Here's my opinion. Do nothing beyond cleaning, unless you want to take the playfield out and send it to someone with real art skill to touch-up and seal. When you clean it you're bound to lose a little more paint in those areas, so be careful. My thinking is this - I've seen way too many PFs made worse by a hack with a black sharpie. The paint will be impossible to match because of the wear, and I have yet to see someone recreate a font without printing out a decal, which comes with it's own set of problems. Also, the lack of paint also means the surface is no longer level, the bare spots are lower. On a Fathom playfield I have been restoring, with more paint loss than that, I was able to gently clean and lightly block sand the entire playfield, using white paint to build up those missing spots until the surface was close again, and will do the same after the final touch up goes on, before sealing everything. I lost a little paint here and there around the worn areas, but you have to in order to fix it right and have everything solid, plus the light sanding helps expose a cleaner and more constant paint color to match. It's a bit unnerving to do. Obviously your playfield doesn't need to go anywhere that extreme, but I mention it for thought.

Now if you really feel you have the patience and skill to ink in those straight lines, you can probably get away with it looking better. But don't try to do more.

wow.... clean it, play it, enjoy it. the amount of time needed to repair that isnt worth it. tearing it all apart then doing all the work to fix that, touching it up etc wouldnt be worth it to me. i would just clean it and play it. all the effort needed for making it look new would be easier by getting a new pf. nothing wrong with a good players machine. they all dont have to be collectors pieces

Yes. Keeping it clean and waxed with new balls will make a huge difference in preserving it. It may not stop further wear completely but it will slow it down considerably. As far as restoring the PF, dont. Not yet anyways. Fixing wear down to the wood is a hugh undertaking and cant be learned in this thread. It takes lots of research and practice. Most of us who attempt this kind of job end up reading pages and pages of articles on restoration. Then watch every video out there with hints, tips and tricks on restoration. Then depending on your skill, experience, tools available and budget decide on a method you feel would work best for you a practice it. There lots of different ways to fix that kind of damage. You can level off the wear with white paint as suggested above, you can clear the whole PF first to give yourself a nice smooth surface, you can scan and print the damaged area on water slide decals then clear over top. Some people paint right to the wood then level the paint by building it up in layers and sanding. You can use acrylics if your going to clear or mylar over top or you can use enamels and let it ride. The point is there are lots of methods out there. Research them all, choose one and practice it. In the mean time clean it, wax it and play some pinball.

You can always use a straight edge like a small protractor, or 12" stick ruler, as a guide to making straight lines. In a game I bought someone had used cut to fit mylar patches to stop the paint from wearing any further, though I really didn't like this idea, I'm ok with it now, and the CPR playfield is finally in the works.

One consideration is to apply mylar or stealth mylar (read warnings) to the worn spots to prevent things from getting worse, until you can do it right. I'm a fan of stealth mylar (vinyl actually), just clean the pf and apply a couple of coats 100% carnauba past wax before applying.

If you're very artistic you can try your own touch-ups beforehand. I'm not paint expert, but pick something than can be removed with good gone or solvent (one that won't damage original art).

Here's a sample from a Creature restore I did last Winter. There wasn't enough damage to do a full teardown and have it sent out for a pro to restore ... but I wanted it to look decent until down the road when I want a CQ game. In the photo I chose and angle that actually shows the stealth mylar. From most other angles it's near invisible. You can see my very slight touchups underneath, in the yellow with black lines:

CreatureHole.jpg

BTW, if you're up for it do the full playfield teardown, then a treasure cove polishing (or alternative polishing compound, just with the high-speed polishing arbors). It will look really nice, even with the damage.

It's thin vinyl sheet (adhesive on one side), marketed as "Stealth Protectors" by PinballPal. PinballPal's operator is unfortunately having medical issues and is not back to fulfilling orders. You can buy vinyl sheet to cut your own. It's thinner than mylar and hence is optically more pleasing. It won't last as long as Mylar but in home-use it's probably not an issue.

Stealth Protectors came under fire in February, 2012 for lifting inserts when removed. Someone had really bad results pulling it up on a No Good Gophers. I've never had a problem, nor expect to remove it once down. But when I do put Stealth or regular mylar down I always put carnauba down beforehand which would make it easier to remove, and if I were to remove it would do it CAREFULLY. Just because it's "easily removable" doesn't mean you rip it off.

Long answer to your short question, but there it is.

Good luck with your pin.

Brian

i've been using the pinball pal removable mylar for years. it's awesome stuff, comes up easily without any work, and comes up clean. will it remove artwork? well if your playfield is delaminating, *anything* you put on it will remove artwork. i've been doing this pinball thing for 20 years, and frankly i've seen what i thought was "idiot proof" get totally messed up by someone. It's amazing what people can mess up when given the chance. There is such a wide range of skill (or lack) abilities that you would be shocked to see what people can do wrong.