Indiana Jones vs. the Heat Gun

Shop Notes

We’ve been waiting for the heat to break so we could finish the cabinet work on this Indiana Jones pinball machine. Finally, we decided to try a different tack, one we could attempt indoors. Check it out!

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Normally, we sand the old decals off a cabinet. But this time, we bought a heat gun.

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Here’s our lucky victim! This kind of fade happens to even the best Indiana Jones. (That’s the problem with being orange.) Luckily, we happened upon a set of decals. They’re getting rare now, so we were happy to find them.

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The Big Boss was up first, trying his hand at using the heat gun to soften the adhesive, and then scrape it and the decal off in nice smooth patches.

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We quickly realized this works better as a two-person job, with one person holding the gun and one person using the scraper.

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Does this look like it took an hour to make?

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The heat gun did leave a decent amount of glue behind, so we had to take the sander to the cabinet anyway.

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But it was a TON less sanding than usual, and that was definitely good since it was still 102 degrees outside. VERDICT: HEAT GUNS ROCK. And this game is almost finished now!