John's Arcade Forum - Classic Arcade and Pinball Collecting and Restoring Discussion Forum - RETRO MAME - Nintendo Vs Forum

After watching the Journey restore Part 6 & 7, I had the following thoughts.  A clear monitor and well tuned joystick make the game enjoyable.  But if you can step back and see the beautiful Journey artwork on the marquee, the bezel and the control panel overlay, that is arcade game nirvana :)  We have not yet seen the Journey side art in all its glory, since it was covered with protective paper.  I have not yet seen a video where you put side art on so I am looking forward to the video where you install it.  By the way, can you announce who was the magical number 10,000 subscriber to your channel?  Maybe they can win the Emerson cassette player.

I have no idea who the 10,000th subscriber was. I wish I knew! :)

I too am loving this series, seeing you working on your games keeps me motivated to keep working on my games and I can't wait to see it finished.

I ran into a similar issue to yours with the gloss Rustoleum paint on my Qbert project, in my case I over coated it with semigloss polycrylic, and then used very fine automotive sandpaper (like 2000 grit) to smooth it out and it looks great, maybe it's something you can experiment with before you move on to other paints?

Love the videos! I do think the Emmerson casetteplayer should go in the Journey, cause thats how was original! ; P. By the way John, in epi 7 (i think) you almost destroyed a button. I have a gazzilion of those red (for use with leaf switches) buttons, but no Leaf switches, so if you need any, i could send them to you (not that i believe you do but, anyway). The ones i have are NOS and old used ones BTW.

Hey John... In respect to your joystick cleaning. I've been using a Tumbler for quite a while now for all my pinball rebuilds and it works wonders with zero effort. Rather than using sand paper I just dump the parts in the Tumbler, metal, screws, washers, hard plastic etc and they clean up awesome. That way I don't need to worry about taking off coatings or metal or anything else. I use corn media with Novus 2 added when I add the media and it works great and lasts for at least 10-20 cycles depending on how dirty the stuff was. I usually leave the parts tumbling for 24hrs or more.

Just a thought, not sure if you have one. My pins have a lot of metal bits that need cleaning when I'm doing a restore/service.

My tumbler will be here today. :) I

You won't regret it man, it's so easy and cleans everything. I don't use a strainer as many of my parts are too small and would fall through so I have a good magnet that I just swoosh around and grabs everything for me. For really small stuff I wire the parts together so I can just do one quick grab. Check out your local pet store for media. Lizard bedding comes in a few different variety's, corn, ground walnut etc.

If you're ever going to put acorn style nuts in there make sure you attach them to a post first or the media will get stuck in the nuts and you'll have a hour long removal process ahead of you.

Oh, another trick... I took a Bic pen housing and slid it over the center post. That way I can put bigger items over that or through it without the risk of damage to my part. This depends on the style of tumbler your getting.