Formica Madness

[ArcadeMaze]

I had this week off and I thought I would try something I have been thinking about doing for awhile.  I have an Asteroids machine that I got at auction that had formica sides on it.  After reading several stories about sideart being preserved underneath, I thought I would take a look....

Not so good.

One side was difficult to remove, came off in pieces, and at one point snapped off in such a way, what it gave me quite the deep cut.

Anyway, I am in the process of removing the adhesive, maybe things will start to look a little better...

Here is the progress...

[Santoro]

I'm guessing that the sideart was in bad shape before application, or they sanded it.    I bought a painted Space Duel a while back expecting to salvage the side-art, but had a similar problem.

With a bit of patience and skill you could probably repaint the side art.  Whether that would be worth it can only be decided by you.  I didn't do it.

[MYX]

It looks good from the pictures. A Heck of a lot beter than the blue stuff! I used to have a Defender that someone painted black. I used Goof Off to remove the latex. It worked great. I know that Goof Off is good for adheisives too. Try it in a small spot first though. you wouldn't want to have to re apply new formica. 

[ArcadeMaze]

Well the madness continued and I finally got the adhesive off.  It took about 5 hours roughly using "Goo Gone", and now all I smell is that orange smell... 

The art looks a little better, but I am at least going to fix the holes in the vinyl before attempting to retouch the paint.  It won't be too obvious for the time being since not very much of the side shows when it is in my line up.

You are right MYX, I like the black better than the blue, although I still have one side of it still that I am not sure what I want to do with it.