Topic: "Vintage" Bonzini restoration

[boomer63]

Hey KGSTEWAR,

would you be interested in selling?  please email me the details if so.  I am in the market to buy a bonzini coin op table, let me know.

Cheers,

[kgstewar]

Hi Boomer,

Thanks for your interest, but I think I'm going to hang on to this one. If I learn of any other B60s for sale, I'll let you know. Where are you located?

Kevin

[boomer63]

I'm in Vancouver Canada, please do let me know.  been on the search for a while.  Cheers!

[kgstewar]

Finished up painting the men. As I said in an earlier post, I used Testors enamel for the white, red, and black, and "Pinsolac" paint from Alan Cribbs for the blue and beige. The Pinsolac paints are clearly higher quality than the Testors and are automotive touch-up paints. They dry harder and glossier than the Testors although the Testors are probably fine. One thing I learned is that to thin the Pinsolac paints you need to use lacquer thinner, regular paint thinner won't work (although regular paint thinner works fine for the Testors). In the future, I might look for a gloss black, white, and red in an automotive touch-up paint to get the same quality as the Pinsolac paints. In any case, here is a red man in all four stages stages of restoration:

[Anderson]

Looks great! Can't wait to see the finished product.

[kgstewar]

Getting close to having the cabinet refinished. The cabinet was in bad shape. Here's what I did:
1. Replaced disintegrating particle board bottom with 1/2" birch plywood
2. Cleaned everything inside
3. Applied two or three coats of shellac to the inside. This basically just seals the wood and makes future cleanup easier.
4. Replaced hardboard ball ramp
5. Reglued veneers on the curved plywood on the bottom ends of the table
6. Stripped finish using heat gun and putty knife.
7. Sanded everything
8. Repaired damaged wood near keyhole
9. Applied a couple coats of SealCoat (this is just thinned shellac).
10. Sanded some more.
11. Wiped on about 8 coats (or more - I lost track) of Arm-R-Seal gloss finish. Sanded with 400 or 600 grit sandpaper between coats
12. I haven't done this yet, but once the polyurethane has cured for a couple of weeks, I'm going to sand with super fine sandpaper (MicroMesh) to even out and gloss up the finish.

Pictures to follow.

[kgstewar]

Some pics of the lower part of the cabinet:

[kgstewar]

Upper cabinet. I removed the little rounded wooden inner bumpers before sanding and replaced them using the original nails.

[kgstewar]

I highly recommend Arm-R-Seal. Very easy to apply and dries super hard and glossy. This is a "wipe-on" finish so is a little runnier than most polyurethanes. I tried using a foam brush and a cotton rag but by far the best was using a folded up sheet of one of those blue "shop-grade" paper towels that you can get by the roll at Lowes or Home Depot. Wipe-on finishes go on a little thin so it takes a lot of coats to build up a nice glossy finish. I probably had between 8-10 coats, but they go on fast so its really not much trouble.

I used about a quart for this whole project.

[kgstewar]

Working on the legs. They were in pretty rough shape: chipped paint, split wood, etc. I glued the splits back together and sanded everything with 80 grit sandpaper to get off most of the paint. I did this outside, wearing a mask, figuring that paint from 1972 probably had lead in it. I then filled all the holes and dents with wood filler and sanded everything smooth up to 220 grit. I put on a couple of coats of SealCoat, sanded with 220, and then painted with gloss black Rustoleum spray paint. Looks much better!

 

[kgstewar]

And also working on the rods... In an earlier post I talked about straightening the rods and cleaning them up. I actually am going to try to do an even better job of rod straightening so that will show up in a later post. Right now I am cleaning some more. It was easy to clean the inner rods and the outsides of the outer rods, but the outer rods have a threaded end that holds an internal spring so the inside of the outer rods can't be cleaned well without first removing the threaded end and spring. The threaded end is held in place by a small 3mm pin. It turns out the head of a 4d finish nail is just the right size to push out the pin:



Once the pin is out, the threaded end slides out and so does the spring. I cleaned these up and set them aside. To clean the rust out of the inside of the rod I did the following:

