Glass Comparisions

Here at BgResto.com we want you to know what you’re getting with our restoration service. First off, we are restoring the silk screen process using digital techniques. That said, the best way to restore a silk screened glass is using silk screening! Obviously that isn’t really something easily (or inexpensively) done, especially for “one off” backglass work. So we do the next best thing using digital techniques. This allows us to restore glasses one at a time in a very economical (and fairly quick) manner.

One of the problems with digital restorations is how the ink is applied to the substrate. In silk screening, the ink is applied in a very thick manner with a squeegee to the glass, through a silk screen. In digital printing the ink is applied by the printer. There’s a big difference here, as the digital ink is less dense with thinner viscosity than silk screened ink. This makes it difficult to get the same light translucency. We’ve come up with some solutions to make the two processes comparable. But frankly the best way to restore silk screening is using silk screening. Obviously with low production games this isn’t a viable option (due to cost and time.) Additionally the number of silk screen shops in the U.S. that would be willing to do a complex eight color (or more!) silk screen in low numbers (and for a reasonable price), you could count on one hand. Hence doing digital restorations is really the best (only?) choice. And we’ve been working on this process for some time, to make the outcome pretty comparable to silk screening.

Below we restored a 1954 Williams Screamo score glass. The original glass that we scanned is seen below, it was in very nice condition (making our job much easier/quicker.) The gentlemen asking for the restoration actually had *two* examples of this game, one with a nice glass, one with a terrible glass. So he wanted the terrible example restored. The pictures below show the outcome. (Pictures were taken using an Apple iPhone5, so the camera quality is typical. Pictures were not edited other than for size/cropping. Also you can click on the images for bigger versions.)

The first picture seen below shows the two games turned off. That is, no backlighting. The BgResto.com restored glass is the one on the left, the nice original is on the right. They look identical eh?

Below is a picture of the two glasses from the back. Notice the transparent areas on the BgResto.com restored glass (on right) is printed twice – this allows better color saturation for the transparent areas (the colors don’t wash out with light.)

Here’s the two games with the glass removed. This shows the lights used (#47 bulbs on both games.)

And finally here’s the two games powered on. The BgResto.com restored glass is on the left (original glass on the right.) Yes there is a difference, the original glass is “brighter” in the transparent areas. To help make the restored glass brighter in these areas, we recommend trying LED “warm white” bulbs. This change really helps brighten the restored glass. (Unfortunately we don’t have a picture of that modification.)