Has anyone done any hardness testing on an older NOS playfield versus a newer one? I'm not trying to feed into anyone's conspiracy theories, but when I owned LOTR and TSPP, those playfields seemed to have much less dimpling on them compared to newer Stern games. My Metallica is very dimpled, even over the inserts. Does it bother me? Not really.

This may have been brought up before, but perhaps the decrease on allowable VOC's for coatings has increased the time it takes for the new clears to harden, or they don't harden to the point that the older solvent based clears do?

Edit: all examples were HUO.

It's not just the wood. If you take an older playfield, touch it up, and coat it with auto clear, it's going to look like a sheet of glass until you start playing on it and the dimples start again. That wood should already be compressed.

I'd bet that the clear coats on the newer games are thicker than they were 10-15 years ago. You are seeing dimples over inserts now.

Vid, when you do your testing, test how many mils of clear are on new playfields versus playfields from 10-15 years ago.

Orange peel occurs when the coating is applied and doesn't dry completely smooth. It's called orange peel because it resembles the peel of an orange. Many automobiles have some orange peel but you don't notice it unless the light hits the finish just right.

Dimpling is caused from the ball impacting the surface and putting a small indentation in the surface.