. And what I would do is I'd put it back into the game after I re-soldered the tail after you scraped the enamel and then re-solder the wire back to the lug. I would install it in the game and do a test game and see how well it kicked. And I got it just where I wanted it, just right. I didn't want to take any more wines off, so there it sat.
45:34
And that's how it all works out. So I'll come down to the machine real quick if we've got a moment of time. Use this mic, yeah. Oh, sure.
45:59
I'm going to have to grab a nickel out of the coin door here. You didn't set it on free play? No. Because there is a side coil on coin mech. That's how it gives a free play with a push chute. Okay.
46:29
Oh yes, and on this machine here, this coin door isn't on a hinge or anything. That's how a lot of these games work. So the coin door simply pulls out. All Buffalo nickels, right? All right, so just like regular, their regular typical vending machine coin mechanism. Balls are all going to drop down into the catch chute there. And we are going to lift the ball here. This also is going to need a little bit of adjustment. It's not too level here sitting on this cart as well. flipper so it's kind of hands-off you know. Oh I just tilted it because it's on this cart. So this game's got two tilts in it. It's got a cabinet tilt down at the bottom there's a triangular piece of wood that's in there. And if I tilt the whole game so in another nick we'll go this way. Let's see if we can be a little more gentle in here. There we go. As you can see the numbers, they are going to disappear and we are not level here so ... Multi-ball. Multi-ball, yeah. We're going to play some multi-ball here. There we go. Oh, don't do that again.
48:20
Yeah, this card's a little too short for the Newton ball effect. As you can see, we've got some light bulb scoring action that's moving along. Okay, there we got it kicked out.
48:52
And down it goes. As far as the play field goes, there really wasn't any touch-up. The only thing I touched up was this stripe of blue that's in the shooter lane.
49:07
And I just so happened to get paint that actually matched. So there we go. And it just has one simple little bell in there. There it goes. to ball five here. See if we can spell united here. The U and the N are between the two triangular guides. There we go. It's got a kick out. So now it's going to be paying my bonus out because I earned whatever that was there. And we're going to get there. And now the bonus is up now it's gonna count down and pay me out that bonus again and there we go game complete
50:26
rescue that one yep those longer back leg levelers to give that more of a slope so we'll go down that. And with it not being on its legs, we don't have level here.
50:42
But there we have it. Well, thanks, Jay. Fun to play.