Early War Eagle.

[oldslotman]

Just found what appears to be an early War Eagle. 2 / 4 pay with 10 stop mechanism. There is no access door for the jackpot mech. Metal reel strips. Matching serial numbers 264XXX. All there but the back door. Does not work at the present time. What do you think, restore or leave as is?

[flipper77]

Looks from the front picture that original paint is in fairly good condition. I would just clean up the casting and try to retain original paint. And same with cabinet if good shape - clean rather than refinish. Mech is bit rusty and dirty so it needs work. But beautiful original early example and best to retain that look. Nice find!

Flip

[oldslotman]

Cabinet is in excellent shape. I think for now I'll just get the mech working and clean up the castings and cabinet and see what it looks like.

[andydotp]

Fantastic find oldslotman, well done.
Some of us were admiring Flip's War Eagle over on his thread the other day and I pointed out some little differences between his and mine. Well your beauty could be mine's twin! - No JP door, clover leaf denominator, reject button in the coin entry, non-fortune strips and ninth 'feather' around the coin entry too.
Congratulations on an adorable, original piece.
I'd suggest concensus of opinion might be to get it up & running, give it a clean and leave it as-is as much as possible.
Regs,
andydotp

[oldslotman]

Tried cleaning up the paint with just water and a little soap and the paint seem to be flaking off or becoming really dull. Color coming off on the rag. Looks like I may be in for a repaint.

[flipper77]

Interesting - I took the same path with my recent War Eagle find. Very dirty from sitting in a barn. When I took fairly strong soap and water to clean castings - paint started coming off on rag. So had no choice. My wood cabinet had split into each of the pieces so had to dismantle and glue. Painting the War Eagle is rather fun!

Flip

[nvmos2]

Great find;
it really looks to be in unusually good condition;
hope you can solve the paint problem; the paint looks too good to scrub it away.

Matching serial numberS (plural?)
Is there more than one serial number stamped into it (on the top casting, handle side edge)?
Or are you referring to the sticker inside the cabinet?
Was there a serial number sticker for the mechanism still in there somewhere?

Just checking: I'm thinking there was only the one stamped serial number on these machines,
plus the 2 stickers which are almost always long gone.

[oldslotman]

Great find;
it really looks to be in unusually good condition;
hope you can solve the paint problem; the paint looks too good to scrub it away.

Matching serial numberS (plural?)
Is there more than one serial number stamped into it (on the top casting, handle side edge)?
Or are you referring to the sticker inside the cabinet?
Was there a serial number sticker for the mechanism still in there somewhere?

Just checking: I'm thinking there was only the one stamped serial number on these machines,
plus the 2 stickers which are almost always long gone.

I was referring to the numbers stamped into the casting and the sticker inside the cabinet. The sticker on the mechanism was about 80% gone. The paint looks better in the picture than iit really is. There is alot of dirt deep into the castings and hard to get clean. The cabinet is in great shape but the finish is also coming off when trying to clean.

[oldslotman]

Finally finished the War Eagle project. The paint just looked too bad to leave as is. Cleaned it up but lost a lot of paint. Hardly any black at all left and the red turned out to just about as bad. The cabinet cleaned up a lot better. I was able to save the originial stickers on the side and some of the scroll painting on the sides. The cabinet itself is very solid. Got the mech back in operating condition. Repainted the castings and installed new reel strips. I was able to get the old tin ones off without any further damage and I will keep them.

[altort]

The slot looks great! what did you use on the cabinet to bring the finish back? I have used "HOWARD RESTORE-A-FINISH" with goo results, like to know what else works and try, also read in other post that "NOXZEMA" works on bringing back reel strips but have yet to try.
Great job.