Mills Castle Front
Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2018 9:36 am
I have an old 5 cent Mills Castle Front that belonged to my Grandfather. This machine according to my father sat in the back room of one of his businesses in London Ohio for many years. When I was a boy my grandad had this machine sitting on his workbench in his basement In Plain City Ohio. He would sit me on a stool and give me a bag of nickels and let me play it while he worked on cash registers. It was painted over with silver furnace paint at some point, my dad said so that it wouldn't be seen by the authorities in the forties. When my father was in the process of moving my grandparents to Columbus in 1980 I arrived at their house to see him carrying the machine to the scrap pile out back. I stopped him and rescued it and took it home. In the early eighties I stripped and polished the exterior parts of the machine and refinished the wood cabinet. I had the handle and payout card frame re chromed. I cleaned up the mechanism as best I could and re lubricated it as best I could without disassembly. It sits in my basement recreation room on the bar and it is a constant conversation piece. It works but could probably use a good disassembly and cleaning and thorough going through. I am now in my sixties and would like to make sure that this thing is in good working order when I pass it on. Any tips or good sources for anyone that could possibly give me some assistance to bring this up to snuff? Thanks, Jim