Well finally it happened. The weather was nice and the pinball gods smiled on me, and there was much rejoicing at the altar of the pinball.
Or, to put it another way, I got an early start at work today so finished at 1pm. As i'd worked from home I had a free afternoon that I could immediately take advantage of. Given it was a nice day it seemed rude not to go outside and get some work done. It's been a cold miserable old winter and i'm so happy to get moving again.
Anyway, the exterior artwork is all now removed. The interior still needs a bit of a going over by hand (some areas are too tight to get the ROS into) but I figured I should really start fixing up the dings and scrapes. So after some time with our friend Ronseal two-part wood filler and the sander I finished up with this.
Still not totally done but the priority for now was to get a fairly nice square edge. I've got some 600 grit discs on order and when those arrive and i've finished the filling i'll work up though 180, 240 and up to 600 grit so the exterior is a nice mirror smooth finish.
I think these corners came up nicely to say they had a good 5 or 6mm thickness of ply missing from them. I've still not quite perfected the art though as I generally end up over-filling, sanding back and then realising that i've not quite managed to get enough filler into the hole. Anyway, it takes a bit longer but thankfully filler and my time isn't that expensive.
I also cracked out the dremel and used it to chop a 1cm long piece of the metal pipe off. This was the pipe that came with the new B&Q kitchen. By an amazing coiocidence it's just the right size to fit in the rotolock hole. I also had to drill out the holes for the rotolock fitments because someone had managed to fill them in when fixing up the rear. With the rotolock temporarily in place I could check to make sure that the pipe position was correct and that the hex wrench would still line up and work the mechanism. Great news - it did. So after some careful filling and sanding I ended up with this. Look how surprised it looks!!
(The left hole chipped away like that when I drilled through so i'll probably use a drill bit to plug the hole and then apply some more filler just to tidy it up, although I realise I need to make sure there is a square recess there for the bolt to fit into. I'll need to be careful when tightening the rotolock to make sure I don't tear through the filler)
More gratuitous filler shots.....
And also today I finally got started on tearing the playfield down. Very slow progress as i'm bagging and labelling the parts as I go along, but hey, at least it's started now.
Still lots more filling to do but i'm hoping that the filling and sanding will be done before the end of the month. I'm hoping that by then i'll have got my spare cab painted up so we can compare the paint finish with the decals and make sure it's a good match. Then it'll be onto undercoating and painting and then the fun really starts.