Can't wait to hear the story!

I'm sure others will have better advice, but I think you're on the right track. I had a backglass glass explode a while back. We thought we cleaned up everything and I'm still finding dust and the occasional bits!

Be glad it wasn't plate!

sorry to hear this, something i would never like to happen to my or anyone else's pins, all the best

Use extreme caution on using compressed air on broken glass. Use safety glasses, leather gloves, and do not blow glass chards towards yourself or others. Generally, take your time with a strong vacuum, and suck up the glass. You will not get all of it. Glass pieces will mysteriously show up later.

If you are careful, a simultaneous application of vacuum and air pressure can get it cleaned up pretty good; really need 2 people to make that work well.

The air will push the pieces to where the vacuum can pick them up; though nothing is better than stripping the whole game down and vacuuming.

Robert

+1 on this.. it usually involves taking the game all the way apart..

And just when you think your done, more will show its ugly head...

the biggest deal is the eye wear, be careful :)_

at work to get hot particles or other microscopic rad containmation off of us they queit often use duct tape- fairly effective.
i would use it after an intence vac job.

dont, drag the tape the glass dust you cant see is very hard and will scratch and do a little hazeing (not reallly much but its bad pratace smearing it all around) , anwaays they just pat us down fairly firm and 95% of the time it get the radioactive particle up- if not it just means it got through the cloths and got into a skin pore...... dealing with firm ,solid surfaces your have an good recovery ratio

have fun

I had one explode about 3 years ago, I'm still finding piece's.

No matter how you do it or how well you will find pieces of glass in or from that machine for years. No great method to get it all just take your time and do the best job you can and that is about all you can do. We have been lucky and never have had one of ours explode but I have purchased several machines over the past few years I know it has happened to and I never got 100% of the glass out of any of them no matter how hard I tried.

I kept finding glass "cubes" in the playfield switches in the one pin that came to me with the playfield shattered. A true pain in the ass to try and get it all out. I never stopped finding glass, even after multiple cleanings.

The worst was when I would clean and wax I would see my finger bleeding when a tiny sliver of glass would get caught in my cleaning cloth and cut me.

The solution I found? I sold the game.

...by the way...do you know John Skerchock?

use a painter's respirator when vacuuming or the air compressor. you don't want to breath or otherwise ingest glass shards

also, the sticky sheets from a clothing lint roller should be helpful. it's got enough tack to pick up the tiniest of glass pieces without being too tacky to leave any residue on the playfield.

be sure and *DON'T* drag anything on the surface of your playfield to prevent micro scratches in the clear from the glass shards

How does this happen? Been restoring games since 1998 and it has never happened to me. Have I just been lucky?

I am joking about my solution. I did not sell the game because I got tired of finding glass in it. I would have sold it regardless, I did not like the pin.

But selling it was the only total solution I found for getting rid of the glass. As too-many-pins mentions, you will always find glass.

If I had to do it over again for cleaning up glass. I would:
1-use a big shop vac with a brush type attachment to get all of the big easy to get glass.
2-strip the playfield as much as you possibly can.
3-use a small brush,dental probes and tweezers in combination with a good vacuum that has a small attachment that can get you into tight places.

My mistake was not stripping the playfield and not having good tools to pull/poke glass out. Use the hard tools to get the glass free and let the vacuum suck it up. For me the hardest spots were the hole in the playfield. Glass cubes will get wedged into places and you can't figure out how they got into them so you can pull the glass out.

I would NOT use compressed air that is just going to blow crap all over the place and make areas you cleaned dirty again.

Just systematically start at one end and work to the other with a full set of tools at your disposal to get in the tight spots. Planning on "coming back" to hard spots did not work out for me. Pins are nothing but tight spots to come back to later.

Best of luck

For that use compressed air seems fine. I would not use it to try and dislodge something from the playfield, like in the holes that have the switches.

Compressed air can be great for cleaning somethings. But sometimes it seems to cause more problems. It is just too random in how it moves things when spraying it at something that has lots of angles/corners/crevices.