# SDTM Cary Hardy: How To Install A Pinball Hardtop (Swords Of Fury)

**Source:** Straight Down the Middle  
**Type:** video  
**Published:** 2020-10-01  
**Duration:** 32m 44s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvJxjiGRKQU

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## Analysis

Cary Hardy from Straight Down the Middle demonstrates a complete hardtop installation process on a Swords of Fury pinball machine. The video covers full playfield disassembly, artwork removal via sanding, surface preparation using progressive grit sanding and Novus 2 polish (as an alternative to clear coating), alignment procedures, and final hardtop adhesion. Hardy emphasizes that hardtops allow restoration of worn playfields to near-original condition without extensive restoration skill.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Hardtops are a revolutionary product available on select games, with Swords of Fury being the newest addition — _Cary Hardy introduces hardtops as a product category and identifies Swords of Fury as a recent eligible title_
- [MEDIUM] Progressive sanding from 220 to 1200 grit followed by Novus 2 polish can achieve results nearly equivalent to clear coating — _Hardy demonstrates the method and observes minimal visual difference in final result, though acknowledges it's not quite as crystal clear as clear coat_
- [HIGH] Swords of Fury playfield is approximately 33 years old — _Hardy calculates the age based on machine release year during the disassembly narration_
- [HIGH] The critical requirement when sanding is to completely remove artwork and decals from inserts, not necessarily sand the entire playfield — _Hardy cites recommendations from hardtop manufacturer (Outside Edge) regarding minimum sanding requirements_
- [HIGH] T-nuts on this Swords of Fury machine were severely degraded, requiring complete replacement rather than removal and reuse — _Hardy encounters multiple t-nuts that fail to grip or unscrew properly, ultimately deciding to replace all rather than spend time with heat gun remediation_

### Notable Quotes

> "hardtops a revolutionary product available on select games this game being their newest addition"
> — **Cary Hardy**, early in video
> _Introduces hardtops as a significant restoration product and positions Swords of Fury as a new eligible title_

> "i will not be doing a simple shop and polish on this playfield i will be making it look brand new but this comes at a price money well of course but more than that in order for this to happen we must first destroy the original art eradicating it from existence"
> — **Cary Hardy**, opening
> _States the fundamental trade-off of hardtop installation: destruction of original artwork for restoration of playfield aesthetics_

> "whenever you gotta bust out a hammer when working on a pinball machine you know things are getting real"
> — **Cary Hardy**, mid-disassembly
> _Humorous acknowledgment of the difficulty encountered removing the flipper assembly from the machine_

> "that is damn smooth so that is really good i'm oh yeah that is butter that is nice and smooth"
> — **Cary Hardy**, after 1200 grit sanding
> _Positive assessment of the polishing method; indicates satisfaction with the progressive grit sanding approach_

> "my brother thought i already clear coated it because it was so smooth it is not but i think we are definitely well within range for being able to start getting this hard top ready to be put on here"
> — **Cary Hardy**, after Novus 2 polish
> _Validates that Novus 2 polishing achieves near-clear-coat appearance without the additional step and skill required for clear coating_

> "it gives the people the ability to resurrect trash play fields to their original aesthetics without requiring too much skill"
> — **Cary Hardy**, conclusion
> _Summarizes the value proposition of hardtops as an accessible restoration method for non-expert restorers_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Cary Hardy | person | Host of Straight Down the Middle, pinball restoration expert demonstrating hardtop installation |
| Straight Down the Middle | organization | YouTube pinball content channel hosting restoration tutorials and gameplay videos |
| Swords of Fury | game | Pinball machine being restored; subject of hardtop installation demonstration; approximately 33 years old |
| Outside Edge | company | Manufacturer of hardtop product; provides sanding requirement recommendations |
| Novus 2 | product | Plastic polish used to achieve sheen on sanded playfield inserts as alternative to clear coating |
| Createx | company | Manufacturer of airbrush paint (opaque black) used for perimeter insert painting |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Hardtop installation and product category, Playfield restoration techniques and surface preparation, Sanding methodology and grit progression, Clear coating alternatives (Novus 2 polishing)
- **Secondary:** Hardware degradation and replacement (t-nuts, fasteners), Playfield alignment and dimensional tolerances

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.82) — Hardy expresses enthusiasm for the hardtop product throughout the video, emphasizing its value and ease of use. Minor frustrations with hardware degradation are overshadowed by satisfaction with the final results and process. Concluding statements are endorsement-focused.

