Will the Paint Come Off? Amiga 4000 Restoration | Trash to Treasure

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a Commodore Amiga 4000 from 1992 but not as we know it the former owner had a style all of his own perhaps a Visionary perhaps a fan of the A-Team whatever his reasoning it hasn't aged well at least not in my opinion but can that paint job be reversed is there any hope of making it look like new it's not going to be easy but every Amiga deserves a second chance join me as we try to take this A4000 from Trash to Treasure [Music] we'd like to thank pcbway.com for supporting our episode today they aren't just about pcbs although they do do a tremendous job of that they also offer CNC Machining sheet metal fabrication 3D printing and injection molding if you're creating then pcbway.com can help you bring your project to life get an instant quote now over at pcbway.com and we thank them for their support what do you think then impossible well the previous owner of this was of course Robin who kindly made a donation of many machines to the cave a few months back you might remember that little road trip that we took here I am on the day and in amongst all of it was the Amiga 4000 in amongst many wonderful systems that came with this donation when I took a look inside I found that it was pristine it was in good working order it had a cyber Vision 64 video card taking up the full length of the case there and tucked down inside there was even a gvp T-Rex accelerator with a Motorola 68040 CPU on there and a stack of extra Ram it is fully loaded it was clearly loved and it is in good working order which is all the more reason why I'd like to see this thing looking as good on the outside as it is on the inside we've got two things to tackle here then there's the metal casing and there's the Plastics we don't know what paint was used if the materials were primed how many coats of paint went down these are all unknown so unless we have a go at it I've got no idea how the paint will react and can it even be removed in any way whatsoever the presence of Drive Bay covers means that we have a little bit of room for experimentation and in a worst case scenario destroy only one of those covers and not the whole fascia it was the model Community I looked to for tips on this as removing paint from delicate plastic figures without melting them is a common request so we're going to try two of the methods that I found from that Community the first is straight up isopropyl alcohol or IPA I'm going to submerge the plastic in it you can also dilute it down to make it go further and then with that in there I'm going to cover it up just to stop the IPA evaporating away and simply wait [Music] 2 is metal it's easier to buy than IPA it's cheaper and it has a much higher flash point than IPA so you've got less chance of losing your eyebrows once again I'll just submerge the plastic in the liquid and cover it up it won't evaporate in the same way as IBA but we'll cover it up nonetheless and the smell of Dettol now fills the cave it's both overpowering and extremely nostalgic for British school children of a certain age while that's going to work I applied some heat to the case badge and then removed that and any residual glue underneath it I will keep hold of it we might reuse it it's a bit scratched up I'm not sure yet but we just need to see how the experiments go [Music] back to those experiments the IPA solution is showing good signs the paint is not falling off the plastic but with a little bit of persuasion it is rubbing off [Music] and that's really promising I did think the paint would have bonded to the plastic and it would just turn into a smeary mess but I can see the original plastic right there progressing from a cotton Bud to a cloth to give it a good rub and wipe down the paint just keeps coming off and then with the help of a brush to get into the harder to reach Parts I'm cooling IPA a success this could be the way forward let's check the detail now and see how that did [Music] once again I can immediately see the paint is coming off with Dettol some areas are more stubborn than others so I added some water to fully submerge the plastic and soak it for even longer I did read on the model forums that they like to use one part Dettol to one part water so that's great it makes your Dettol go even further foreign enough after a second soak apart from some of the really hard to reach crevices it worked great so Dettol and IPA seem to be good Solutions I say use whatever you have to hand adhere to the safety precautions on the labels and crack on with either let's go for it then with the fascia now I'm just going to go with IPA and I'm going to dilute it down because I'm not in too much of a rush to get this done I'm happy to let it soak for as long as possible in it goes with a one-to-one mix of water and then I'll cover it up and I'll let that soak do your thing lay four thousand meanwhile I'm taking the metal lid and I'm putting it in a box like this I'm adding in some IPA and water and I'm wrapping it all up so the IPA doesn't evaporate off why am I doing this or will we come clear shortly I'm such a tease sorry the keyboard here is interesting the keys are in great condition except for the space bar and the bottom of the keyboard there has a glossy patch of paint it's like it's been touched up or maybe it has something underneath the black paint so that could cause an issue if indeed it does react in the same way as the other Plastics into the IPA and water goes the keyboard casing and out comes the front let's see how that's getting on see how the paint is crinkled in some places that's promising and look at that it's working it needs a lot of hard work even with the assistance of the chemicals but it's working and Flake by flake hour by hour with lots of patience as I worked along this the paint came away [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] after the first pass I then went at it again this time with some detto I like the neat detto because it's got a thicker viscosity than the IPA and it really kind of clings onto the nooks and crannies like in the Amiga logo so I poured that on and then I just let that go to work for a while and got scrubbing again foreign [Music] but surely progress and when scrubbing the yielded no more results I delicately worked around every single remaining Fleck of paint that I could see with a scalpel little did the teenagers who painted this realized that 30 years later a middle-aged bald man would be obsessing over its reversal [Music] but what is this weird man doing with the lid let me show you because this is so cool I don't know anyone at the moment who can professionally strip and repaint the lid for me I could find someone I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult but I was inspired recently by another Commodore product which I'll show you shortly so all I'm doing with our