Pinball

Journal Entries

Introduction
2025-09-17 - Entry #00: Purchased
2025-09-20 - Entry #01: Electricity
2025-09-22 - Entry #02: Fuses
2025-09-24 - Entry #03: The Pinball Resource

Introduction

I have a new project (yes, another one): a pinball table!

A photograph of a Williams 'Maryland' pinball table, an old machine (manufactured in 1949) with wooden construction, as opposed to more modern tables. The backbox has the title 'MARYLAND,' and shows painted score values (that will be illuminated during play) and three women picking grapes in a field. The table is standing on a concrete floor, up against the wall of a garage.

The table is in fair shape (it is 76 years old, at this point), and the seller had replaced the rubber bumpers and the playfield glass before passing it on to me for relatively cheap. I'll try and document the table here, and my progress in getting it playable.

Repairs List

~~Replace mains cable~~
Figure out why the line voltage fuse is blowing!
Test table functionality
Fix table functionality!
Glue and clamp backbox split
Spray adhesive for peeling backbox paint?
...
Repaint/touch up playfield?

Costs So Far:

Table - USD 200.00 (in September 2025)
5 meters of 16-2 2-pole cord - USD 20.85
polarized 2-blade electrical plug (might need to return it for a different one) - USD 1.39
2x 10-amp "microwave" fuses (these are the correct current rating, but I'm not sure what the difference is between "microwave" fuses and regular fuses - USD 3.99
2x 10-amp fuses, and 2x 5-amp fuses - 10.58
...
Running Total: USD 236.81

2025-09-17 - Entry #00

I bought the table one week ago. Getting it into my car wasn't terribly hard (hatchbacks!), but getting it across my rough concrete garage floor and set up in the back corner was unpleasant. Now that it's there, I can pull it out again when I want to work on it.

And it does need work. The mains wiring (lamp cord/2-pole cord) was sketchy and ancient, with chunks of insulation either already missing or falling off as I wiggled it. Absolutely not going to power it on in this situation.

A photograph of a person's right hand gently holding a pair of 2-pole electrical cords ('lamp cord') that have been joined with wire nuts. Well, one of the wire nuts is still there, but the other has fallen off. Even disregarding that, insulation has visibly broken off the electrical cord leading up and to the left in the photo, exposing stranded copper wire. In the background, out of focus, are some of the internals of the backbox of a Williams 'Maryland' pinball table.

I moved my first soldering iron (a 40 watt Weller station, bought 20 years or so ago) out to the garage permanently for this project. It isn't fancy (no temperature indicator, even!), but I know it works and I know how to use it. The good soldering station and Pinecil can stay inside.

A photograph of an orange-and-black Weller soldering station, a basic model. The adjustment knob on the front panel doesn't even have temperature settings, just numbers from 1 to 5. Other than that, it has an on-off switch (currently off), a tray for a sponge, and a steel coil holder for the soldering iron (currently resting in the holder. In the background of the photo, out of focus, are garage shelves and boxes.

Because it was outright dangerous, the first repair I made was to desolder the existing mains cord. I cut most of the length of it away, dabbed flux onto the solder joints (one at the transformer, another at the 5 amp fuse), then applied the hot iron. It's a little cramped working around the inside of the backbox, but it's doable. As I gently pulled the wires away from the terminals, large chunks of insulation cracked off and fell away from the copper.

I have already been to the neighborhood hardware store and bought 5 meters of 16-2 lamp cord and a new polarized two-blade plug. I may need to go back for a different plug, though, as the heavier 16-2 cord doesn't fit well into this plug. I can just return it and exchange it, if need be.

More updates (with photos) soon!

2025-09-20 - Entry #01

I didn't provide a photograph of the inside of the backbox last time.

A photograph of the inside of the backbox of a Williams 'Maryland' pinball table. Wires cascade between wheels, gears, bells, and electromagnetic coils, all nailed and screwed and stapled to a cheap wooden board. A larger cabling of wires loops down through a hole in the floor of the box, into the pinball playfield below.

Using the lamp (2-pole) cord and polarized blade plug I purchased last weekend, I constructed a new electrical cord for the pinball table. The plug on the cord that came with the table wasn't polarized, but that isn't a thing we do in the United States anymore.

I tested the assembled cable, double-checked the polarity, then soldered the positive side to the transformer and the negative to the fuse holder. This connection is only temporary, I'll want to do a better job with proper strain relief later. Right now, I only wanted to power up the machine for the first time.

There's no power switch anywhere in the line, so I ran an extension cable from an outlet, took a deep breath, and plugged in my new power cable.

Nothing happened.

On the plus side, no fire or explosions. On the minus side, nothing happened. I pulled out the multimeter; there were definitely 120 volts at the transformer and the fuse panel inside the backbox, but the table showed no activity at all.

