Williams "Black Knight" pinball restoration.
How-To recreate a pop bumper cap
The good thing about pinball these days, is that there are a lot of guys doing repro work out there. Some of it is very high quality indeed. Unfortunately, there are a lot of old machines out there, and not every part you need is available. One such piece is the pop bumper cap for Black Knight (at least, not available at time of this writing). Some are currently out there with the center image hot-stamped in, which ARE nice looking. You can also get new center decals, if your original is intact. Unfortunately, none of the current crop of reproductions have the outer scrollwork. So, here's how I did mine.
	Oh, and of course we need a "Before" picture. Here's what I started with, YIKES!
The key is the artwork. I was able to get a 600dpi scan of an old, but complete, original pop bumper cap. From this I re-drew all of the black using GIMP, and printed it out on clear Papilio laser decal sheet. I prefer the laser style sheets, as many home inkjet printers suffer from nasty UV fade over time. Some have archival ink, some don't, and I honestly don't want to take the chance. Then I obtained a plain opaque red pop bumper cap from Pinball Resource. It's lined up here with the other tools that I'll be using. Rubbing alcohol, future floor wax, q-tips, x-acto knife and a good paintbrush. Also very important here is that little red bottle labled "Mico-Sol", which is a decal setting solution. More on that later.
	Now, the rubbing alcohol is uses to prep the bare cap. You want to remove any old release agents from the molding process, and your own body oils that get on there when you handle it. Since I printed the decal on plain sheet, it means I have to trim it before applying. This isn't like model decals from kits, where the carrier film is only around the decal itself. In this case, I also have to separate the center artwork from the outer scrolling, they would never go on well as a single piece.
Now, I know what you're thinking. I just dipped it in water, layed it down, and rubbed it with the Q-tip, right? Not even close. Here is where that micro-sol comes into play. I layed down a good wet layer of it first, before applying the decal. This helps adhesion, while also keeping air bubbles out. After I lay the decal down, and guide it into place, I brush on another coat of micro-sol. Then, things get scary. You'll see the whole decal surface start to wrinkle tremendously. Micro-Sol is also a mild solvent, that attacks the carrier film of the decal. What I do here is gently roll the q-tip across the decal a few times. This lays it down flat, works any excess fluid out from under it, and drys it off. It's important here to remember, ROLL the q-tip, don't wipe it across the decal, or you risk moving it around or tearing it. It's extremely fragile at this point, as the carrier film is dissolving partially and is very soft.
	In this case, I had to carefully trim that outer scrollwork. It barely fits around the center section of the cap. Here is a test fitting, before fully applying it. I had to go back and re-do my master graphics file at this point, as it was just too tight for my taste. This is why you test with plain paper a few times first, decal sheets can get expensive if you start printing your mistakes on them.
And here it is with the outer scroll decal applied. Alignmentis good, but we're not done yet. If you look carefully, you can see the edge of the carrier film around the decal, the Papilio stuff uses a fairly thick carrier. The micro-sol helps, but doesn't eliminate that edge.
	Another view showing that edge of the carrier film, which is most obvious on the center section. Not acceptable yet as a finished product. Harder to see is that the black artwork looks a bit dry and washed out, an effect of the micro-sol.
This is where the Future floor wax comes in handy. This stuff has been popular in the scale model community for quite some time as a glosscoat and sealant. It's a clear, glossy, hard acrylic, not an actual wax at all. It sprays great, brushes great, and is one of the best self-leveling clearcoats I know of for model work. Here's the cap after about a half dozen light brushcoats of the Future. Now it's a good glossy finish all over, the black artwork is no longer washed out, and the carrier film edge is amost totally invisible. Now it's ready for installation.
So, not that hard, eh? Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of great reproduction parts out there, and I say support the guys doing the hard work. But sometimes you just can't get what you want, and have to do it yourself. In this case, I think the end result looks better than the original. The originals suffered from terrible UV fading of their center decal, to the point it looked like it was a white and red bullseye cap. This varient won't suffer that problem at all. Now, unfortunately, I can't share my artwork with you guys at current. WMS and it's licensee's are against the open sharing of their artwork, and I respect that fully. However, hopefully I've shown you that your not stuck with incorrect parts when a good repro isn't available. With a touch of ingenuity and brow-sweat, you'd be surprised what you can do.

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