### Signals

- **[market_signal]** Hardtop availability expanding to additional machines; Swords of Fury confirmed as recent eligible title for the product category (confidence: high) — Hardy states 'available on select games this game being their newest addition' indicating ongoing product line expansion by Outside Edge
- **[product_strategy]** Hardtops represent a significant post-release enhancement product enabling restoration of worn playfields to like-new condition without full traditional restoration skill requirements (confidence: high) — Hardy demonstrates complete workflow on Swords of Fury; emphasizes accessibility to non-expert restorers; positions as 'revolutionary product'
- **[technology_signal]** Novus 2 polishing emerges as viable alternative to clear coating for hardtop installations, reducing skill/equipment barriers for DIY restorers (confidence: medium) — Hardy experiments with progressive grit sanding (220→500→1000→1200) plus Novus 2 polish; observes minimal visual difference vs clear coat; notes brother mistook result for clear-coated finish

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## Transcript

it's a rare case to find a play field for this game in great condition this one is actually one of the better ones that i've seen but with all the efforts i have put into this cabinet i will not be doing a simple shop and polish on this playfield i will be making it look brand new but this comes at a price money well of course but more than that in order for this to happen we must first destroy the original art eradicating it from existence the payoff is well worth it in my opinion [Music] hardtops a revolutionary product available on select games this game being their newest addition in this video i will be showing you how to install it for sword to fury without clear coating it is way too hot out in the garage and i don't have a tv in the uh dining room where i have been working on things lately so i know this is gonna take me a while so i brought it in here into my game room so i can watch some netflix or amazon prime or whatever to buy my time as i am disassembling this mess i will update throughout the teardown for what i find all right so i've got the slingshot area all disassembled along with the outlane on left and right uh i'm probably going to need new t-nuts throughout this machine it seemed like every single one i tried to unscrew was coming loose at the bottom and it was just a big mess when trying to remove them the screws are like really loctited into the t-nuts and the t-nuts or sometimes even just not able to grip inside the wood that just kind of just so basically i'm just like clipping them off i'm just gonna buy all new ones i'm not going to be working around trying to get a heat gun out trying to loosen them all up i'm like screw it i'm just getting all new ones if they want to stick out then whatever like this one i ended up having to just snap off because it was like uh it was nowhere near able to come out it's being blocked by the flipper mech down below so i'm just like screw it i'll pull it out whenever i get to the flipper mix when i turn the play field over i'm already liking where this is going [Music] moving along here all right so i'm working my way over here i've got the wire forms removed and then i discovered this are you kidding me one i don't even recall seeing this in my previous videos or observations of this play field but there's a damn screw that's i can only assume was used to hold this metal flange right here in place because of yep so looks like i'm just going to be end up getting a new ramp for this one great just wanted to give everybody a look at what this looks like without that top portion ramp on there and all the nice dirt and grunge it's all behind in here yummy all right all of the ramp has been removed all right moving on to the upper playfield portion all right i just removed the upper play field and by all means that was a task now there may be added difficulty because of the fact of the age of the hardware involved like the screws not wanting to unscrew out of certain areas and but just finding everything that made it mount under and above the play field and then removing it was definitely uh a task that was interesting uh i think that is actually probably gonna be the hardest part of the whole disassembly i think everything else from here should be pretty easy it was not easy getting the flipper removed from the actual mech that now that i look at it i didn't need to do wait yes it did i fixed my same what i'm pretty sure i had to yeah the flipper fed all the way through the bottom of this play field and man the assembly attached to the rod of that flipper was on there very very tight i mean whenever you gotta bust out a hammer when working on a pinball machine you know things are getting real all right before i begin this process of tearing this thing apart i wanted to make sure that everyone had a good view of what this playfield looks like beforehand so let's just kind of go over it right now one half at a time that way everybody gets a good look at what this playfield's condition is before the word blasphemy starts getting thrown around now is this play field salvageable without sanding yes it could technically be saved to where if i wanted to get it all cleaned up and then retouch all the little bitty stuff and then lock it in and i guess yeah i could but whenever i've got an option that gives me a pristine art shiny lovely look like it's brand new that doesn't require much effort then yeah i'm probably gonna take that all right so let's clean it off just to get another good island what it looks like and this is with me going over the playfield with nafta and this was no scrubbing no dry eraser or magic eraser i mean or anything like that this is what the play field looks like with that top layer of dirt and dust removed from it you can see there's lots of little spots speckled peppered it's another phrase to use throughout the artwork that is missing all kinds of ball swirls and everything they're out here and you have a number of streaking also they're out here the typical wear spot for this game and then all the