I unplugged the power cable again and thought about things, and it only took me a few minutes to remember that I never plugged the Jones plug connector boards back in.

A photograph of the Jones connectors at the end of electrical cables in an antique pinball machine. The connectors are a 2-by-X arrangement of cylindrical metal pins that extend through a strip of plastic (?) board, and plug into matching sockets.

These are the wire harness connectors for the wires that run up from the playfield, into the backbox, and connect there so that power can make it down to all of the lights and flippers and bumpers. I'd disconnected the Jones plugs on the day I bought the table, in order to separate the backbox from the playfield so that everything could fit into my car. I'd forgotten to reconnect them.

There had been no circuit from the backbox to the playfield. I plugged the Jones connectors into their sockets in the backbox, took another deep breath, and plugged in the power cable again.

It's alive! Not working, but it's trying to do stuff. But it's buzzing, which means a stuck relay or motor, so I unplugged it again immediately before something burned out.

The buzzing is coming from the play counter wheel. That's where I'll concentrate first.

A photograph of the play count wheel in the backbox of a Williams 'Maryland' pinball machine. The wheel mechanism has electromagnetic coils, gears, springs, a relay switch, and more.

But, before that, I found PinRepair.com and read^[1] that I should have checked the fuses before I powered the machine on. I mean, I did check the fuses, I made sure they weren't blown. But did I check that they were the correct values? No, no I did not. I assumed that no one would have been so foolish as to cram any fuse that fit into the fuse holder, regardless of its current value.

A photograph of the fuse holder in the backbox of a Williams 'Maryland' pinball machine, with no fuses currently installed. The required fuse value are printed on a yellowed strip of paper behind where the fuses will go. They are, from top top to bottom: 6-8 V. Lites, 10 Amp. Fuse; Coils, 10 Amp. Fuse; 6-8 V. Line 115V, 5 Amp. Fuse.

Were the fuses correct? Absolutely not. From top to bottom, installed were

15 amps (should be 10)
15 amps (should be 10)
20 amps (should be 5!)

Yikes. I'm hoping that I haven't damaged anything in the table by powering it up before I knew the fuses were flat-out wrong. I biked to the shop on a lovely afternoon to get correct replacements. Next time I'm working on the table, I'll pop those in.

[1] https://www.pinrepair.com/em/index2.htm#fuses ↩

2025-09-22 - Entry #02

[Imagine some loud cursing here.]

Recall that, last time, I noted that entirely the wrong fuses were installed in the fuse holder, especially that a 20 amp fuse was installed for the line voltage, when it should have been a 5 amp?

I installed the correctly rated fuses over the weekend and connected to the mains. The 10 amp fuses held, but the 5 amp fuse lasted all of 1 second before flaring brightly and cutting out. So, I definitely shouldn't have been powering up the table with the wrong fuse values before.

A photograph of the fuse holder in the wooden backbox of a Williams 'Maryland' pinball machine. The lowermost glass fuse, rated for 5 amps, has done its job properly. The metal wire inside the glass tube extends from the left side toward the middle, but in the middle it's burned through, leaving only a dull grey stub.

I'm angry with whoever popped the grossly wrong fuses in before (likely the seller), but I'm also angry with myself for being over-eager and not thinking that might have been a possibility.

2025-09-22 - Entry #03

I jumped the gun a little bit in buying this pinball table. Not that I hadn't been on the lookout for a cheap table, especially something to fix up, but I definitely started doing much more research after money had changed hands and I'd hauled the table out of my hatchback and into the garage.

There are a lot of people who have done the hard work before me and documented general and specific information about fixing and maintaining a pinball table. Websites, blogs, Youtube channels, and most of it is free. There are also stores that offer replacement parts and schematics, and one that I saw mentioned repeatedly is The Pinball Resource, by Steve Young out of Poughkeepsie, New York, USA. I called their phone number about placing a small order: a contact adjuster, a contact polishing tool, some wax to protect the playfield. The phone was answered by a man named Steve, who I'm assuming is the Steve Young on the website header.

Steve gave me ten minutes of his time and expertise, and then declined to take an order from me in return. He assured me that I didn't need specialized tools yet, and told me what wax to buy at my local hardware store. He listened to me describe the table, the issue with the short on the line voltage circuit, the play counter wheel being stuck and buzzing, and he gave specific advice that I, as a beginner, could understand and act on. He paused every few sentences so that I could catch up as I took notes.

He was encouraging and generous. I thanked him for his time, ended the call, and marveled that a shop owner wanted to help more than he wanted to take my money. I don't think for a second that he would have sold me things I couldn't use in repairing the table, but he seemed to think that I wasn't at that point yet. Seemed to be a genuinely decent person. I will absolutely go back to The Pinball Resource again when I do need to spend more money on this project.