oldslotman wrote:TJ wrote:The cabinet on this machine was in very rough shape, after stripping I put the cabinet back together with good old wood glue. The wood looked so nice in the natural that I decided to give it a couple coats of varnish, and that's it. The castings are all original just been cleaned. The picture doesn't show the wear real clear on the left side of the bib, and at the coin entry.
I know a few people prefer not to paint the wood black, but to me a Black Cherry just doesn't look right with a natural wood cabinet. I believe they were all painted from the factory. But I too take a few liberties with paint colors and schemes so to each their own. Nice clean machine. Thanks for sharing.
I have always been a keeper of ORIGINALITY, and preach the same, but there are times when I will
bend-the-envelope just a tad. The "Black Cherry" is one of those 'Tads'. I DO NOT like painted wood
on any slot machine cases, factory, or not. Unless they chose to use plywood or knotty pine that is.
Walnut or Natural stains, always looks the best. Although, there is one exception here. The tu-tone
black & natural combination, on the sides of the Watling cases.
On the other hand, when it comes to arcade machines, that's a whole-nother-story. All of the early
machines were stained wood, with detail paint on plated castings. Then as they got more into the
1930's, some models came out of the factory, in a multitude of colors on the wood cases. Even the
ones that were natural, later became painted numerous times, when on location, as they became
banged-up from player abuse.
There are some trade stimulator manufacturers that sometimes painted the entire fancy aluminum
castings, which always look better in their natural state. Buckley is a good indication of this practice.
Take the "Cent-A-Pack" model for example. Most were plain aluminum, but there was a very large
number that left the factory, with the entire case, in a wide variety of wrinkle colors. More commonly,
green, red, tan, and even black, with white cobwebs. I have an all original "Alwin", that is red wrinkle,
but the center jackpot was left plain. The oddest color of any, is my "Mutual Horses", which left the
factory, entirely in silver wrinkle. Only drawback is, that someone later painted some of the highlights
in orange, yellow, and black. Never touched it, as it was a rather good job, and had bad feelings as to
trying to remove those colors, without damaging the original silver wrinkle. As the trade stimulators
got into the late 30's - early 40's. most all cases were painted. Some were in their own standard colors,
of hammertone & wrinkle, where others came in a very large variety of colors. A good example of this,
is the Groetchen "Sparks", with the star-front casting. I have seen just about every color combination
imaginable. Some are plain smooth colors, but most are either tu-tone wrinkle, or two or three color
combinations of hammertone. This is one hard machine to put back to original, if it has been repainted
numerous times, and you can't tell what the original combination was. So, 'take your pick'!