From: “John Wart, jr” Newsgroups: rec.games.pinball
Subject: Re: Best order to shop a pin in?

For some unknown reason, I always seem to do the playfield first.

Of course, I make sure everything works 100% before I undo a connector or
remove a part - including all board work. Otherwise, you might not know
whether something was broken during the restoration or before you start.

I pull the playfield and load it in the rotisserie and start disassembling.
I end up with a blank playfield and a couple tables full of parts.
Everything gets cleaned apart and carefully reassembled.

I keep a plain ole bedsheet that I put over the playfield in the rotisserie
to keep dust and crap off the playfield while I’m working on things, since
they take months at a time it seems.

I do tend to do similar things at a time - clean all plastics and plastic
ramps at the same time, which includes everything from the flat plastics to
star posts to clear ramps that get the decals frozen off and flame polished,
then do metal lane guides and disassemble all the mechanisms with metal
brackets ad clean/polish them at the same time. All the posts etc get
tumbled

Then, I reassemble the playfield. I find if everything isn’t clean before I
start to reassemble the playfield, I end up getting dirt on the rings, or
transferring dirt from something that was dirty to something that was clean.

Once the playfield is reassembled, the sheet goes over the playfield until
the cabinet is done. I have about 10 different sets of cab decals here, yet
I haven’t gotten around to installing any of them yet! That might change the
order of operations.

Another thing that might change the order of operations is if the playfield
needs to be sent off for clear or repair - you’d have a couple months to
kill while the playfield is getting cleared, so you could pretty much be
ready for it when it gets returned with everything cleaned, the cabinet done
etc.

But, from talking to others, it seems just about everyone has a system, and
they do what works for them.

–
http://www.myhomegameroom.com