1. Bought two of these gun cleaning kits from Walmart (http://www.walmart.com/ip/Outers-Universal-Gun-Cleaning-Kit/20703052. Each cost about $9, I think). It has two threaded rods which screw onto a third rod that has a handle attached as well as various brushes, etc. I bought two of these kits because I needed three handle-less rods.
2. screwed three rods together and then screwed on one of the smaller brass brushes onto the end.
3. inserted this long rod into the chuck of my electric drill.
4. Tore off a piece of steel wool and wrapped it around the brush at the end of the rod. The brush grabs hold of the steel wool.
5. Sprayed some WD-40 on the steel wool and into the rod.
6. Put this contraption into the rod and squeezed the trigger of the drill. This spun the steel wool inside the rod and I would just move it up and down the length of the rod.
7. Pulled out the drill and then used the gun cleaning rod to run a small patch of cotton cloth down the bore to wipe out all the oil and rust.

Last picture shows the inside of the rod. This was dirty and rusty and is now clean and shiny!

[Anderson]

I don't know why it never occurred to me to use a drill. I attach gauze and use the gun cleaning solvent, but WD-40 with steel wool seems like it would work a whole lot better. The legs on yours were so much better than mine. Mine were severely rotted at the feet.

Do you know anything about brazing and unbrazing? My new Rene Pierre has men brazed to the rod as opposed to screws. I have a two man rod where the men are off by about 20 degrees. How did they miss that at the factory? I know I need to heat it up so I can turn it, but I don't want damage the rod or the men. Bonzini is so much better than Rene Pierre. I love my new table, but there's definitely a gap in quality.

Great job! Very informative for us do-it-yourselfers.

[kgstewar]

I don't know why it never occurred to me to use a drill. I attach gauze and use the gun cleaning solvent, but WD-40 with steel wool seems like it would work a whole lot better. The legs on yours were so much better than mine. Mine were severely rotted at the feet.

Do you know anything about brazing and unbrazing? My new Rene Pierre has men brazed to the rod as opposed to screws. I have a two man rod where the men are off by about 20 degrees. How did they miss that at the factory? I know I need to heat it up so I can turn it, but I don't want damage the rod or the men. Bonzini is so much better than Rene Pierre. I love my new table, but there's definitely a gap in quality.

Great job! Very informative for us do-it-yourselfers.

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your encouragement! I'm afraid I know nothing about brazing/unbrazing. I have a vague recollection of an earlier thread where someone had an old french table and ran into the same problem as you are having. I think there is a way to do it but I couldn't find the thread.

Good luck with your table!

Kevin

EDIT: Found the thread I was thinking of. Not sure if this helps - http://foosball.com/forum/index.php?topic=5126.msg23033#msg23033

[kgstewar]

The playfield has one deep scratch (lower left in photo) and a big discolored patch (center left). At first I thought I could just get a new sheet of Gerflex from Alan and Gloria but then realized that the particle board base was really sagging in the middle. When it's installed in the cabinet it flattens it out somewhat, but it has a lot of ups and downs. The particle board they used in 1972 was really pretty bad stuff and a little moisture or humidity would permanently deform it. So, I'm going to get a new sheet of Gerflex and try to build a new base using plywood.

[kgstewar]

The rods. When I first bought the table most of the rods had at least a slight bend and a few had some pretty big bends. I managed to straighten them all to the point where they were playable but wanted to see if I could fine tune their straightness. I built the jig shown below using 3/4" plywood and one thick board. I drilled two holes (3/4") and inserted a couple of the red nylon Bonzini bearings into the holes. I could slide a rod through the holes and with the handle attached, spin the rod. I could see where the high spots were and used a piece of wood as a lever and pushed down on the rod. I'd do this a few times until the rod was straighter. I was able to straighten 6 of the 8 outer rods but had to give up on two of the rods that had a pretty complicated "s"-bend in them. I ordered a couple of outer rods from Bonzini USA to replace these.




The inner rods were all pretty straight, but I noticed that most of them were a bit droopy; that is, when the flange side of the inner rod was mounted to the side of the table, the rod was not centered in the opposing hole but would rest on the bottom of the hole. On my jig I drilled three holes so I could mount the inner rod on one side, and cut a slot on the other side. This way I can lift and bend the rod slightly so that it is centered when mounted, shown by the pencil line. I plan to continue using this jig to keep my rods tuned up once the table is finished.