Fixing stenciled overspray on arcade artwork – What is working for me

I have had some suggestions, some I take as fact based on the source and some I have just considered, all of them have been good. But tonight I feel like I have had success with a careful use of mineral spirits, a rag, and a detail paint brush to fix some of my ugly edges on the black Ms. Pac-man artwork.

Before & After – Ms. Pac-man lettering

I got a suggestion from a collector that is, to say the least, a little bit passionate. This collector took one of the worst looking Ms. Pac-man cabinets I have ever seen and by hand, repainted all of the artwork.

He made a suggestion – take a q-tip dipped in mineral spirits and try to scrub off the black overspray, then use a brush to touchup the yellow and the black.

The q-tip didn’t work for me, the texture on the yellow trashed it. However, using a folder over flat edge of a rag worked wonders. I was able to scrub the fine black dots off leaving the solid black broken edge. Then, carefully, with a dabbed out detail paint brush tip I was able to fix some of the edges. I don’t anticipate painting any black, the yellow seems to be working with a little feathering at the end. I don’t see any brush strokes, and I think that may be one part the feathering, and one part the fact that the yellow is textured you can’t see brush strokes.

Before these photos I had already wiped out an overspray spot on the top right of the letter N. These two photos show a before and after of what I have been able to fix.

Ms. Pac-man Fixing Overspray Before & After

I have noticed that if I don’t use feathering in my scrubbing, that I can turn the yellow slightly dingy, and it definitely makes the finish a little more dull. But I am guessing that this won’t matter from a distance and that this will not show when the clear coat is added.

I am happy this is working. I had stopped at Hobby Lobby tonight after the gym and picked up a pad of acetone sheets. At Hobby Lobby, their cheapest airbrush gun was $100.00, some sort of universal brand gun by the name of VL. I had to pass on that of course, and started to get worried about my options. Somewhere I had seen a price online of $20 for a cheap gun, I had planned on stopped by Harbor Freight tomorrow.

But if this continues to pan out, I might be able to save all of that.

Here are some similar arcade posts

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That looks good. I’ll have to remember that trick.

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The only downside I found is that you can dingy up the paint a little bit doing this. I also imagine this only would work really well on spray paint, as it doesn’t lift up the yellow or the pink nearly as well.

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>I also imagine this only would work really well
>on spray paint, as it doesn’t lift up the yellow
>or the pink nearly as well.

I think that is because the black spray paint is oil based, and the yellow and pink are water based. If you used oil for the yellow and pink I bet it would have ate away at that and the black.

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For what it is worth, I picked up a Kolbalt gravity feed air gun a few weeks back and it rocks! I had a siphon feed I used for years and the needle and nozzle finally wore out. It was not worth buying a new nozzle because it was 30 buck and the entire gun only cost me 35 at the time I bought it. I highly recommend the Kobalt gravity feed and it was only 60 bucks!! So far I have used if about a dozen times and it is so much better than my last siphon feed gun.

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@ibis

The gun I bought from Harbor Freight was like $19.99. I think it might have been a sale price, but even then it wouldn’t have been more than $30.

I know you have your gun now, but do you even have a Harbor Freight near you?

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@Jamie

Hmmm, makes sense about the oil based paint thing. I didn’t read on your site and your Moon Patrol…maybe you told me this, did you use latex based paints in your gun or did you use oil?

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@Jeff

I used latex, accept for the black which was Rustoleum satin.

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