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Pinball 'fixing up' masterclasses?

Nickbs

Nickbs

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Just thinking on from postings on from the 'Dr Who decal application' thread - is there any scope/potential/interest for some form of 'pinball master class' seminars to be run by those who have relevant expertise to explain & demystify some of the areas of pinball fixing, modding & restoration?

I never cease to be amazed about how what appears to be the most obscure or specific question get answered so quickly and readily, as well as questions from relative newbies ( such as myself) are answered so helpfully and comprehensively.

I appreciate there is a lot of knowledge regularly shared on here from what appears to be a very pool of knowledge, but could that knowledge to channelled and shared through a short series of masterclasses from people who have the knowledge and are happy to share?

Could such 'master classes' be run alongside one or more of the larger pinball events or on a dedicated day?

Where and when?

What would be good topics?

On the latter question my initial suggestions would include:
- how to best clean & polish a playfield;
- how to do an LED conversion
- how to rebuild a flipper;
- tricks and techniques for re-rubbering a machine;
- how to polish all your your bits up (ooh err missus..)

What would be on your list?

Do you think it could be an idea, or is it just me swirling around in a vast pool of largely unknown pinball knowledge?
 
It's a nice idea but so much is close up and fiddly I think you'd need cameras live feeding to TVs for anyone to see anything and there are so many videos on YouTube to get you up to speed on most aspects of repair/maintenance, and there is always people helping each other fix faults at the meets anyway to learn from!
 
Although not exactly what you're talking about, I have been thinking about doing a Video Log of my next high end restoration project (maybe Road Show), rather than doing a shop log on here.

Good idea to post lists of what you'd like to see done, as ideally I'd like to make my video different to what everyone else is doing. As for questions, well I suppose they could be submitted via comments or email and then answered in the next video.
 
Well, over the years the amount of games I have played with weak flippers, wobbly flippers, flippers out of alignment, it seems like this is an area a fair few people struggle with and it is one of the most important things to get right!
 
I would expect there is overcoming the fear of taking on more than you can handle and then knowledge that comes from experience or education.
We could do with a rating system, like in Haynes Manuals, where each task is rated with 1-5 flippers to say how hard it is.
A single flipper (1) rating would be for polishing your balls for instance.
The list above from Nickbs appears to be things that most people can do if approached in the right way and would be transferable across most machines of a particular era but with slight various across companies.
 
J.C.Rox said:
It's a nice idea but so much is close up and fiddly I think you'd need cameras live feeding to TVs for anyone to see anything and there are so many videos on YouTube to get you up to speed on most aspects of repair/maintenance, and there is always people helping each other fix faults at the meets anyway to learn from!
Click to expand...

They have projector screens at the Replay/NLP show for the people doing talks to use. I guess technically they could be set up to do closeups of a pinball master class, assuming that the Replay organisers would allow those screens to be used from time to time over the weekend.
 
Could we have a regional masterclass that you could attend for the day, and pay for someone to teach you how you do maintenance and repair,
I would enjoy that, and then in the evening play the pins
 
I'd like to learn how to do small playfield touch-ups, pref using an airbrush similar to the recent Shadow post.
 
Some thoughts of a new guy. I think you guys are on to something good here. In my quest for pin knowledge I have done a good bit of searching (for hours on end) only to find a bit here and a bit their. To date this has been the best site with the most useful information.

Maybe you could start with the most common and easy fixes for us new to pin repair and move on to the more advanced stuff and make it a sticky at the top of the page. You could also include some of the better parts (rubber & lights) as I see them priced all over and I know from experience not all are equal. Looking forward to where this goes, as I start my first clean up and small repairs of the Corvette pin I just acquired.
 
I was wondering - @pinballmania - Andy you are fairly central - Something you would consider putting on?? I'm sure people would happily chip in £10-£20 for an hour or two of Netherwood Masterclass in the workshop :) Oh and some tea - plenty of tea (It's a midlands thing).... ;)

No pressure at all - just a suggestion :D
 
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