Cast Iron Chrome Bell Restoration

[greenman77]

I am just starting the restoration of an original Mills Chrome Bell circa 1938-39. It is original as found and was actually full of silver quarters once I extracted a broken key shank and had a new key cut by Dave Berten.
I am certain I will have many questions because this is only my seventh machine restoration and only my second Mills. The first point of question I have concerns the mechanism bottom. I have two other "Diamond Front" machines that are both post war machines and the bases are cast iron i. e. magnetic. This machine with all its ultra heavy cast iron castings has a base made of what I believe to be phosphor bronze. At first I thought it was just plating to make payout slides smooth in operation but it is solid (non-magnetic) and the color indicates bronze rather than brass. It is heavily patinated over these last 78 years or so and I am not sure if I should restore it to bright bronze finish for not. The how part is easy if desired. I can just have it bead blasted and then clear coated. I want this restoration to be as correct as possible so if on the off chance that Mills actually applied a patina to the casting I sure would not want to change that and over restore the machine.
I will follow the advice of this forums collective experience.

[mechanic]

FYI What you have may not be a Mills but a Baker Novelty machine. Mills was in war production and aluminum was a strategic metal. So Baker a small shop took over production of slot machines from Mills. They did all the current at that time models in cast iron as well as updating older models again using cast iron. Many of the Baker machines also had this glitter sprinkled over the upper and lower castings and back bonnets. In over 40yrs I have only seen one original decal from Baker and silly me never got a pic of it. It ended up some where in FL. Double check!!! Your machine may be a Mills or maybe the rarer Baker!! Good Luck

[norabt]

The Mechanic is correct re;Baker. I have seen Horsehead Bonus's and Bursting Cherries with cast iron castings. But Mills did make a chrome plated cast iron model in the late 30's that from what I have read [Dick Bueshel] was discontinued because chrome was needed for the war effort. Mills then produced Diamond Fronts with aluminum castings with glitter paint until slot machine production was halted and manufacturing was converted to war production.

[greenman77]

Thanks folks for the info. The machine is an original 1938/39 cast iron Chrome Bell just as advertised in their literature. I will post with this some photos of the unrestored parts I am working on. It is chrome finish with the metallic red diamonds and the "bronzed" cabinet which is actually a hammer coat bronze paint on wood, bonnet and back door. The red diamonds are cast iron with copper plating topped with clear red lacquer.
My confusion is with the construction of the mechanism itself. The reel bundle is finished in a light bronze lacquer coating also and the mechanism is after degreasing lightly colored a bit with the same bronze finish. Some has been cleaned away over the years to reveal a normal cadmium plating over cast iron.
What I have never seen before is the fact that the mechanism base is (under the dirt and grime) solid phosphor bronze totally non-magnetic, not brass but a much harder phosphor bronze. I assume that when this machine production was stopped due to the war that the usage of bronze also ceased as it was a scarce war commodity (i.e. steel pennies and silver nickels).
The machine came out of a storage room from a VFW/DAV club and after I managed to use some jewelers tools to extract the broken key shank and have it copied by Dave Berten the cash box and jackpots were fairly full of silver quarters with the newest one dated 1956. There were even a handful of the old flying eagle quarters. To the best of my knowledge the only non 1938/39 item is the reel strips which had been replaced with the silver ones circa 1947.
I always feel like Sherlock Holmes with a new find. My query to the group is this base. Has anyone else ever seen a solid bronze mech base?
For fun a few pictures and when I am done with restoration I will post the finished product.