Stargate stencils have different top angle?

[priglmeier]

I have been working on several restorations recently and so I purchased some gamestencils for a Stargate dedicated upright. I have the base red done and now I am ready to apply the first set of stencils and the top angle of the stencils does not match the angle of my cabinet.

Are there variations of the Stargate upright cabinet design?
I know this cab is original and un-modified.

There is no way the stencils will work an produce the evenly spaced edge around the outer part of the side.

Anyone seen this before? Curious.

-greg

 

[priglmeier]

stargate stencils images

images of the cabinet with stencils

 

[mitchschaft]

That's exactly how mine is and looks normal to me. I stenciled mine last year. I wondered the same thing when I did it, but figured it wasn't supposed to look so perfect.

 

[priglmeier]

game stencils

Brian at gamestencils said that he hasn't seen this before...

My reply was:
No. If the sides are correct the top border lines are not the correct angle.
(Then the sides would be really crooked)

The pictures show that the line is skewed by about 1/2 inch from the top-front to top-rear, roughly going form 1 inch to 1.5 inches. From the rear-side if I place a protractor along the top angle it appears to be about a 76 degree angle.

Question-
Do you have a picture from <before> you re-painted your cabinet?
Could you post it here please?

 

[jigz]

I'll toss this here since I was just watching it last night - might be helpful, might not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkNGPCgGwmg

 

[priglmeier]

video

Nice video, but no that's not really helpful.
So far I have only found 1 other person that has the same cabinet.

 

[tester007]

There was another thread on here with same issue.. But there are a few resto threads that it doesn't seem to be off either..
p.s. my original stargate is straight as I checked the cab after I saw the last off angle thread. I was going to re-stencil.

 

[joeycuda]

Probably not helpful, but a few pics of mine, and I used the same stencils from Gamestencils on this:

http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=160029

I don't recall any major problems, but I think I just got it aligned as even as possible and went with it.

 

[priglmeier]

helpful

Thanks. The second image is a bit cut off but it does look fairly parallel to the cabinet edge. Perhaps only slightly off.

I am a bit curious that nobody seemed to noticed this a million times before?
Hmm..

 

[mitchschaft]

I got mine from gamestencils, too. I thought it was normal until now. it's probably gonna bother me lol

 

[mitchschaft]

I didn't see your request for pics.

Here's pics during the deconvesion from wwf superstars. It's the only pic I have showing the lines. You can tell even the original is crooked.

Here's after part of the stencil.

 

[mlenardon]

Brian is awesome. You will be very happy with the stencils once finished. I did a mini with his stencils. Williams sometimes was sloppy with the paint so do worry. It will look factory when done. My NIB Robo Mini even was not perfect and had a few sloppy touch ups etc. done at factory.

Michael

 

[prOk]

I was typing an email to the OP via regular email and then saw this so figured i'd reply here instead

Mitchshaft's pictures above illustrate what I was going to say, so thanks for that! The reality is, there were a great many stencils, cabinet cuts, and factories that produced williams games so there is no perfect cab. Some lined up better than others, some had glaring errors.. it just goes with the territory of how games were manufactured back then. These games were slammed out as fast as they could to get them to ops not really thinking about perfection or collector value down the road.

As much as it might bug some people (sometimes it bugs me when things don't line up perfect) it's perfectly normal. They never lined up perfect. It's really one of those questions that I had to ask myself when making the stencils in the first place. Do I fix factory irregularities and flaws or do I remain faithful to how they were? I chose faithful recreation warts and all. Stargate mini is a perfect example.. there's an error on 95% of cabs where one upper corner of the red and black lines are color reversed. I could have fixed that, but chose rather to keep that error/detail.

Hope that explains it satisfactorily.
b

 

[mitchschaft]

The wife and kid love playing it. It looks great, too, so I can't complain. Next is multiwilliams in a stargate scratch build.

 

[priglmeier]

Confirmed incorrect

I've had a few folks chat with me and they are definitely off on the top line.
I was still working on the other side of the Stargate and when I looked closely before the final bit of sanding I can see the lines were perfectly parallel to the top.

I was hoping to get an answer from Brian at gamestencils.com, but it doesn't seem like he's too concerned. We'll see....

 

[priglmeier]

vote

Perhaps we should have a vote on this?
If nothing else it may determine what is the preferred stargate stencil for the future.

Thanks for everyone.

 

[mitchschaft]

I was hoping to get an answer from Brian at gamestencils.com, but it doesn't seem like he's too concerned. We'll see....

He answered you above. His name is prOk . My vote is I don't have a problem.

 

[priglmeier]

next

Sure. I was perhaps hoping for a bit more... like we can adjust the stencils so they are correct for the future on more cabinets OR even better:

Send the stencils you have back and we'll ship you the newly corrected ones.

 

[Wolfinator]

mine is off by 1/4" on one side and 1/2" on the other. It bugged me at first, but I'm used to it now! The factory lines were off by a little less.

 

[joeycuda]

Like Brian said, the spacing probably varies across different cabinets. Imagine the assembly line - these were likely done with brass stencils, and there were likely MANY sets of the stencils, and if cut out of a hard material like metal, they likely weren't all exactly the same. It's the same deal with NOS artwork - often times there are multiple revisions, so what matches one sample doesn't match another. If the stencils match even one game out there, then they're technically right. I'd just get it as centered as you can and go with it.