1984 Bally / Midway Eight Ball Deluxe SS

I decided to go with a hardtop from Outside Edge for this restoration - my first one (and I’ve done many since…a great product when it’s not feasible or possible to do a playfield swap). While you need only remove any artwork on inserts prior to installing the hardtop, I took the opportunity to remove everything. With as messed up as this playfield was with planking, missing wood, and the like it was cathartic to sand (evenly) everything down to bare wood. And even though the rigidity of the hardtop would cover any cavities made by the planking and chips, I filled in the bigger ones with wood epoxy and sanded them.

At this point early in my experience with pinball restorations, I had not yet heard of Reese Rails and the wonderful work he did with reproducing playfield rails (in oak) for dozens of classic titles. So I basically refinished the factory rails myself and repainted them. They came out ok, but if I ever do a refresh on this pin I’ll likely have Ibis do my rails (he took over reproducing rails in 2022 after Reese Rails closed shop).

Pretty much all of the metals bits polished up nicely - clean parts work better and I was looking forward to playing this pin again.