On Paint & Colors for re-painting a Space Shuttle Pinball Cabinet

Posted on January 3, 2014 by abpinball

Here’s the colors I settled on for re-painting my Space Shuttle cabinet – all are Rust-Oleum Painter’s Touch 2X Ultra Cover:

  • Flat White Primer
  • Gloss Navy Blue
  • Gloss Apple Red
  • Gloss White
  • Matte Clear

spaceshuttlepaintcans

They will be painted in that order. A couple other things to note: First, I tried to find a single vendor/type of paint that had all the colors I needed to avoid mixing different types of paint. I’m going to be painting color-on-color to do the artwork, so keeping it to one type of paint minimizes the chances the paints will react badly with one another. Second,  I’m painting with gloss colors but using a matte clear. I’d much rather be painting with matte colors and avoid using clear altogether, but unfortunately I couldn’t find the colors I wanted in matte, only gloss. Using gloss colors and finishing with a matte clear is the next best thing, at least that’s my theory! I’ll test this out on a sample piece of wood before committing to it on the real cabinet 🙂

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Cleaning up pinball side rails

Posted on January 3, 2014 by abpinball

The side rails on the Space Shuttle cabinet were full of nicks and scratches – a few from when I pulled those dreaded twist nails, unfortunately. Today while waiting for the cabinet paint to dry I started working on them a bit to try to get those scratches out.

The tools I used were sand paper (with a sanding block), red Scotch-Brite pads and a bench grinder with a Scotch-Brite cut & polish wheel.

siderails2

The bench grinder worked the best for removing the deeper scratches, but it left visible marks behind, so I finished them off with the sandpaper and pad making sure to work in the direction of the grain of the metal. Here’s some progress made on the one on the left, while the one on the right is as it came off the machine:

siderails1

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Painted first layer of color on Space Shuttle cabinet

Posted on January 2, 2014 by abpinball

After the last post I thought I was pretty close to putting down some color, but it turns out the primer revealed many imperfections – small cracks and sanding marks, for instance. Spray paint does not fill even the smallest scratches, so I used 2-part filler to smooth everything out, then sanded it smooth and primed some more… Yep, it took several more days before being ready to put the blue paint down.

With that said, I was finally able today to do the first coats of Navy Blue on the Space Shuttle cabinet! I really like how the color turned out – I’ll let this dry 24h, then inspect the finish, sand down any dust spots, then put another few cans of Navy Blue paint!

cabinet-blue-small

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Primed Space Shuttle Cabinet

Posted on December 14, 2013 by abpinball

Finally we got some warmer weather this weekend and I was able to put some primer down on the Space Shuttle cabinet! I was concerned about dust as I’m doing this in the garage, but it actually turned out pretty well with only few dust spots. I will need to sand those down and shoot a bit more primer here and there, but I’m definitely excited about getting real paint down!

PrimedCabinet

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