About 9 mo ago I acquired my first pinball machine a nice Buck Rogers. This was for my wife, she loves pins. So then I had a new hobby, so I sought out a Black Knight, the most loved and what seems to be hated pinball ever made. I acquired not one but two machines with in weeks of each other. One working and a decent play field the other just plain abused with some mold. A month ago I acquired a new Hard Top for one of the machines, after looking closely I decided the worse one which is below to be the one for a Hard Top. After this will come complete cabinet redo inside and out. Now with the news of a new BK coming this just seemed even more relevant for the time. I'm open to tips and suggestions, I'm not foreign to restorations, but I am to Pinball. I've already repaired the boards in one cabinet, this one will be next. My goal is to make a nice functional game.

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Close up shots reveal what the play field really looks like. From distance it looks "ok" but it has really been neglected for a long long time.

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The idea of sanding a playfield bare is not natural. This makes it easy. Couldn’t see dumping it. More to come.

Top nearly finished sanding. Due to some socket issues and other things I was seeing below I decided to just remove everything.

Found several loose inserts. Removed will sand and set.

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Valid observation, I felt I should maybe leave them on while on the stand, didn't want to bend anything. Yes plan to remove and refinish them. More to come next week! Thanks for the tips.

Long overdue update. End of the semester took over.

Most of my blue inserts were terribly faded. I attempted to dye them but that was futile. Another Pinsider suggested I look at Pinball a life, as they had some gem inserts. At .50 I took a stab and ordered red, green and blue replacements for sizes they carried. Best I can tell these are a dead match.

Just finished painting around inserts. That’s a tedious task to be sure. I’ll let it dry and hopefully shoot some clear in a day or so.
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Was finally able to lay the hard top down. Things to watch.

Be sure to check the insert portion of the hardtop. You can do it by yourself. 2 makes it easy.

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Sorry I only get on Pinside now and then. I think it was $300 something. I believe they will continue it, they are regrouping etc per an update on the Hardtop thread by the manufacturer. While not overly difficult it is a time-consuming process. Do build a rotisserie for sure. What became very clear for me is that now I have a nice shiny bright PF I pretty much need to bring all the pieces up to speed to look just as nice. I just added the upper PF Hard Top and finishing adding the wiring back to it. I fully stripped wiring etc on the upper and lower. You can leave the underside alone, mine was just super dirty so went all in. I've polished about 80% of all the SS. I'm fortunate that my plastics are intact. So just cleaning. I work on this an hour or two a week so no hurry on my part. Thus why it's taking forever.

Few pics

Lower is installed and I’ve replaced all rails with Red Oak sanded and applied 2 part auto
Clear.

Upper has had wiring cleaned and installed and new hard top. Pics to come.

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