black metal case is stripping the paint off the front and the rear edges so those are silver they're not even beige they're just exposed [Music] foreign [Music] there we are and I've also keyed up the remaining black paint with some sandpaper now who remembers the Commodore pc20 we're working on in another series it came up looking spectacular after being covered in bird poop for decades and we gave it a great clean up and discovered that it isn't even painted it's actually a vinyl wrap on that pc20 and that's how it came straight out the factory so if that's good enough for Commodore PCS why not Commodore Amigas worth a try I thought so so I called up my friend Dan hi Dan and we made some skins some Amiga skins color matched to cut to the size to fit the cases perfectly we made this one we made an Amiga 2000 skin and no doubt we'll make some more let us know if you've got any requests Dan is a vinyl specialist having built a business around it and vinyls for supercars prestigious sports cars and more so he knows what he's doing with this stuff it took a few attempts to get the Color Spot on and the texture is just right but we think we've nailed it now so here is Dan applying the skin to our Omega 4000. [Music] [Music] he's working out any air bubbles that have got caught in there when applying it before trimming the overlaps and that's why I wanted the silver ends so just if anything is exposed at all it's just silver like the pc20 and not black finally heat is applied to the metal just to make the glue really bond with the metal case and any final bubbles are then worked out [Music] and that's our case thanks Dan and there will be a link in the video description if Dan does decide to put these up in his shop for you to purchase so the case I think looks good but what about that keyboard well things are getting really stubborn here the top half of the keyboard took a huge amount of work I don't know if more coats of paint were applied or maybe a clear matte varnish because the Plastics would endure more wear and tear from use so maybe the previous owners anticipated that or perhaps the paint that's just been worn into the Plastics from wrists hands General use of the keyboard I don't know but it was a lot lot tougher to remove the paint I did of course persevere and once again little by little the paint came away revealing the Amiga logo in the corner here that was wonderful to see appear but the cloth method was much less effective at shifting it so I had to use a plastic Edge while hopefully not scratching plastic underneath it itself [Music] [Music] I used a scalpel to work out the very finest strips of paint clinging to the edges [Music] and then I used the rear of the scalpel blade to work around the inside edges and just very gently scrape away the paint these methods all made up I'm just improvising as I go seems to be effective but it's certainly the toughest paint job removal I've ever tackled I don't have previous tried and tested methods so do feel free to leave comments if you think there are other ways I should have tackled this I'm all ears for future jobs but what I'm doing does seem to be working and it seems to be non-destructive so far foreign [Music] keyboard top cover it is the same one I swear but if you don't believe me you can see that same odd paint at the bottom of the keyboard so I now suspect that this wore away here and was touched up perhaps with a beige paint at some stage and then eventually the whole thing was painted black and we could see The Old Repair underneath it that's my suspicion anyway it wasn't all plain sailing though our luck did run out with the underside of the keyboard the paint was so tough I managed to get some of the paint off the edges of the underside and to be honest this is how I expected the whole job to be when I started out I thought it would be a non-starter so this has given me real problems hold that thought we will come back to it at the end of the video but right now we need to get out Vapor bright in before the good weather ends which is due in a couple of days the storms are coming so we're going to take out the keyboard and the space bar and we're going to take out the front fascia and the drive bay covers for that fascia with the most yellowing of all the parts and it's quite an uneven yellowings and we're going to try and tackle that and we'll take them out into the garden this is my current default Vapor Brighton method I'm popping them into a plastic box on some stands then I'm pouring 12 liquid peroxide in the base and I'm sealing that up the box and leaving it in the sun I'm leaving it in the sun for the whole day under the strict supervision of Gizmo who came and bit my foot when it was ready or maybe she was just hungry anyway with that done let's see how it all came together and let's find out if our black Amiga 4000 is given a brand new lease of life and looks as good on the outside as it does on the inside thank you [Music] [Music] it's not perfect but it's so much better than I'd ever hoped for when I first saw the paint job on this thing and I did choose to embrace some of those imperfections I reused the original case badge which is a little bit scuffed up instead of a new one I just liked seeing some of the patina still there and remember how I said the underside of the keyboard was a losing battle well given the top side looks so good I decided that instead of trying to fight that battle I'd let it tell a story you won't see it unless you look for it but if you do you can enjoy a reminder of this amiga's goth phase some of Robin's black paint job will forever remain a part of it but you just need to know where to look despite two solid days of vapor Brighton and glorious Sunshine the front fascia never came up as white as the keyboard but I think if you saw this for sale you'd probably say that's not bad for a 32 year old computer and keyboard aside you might never know it had been painted I hope you enjoyed watching this restoration and maybe you picked up some tips along the way I know I learned some new things and if you'll excuse me I'm going to settle into an evening of the finest Commodore had to offer in 1992. thanks for taking the time to watch please do subscribe if you haven't already done so and I'll see you next time [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music]
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Channel: RMC - The Cave
Views: 46,397
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: nostalgia, computer history, tech history, remove paint from plastic, strip paint from metal, strip paint from plastic, vinyl wrap, vinyl wrap a computer, amiga restoration, vintage computer restoration, retro computer restroration, trash to treasure, amiga 4000
Id: FM4JrIVA2XI
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 16min 58sec (1018 seconds)
Published: Mon Jun 19 2023
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