Great thread idea !

I suggest adding to this:

1. Planned restorations
2. Planned learning / skill upgrades for the year

-mof

2015 plan/crystal ball:

I've learned that during normal work weeks, I maintain "best life balance" at roughly 1 hour of restoration per day as a pace. Given that I will spend roughly 400 hours of time on restoration in 2015, how will I spend it?

Jan: Complete High Speed playfield swap. (Final 20 hour home stretch, of 140 hour project. Watch lots of NFL playoffs !) https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/high-speed-restoration

Feb-May: (100+ hours) Hoping my Sorcerer playfield which went out last May, comes back in February (fingers crossed), so I can begin a playfield swap on Sorcerer. Re-stencil the cab, going for CQ/near-CQ... In time to take to PAGG with possibly High Speed (May 15).

May-July: (100+ hours) Hoping Seawitch playfields are shipped by May? I'm simply dying inside to play on this crappy old beater playfield, and I can't wait to see what magic John stirs up with his own self-made PFs. Playfield swap, new cabinet, aiming for CQ/near-CQ.

Nothing planned after Sorcerer and Seawitch. I think a 6-month plan is plenty for now.

Biggest "X" factors are waiting for playfields to return. While I'm waiting, I have plenty of parts I can tumble, and cabinets I can get started on should I choose to.

Ideally, one new pin falls in my lap in late 2015: a Nine Ball or Defender.

As for new skills, I am in the process of getting comfortable with the complete "playfield swap". It took 2 years of learning pinball maintenance to get the nerve, tools, and contacts (coaches) to make this a breeze for me. I don't suggest anyone jumps into pinball, and starts a playfield swap on day 1.

Later this year, I plan to learn to sand/bondo cabinets in my back yard, to prep them for stencil work (which I will outsource).

-mof

Fireball 2: Rescued from a warehouse and got it mostly working with some help from a couple of new boards and lots of help from Pinside.

Cyclopes: Rescued from a shed only 2 hours away from me. Previous owner got it for free, crazy for a game that only 400 were made of. Anyways with TONS of help from viperrwk the game worked.... for about 5 hours. Then the mpu took a dump again. Off to viperrwk's place again. Hopefully 2nd times a charm.
Thread: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/cyclopes-pinball-shop-out-restoration-thread

Completed playfield swaps on Addams Family, Cirqus Voltare, Cyclone, and Grand Prix, plus other smaller projects (shop jobs).

Projects in the lineup for 2015 are Taxi, Firepower and Bad Cats for playfield swaps, and a cabinet swap for Attack from Mars. Hopefully, Earthshaker playfields will also become available and I can get that one done too. Phew!

Full restorations on RS, Totan cabinet (waiting on playfield) NGG, corvette cabinet, and FH almost complete, this year TOM, MM, and finish up TOTAN, and Corvette.

TAF wasn't too bad. CV was much harder, partly because the new playfield wasn't dimpled or completely drilled. I had to spend a ton of time marking and drilling holes.