wear across these as well big wear spot right there another wear area right there and then you have some more right here all throughout here and this is just a lower play field the upper plate field has a lot of wear too and when we get to that i'll show you that but no i'm not going to attempt to rescue this playfield i'm going to sand this all off and now we begin the heartbreaking process of sanding all this artwork that is what 33 years old am i getting that the number right yeah around that time something like that can how old am i 87 it yeah yeah okay good i'm right all right anyways this is the part that i recommend that you definitely don't have anything sticking up out of the play field you want a clean table here no socket sticking out to mess up your sanding pad nothing from the flipper area right here that's going to stick up and it needs to be just wood is all you're going to be hitting going across this then once you have that you can begin the sanding process i got two different kinds i got 150 and i've got 220 i'm gonna start out with 150 and if i feel like that's too harsh then i'm going to go to 220. if the 150 is going good then i'll do 150 throughout and then i'll go back over with the 220 just to smooth it out more but before that i'm going to show you on removing this mylar section right here and we're going to see if we can lift that up without uh causing any artwork to damage we got two pieces of mylar here i don't think i have mylar anywhere else on this playfield don't think so the one that i've got the whole center of it it's just covered with mylar so let's remove these two right here man that actually came out really good look at the difference on that guys that's after removing the mylar that was right here still gonna be a little tacky because of the adhesive still there but that just shows you right there the difference of the uh protection right there when it comes to mylar and non-mylar wow the colors are still there and none of the art lifted up with it either wow it's crazy all right let's do the other one see what happens and this side came up just as good no paint lifted wow this gives me hope that my machine might be salvageable of course none none of this is over insert so i can't really judge entirely but that's just impressive that none of the art lifted up with it either i'm uh really good at taking off mylar or i just got lucky plus a number of other conditions but you could definitely tell the difference and what was covered with mylar though wow so [Applause] all right i've been going at it i'd say for at least 10 minutes that first pad's already gone of the 150 and this is how far i got with that i mean there's no turning back now but that just gives you an idea that 150 should be plenty if not a hell i wish i would have gone with like maybe even a better grit than 150 but at this rate i'll be able to take off little by little just to make sure i don't go too deep it's just going to be a little bit more time consuming yep there's the update on that on to the next pad [Music] so let's recap i've went through about four of those 150 grit pads made sure that all of my inserts are completely sanded on that there's no longer any arts or numbers or anything like that on there that's the most important feature i say feature that is the most important factor when you're sanding this the point of sanding in general is to make sure that your inserts are completely sanded off i mean according to you know the people that make these uh outside edge you don't have to do all the playfield sanded like this you don't have to their only recommendation is to sand all of the artwork and everything to decals off of the inserts that's the only thing that you really have to be concerned about so four pads of 150 and then one pad of 220 and it's nice and smooth then i took the air gun and dusted everything off of the residual so now we've got a really nice clean plate field right now all right that is all for right now and we're back at it again i'm going to attempt something and that is we are going to attempt to get these polished up instead of using a clear coating method i've shown a clear coating method that we've done on black knight before when doing a hard top but not everyone is savvy and able to do clear coating but hopefully they can maybe do this method that i'm going to try and we shall see how it looks and if i don't like it then i'm going to go right back to clear coating but what i'm going to be doing is utilizing sanding paper as it goes up the grit to higher grits i'm going to start out because we've close as we've sanded so far is a 220. so now i'm going to do this middle circle right here to get the better visual effect on how well it's going to look we've already done 220 obviously so i'm going to up it to 500 just sand this down real good and then i'm going to go up to 1000 and then 1200 and we're gonna see how well that looks uh and if i need to go to a higher grit then we'll see but let's do this one right here first all right so what i've done here is made my way from 500 all the way up to 1200 using the sander right here and instead of just going over one insert i've actually just done the whole play field because it's not going to hurt this playfield to be even smoother oh man that is damn smooth so that is really good i'm oh yeah that is butter that is nice and smooth so so far i'm actually recommending this method so far so far uh i've done an air dusting off to get all the saw the sawdust but the all the you know the sanding residual done blown out and this is nice and smooth i am seeing a pretty good reflection on this now granted it's not going to be as crystal clear as it would be if it was to get polished so now what i'm going to do is uh get a little more cleaned up and then we're going to try something else what i've done now is gone over all the inserts by hand using a 2000 grit sandpaper to get out any possible marks from the sander that i use like swirl marks or anything like that so at least it's got even across it i'm gonna probably go get some more actually i only had one sheet but what i've done also is made one of these i've used novice 2 and