Treasure Cove Pinball Playfield Polishing Kit
You’ll need to pick your jaw up off the floor when you see
how well this stuff works
By Randy Peck
I think most of us pinball nuts use
Novus 1, 2, and 3 to clean and polish our playfields, and it
works pretty well. But the pinball restorers at Treasure
Cove of Jeffersonville, Indiana have put together a kit that
will do a far better job in much less time
than hand polishing with Novus. I just can’t overstate how
great this stuff works – you really owe it to yourself to
check it out.
My story started with a very nice
Creature from the Black Lagoon that had a dull-looking
playfield. It was far more glossy in the areas where the
ball didn’t track than in the areas that it did, so I knew
that it should look gorgeous all over. I think this
is what all playfields start to look like after they’ve been
in service for a while, especially if they aren’t regularly
waxed.
I spent a long time trying to polish it
up by hand starting with Novus 3 and working my way to Novus
1 and finally a heavy application of carnauba wax. I hope
you can see in Photo 1 that it’s still very dull in the ball
areas, even after extensive hand polishing. Look at the
contrast between the area just above the flipper and the
mid-playfield area.
a fresh copy from
www.thepecks.com/tcbefore.jpg]
Photo 1: My Creature
playfield still looked dull after hand polishing with
Novus 3, 2, 1, and carnauba wax.
I was disappointed, but I figured that
was about as good as it was going to get – after all, Novus
is what everyone uses and I gave it the full treatment. But
in April I heard about a new playfield polishing kit from
Allen Shope at Treasure Cove. Allen is well known for
producing beautifully restored machines, and he just
recently started offering a “Shine Master” kit consisting of
various polishing compounds, polishing pads, a 30-minute DVD
instructional video, and other goodies. Having seen Allen’s
restoration work (I own two machines he restored), I knew
this was something worth trying.
I ordered one of everything (the
components are available separately or as kits), including
two-inch and four-inch buffing pads, an arbor to attach the
pads to my electric drill, and bottles of his PowerCut
polishing compounds #1, 2, and 3.
PowerCut is different than Novus, and
in fact PowerCut 3 is so coarse that it feels as gritty as
320 sandpaper in your fingers. Sounds a little scary – I
sure wouldn’t sand my playfield with 320-grit paper! But
the magic of the kit is that the polishing pads are made of
foam, and the coarse particles of compound get caught in the
pores of the foam and thus don’t scratch a playfield the way
it would with a cloth pad. Foam pads are well-known among
car detailers, but I’ve never heard of anyone using them to
polish a playfield until now.
When I got my kit I started with
PowerCut #2, thinking that #3 was going to be too coarse.
But it was apparent that PowerCut #2 wasn’t doing much to
improve the dull finish on my playfield. So, I crossed my
fingers and tried #3, then switched to #2, and finally #1.
After about five minutes total, I wiped off the area I’d
polished and it looked like a new playfield! This
stuff was amazing!
a fresh copy at
www.thepecks.com/tcafter.jpg]
Photo 2: My Creature
playfield after polishing with Treasure Cove’s Shine Master
kit. Wow!!!
No trick photography here – just a
perfect product for its purpose. I was so blown away by the
performance of Allen’s product I nearly wet myself. I
believe the PowerCut compounds and Shine Master pads are
similar to what is available to auto detailers, so there’s
nothing too proprietary about what they’re offering – but it
was revolutionary to me. The results I got were staggering
– certainly far exceeding what’s possible with a rag and a
few bottles of Novus.
The basic kit, shown below, sells for
$64.95 and includes the three grades of PowerCut compound,
two grades of four-inch foam pads, a four-inch wool pad, an
arbor (with Velcro) to attach the pads to an electric drill,
and a 30-minute instructional DVD. There’s also a nice
tutorial on Allen’s website (http://www.treasure-cove.net/PolishingKit.htm)
that includes over two dozen detailed photographs showing
how to use the kit.
Photo 3: The basic Shine Master kit
sells for $64.95 – a bargain once you’ve seen how well it
works.
A couple of mini Shine Master kits are
also available, with two-inch and three-inch pads, for
getting in hard-to-reach areas when you don’t want to strip
the top of your whole playfield. Most of the components are
available separately as well.
Other than Shaggy and Norm’s This
Old Pinball video tape series, this is perhaps the best
money I've spent on pinball, ever. But when it rains it
pours. There’s yet another revolutionary pinball
product, also for playfields – but in this case it can
largely remove the infamous “ball swirls” from older
playfields. You heard right, a job that pretty much
everyone thought was impossible. It’s called the Mr. Clean
Magic Eraser. But that’s a tale for another issue.
Treasure Cove can be reached at:
TreasureCove
c/o Allen Shope
3420 Morgan
Trail
Jeffersonville, IN 47130
(812)
288-8961
http://www.treasure-cove.net