one of these is just cleaned up after sanding i'm not sure if you can tell which one has been polished and which one hasn't probably the one that's got the most reflections to it because so that tells you right there that novus 2 polishing these things out will make a difference and give you a pretty close damn good sheen to after clear coating so i'm going to continue doing that all right after going over all the inserts with some uh novice two and you can see that there is a sheen to them they are reflecting light through granted it's not as pretty as clear coat would be but i think it's going to be very negligible when it comes to after you put the hardtop on here and then you have the artwork that goes over these inserts going to be very negligible i don't believe that it's gonna be such a drastic difference that i would regret not clear coating it all right i brought this sucker inside and this thing is so damn smooth guys my brother thought i already clear coated it because it was so smooth it is not but i think we are definitely well within range for being able to start getting this hard top ready to be put on here now the next step that i'm going to be doing is not mandatory but it is nice insurance just in case something goes wrong during the laying down process and something doesn't line up very well so what i'm going to be doing is taking my paints and painting around the perimeter of all of these inserts just to make sure in case it gets laid down incorrectly that i'm not going to have bare wood showing you let me show you what i'm talking about all right so this is me just setting the hard top on here as a right now and uh as you can see everything looks pretty damn good and lined up but if you don't have things lined up just right we're talking like it doesn't take very much bam look that's what i'm talking about everything else looks to be just fine and then you'll have this one insert and it shows right there that you need to make an adjustment just move it over a little bit so painting around the inserts if that was still like that at least you wouldn't have bare wood showing it would be black and just be less you know obvious that it wasn't on correct so it's just an insurance method you can do what you please but i'm all about a little extra insurance especially once this thing goes down it's down all right let's get painting the paint i'm going to be using is createx airbrush coloring that's what i use for my airbrushing as well opaque black i'll just put you know you a little pile in there then i'll dab it and i'll just be going around the perimeter it's a very little tedious task but yeah like i said it's insurance here we go all right so now you can see we've got the black paint around all of the inserts and after you get it all painted around the inserts take a heat gun or even a hair dryer and just make sure you go over all the paint it should dry pretty quickly if you use the same paint that i did and then guys we can start getting prepped up for the hard top to go down once i believe everything is lined up i will c clamp the play field and hard top together then grab a flashlight and verify the alignment from underneath this next portion i highly recommend you have two people for that's how it's gonna work i'm gonna lift this up and this just be pulled down but first i'm going to use a tack cloth to wipe off any area that it can possibly get to right now we're only going to lay down about the bottom 25 to 30 percent of this and once that goes down flat the clamps can come off and everything else should just lay down with no problem all right because once that 25 goes down and that's tacked down and everything else is going to move but the tack cloth is used to make sure that there's nothing else yeah no dirt and bugs and anything like that so trying to lose it up too much i don't want to put any pressure on those clamps back there and cause this thing to move over let's lay down real quick make sure it'll be headed [Music] already all right all now we're gonna get right other side fully finished so i've got my tag caught that's the most important thing the interesting part i'll be able to get this part right here is really close to [Music] so [Music] okay [Music] all right now this thing is officially down let's go over things that are definitely going to have to be adjusted when it comes to what the hard top is cut and what the plate build actually is all the inserts are lined up but as you can see this is something that you got to deal with when it comes to hard times not every time are things going to line up exactly perfect so all my slots are good all my light posts are good majority of the holes are pretty good but you're going to have some that are going to be a little bit off same thing goes down here some look to be pretty good all my slots are good but some of them are going to be off when it comes to the holes that are drilled in over here these are like nowhere near so what i'm going to have to do is go through here with my drill slash dremel and make sure all the holes are lined up to where it should be pretty easy to just [Music] assemble we are at the finish line guys the same method is done with the upper play field only on a smaller scale and it can be done solo i can't stress enough how much i love this product it gives the people the ability to resurrect trash playfields to their original aesthetics without requiring too much skill [Music] just keep in mind that you do not drill new holes in the play field you drill new holes into the hardtop there is no guarantee that the geometry would be the same by drilling new holes into the playfield [Music] the only guarantee is that if installed correctly your game will look brand new and have faster gameplay with a durable easy cleanable hard top thanks for watching everyone and be sure to hit that subscribe button so that way you can be notified of whenever we upload new content for your viewing pleasure until next time guys peace out [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music]

_(Acquisition: youtube_auto_sub, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 6d7be309-2f74-4ed8-988d-e2bf10169f51*