Coin Slot Magazine - #037 - 1978 - February [International Arcade Museum]
OLD TIMER'S MESSAGE
(Ed. Note: Not too long ago we received a cassette tape from Raymond
Lucan, an old time slot operator from Chicago. On the tape Mr. Lucan
expressed his feelings about a great many things and wanted to share
them with todays collectors.
The following excerpts, taken from his
tape, are something we hope you will find interesting and informative.
I hope that any statement that I make I'm making from my own heart
and feelings, and that they do not offend people too much.
At times today, it irks me to read some of the articles on restorations.
They are alright as far as they go, but some of them cause collectors to
misunderstand the way we did things back in the old days.
For in
stance, take the article written by Ben Romano on restoring the Rol-A-
Top.
(See Dec. 77 Coin Slot).
There he takes one of the very last
machines made by Watling and does research on it to find out how they
finished them as far as looks go.
.the way Ben says they were.
But all the Rol-A-Tops weren't done
When you're restoring a machine, I'm
under the impression that that machine should be restored to what the
manufacturer put out at the time.
Now my first job in the slot machine business started in 1929, when I
got paid $6.00 a week at that time.
My main job for a long time was
just painting the aluminum part of machines after they had been cleaned
and buffed.
They were not plated in any way, because we didn't know
what plating was.
gloss.
All the aluminum parts were just buffed to a high
Then they were turned over to me and I painted them the same
colors as they originally were.
Now today a lot of the boys are really enthusiastic about their paint
and other things like this and they all have different ideas about it.
But
they can't paint the way we did back in those days because we used a
com
.
You m
can't
brush lacquer today.
:
m As u far
eu
o
s
It has to be sprayed on nowadays.
as brushes go, nobody knew
r
f
ed in ad those
e-m days. We couldn't put paint on
d back
what an air brush was
a
o
l
c
r
n Ben
with an air brush
w.a does.
Dow like
w
w
://
http goes, I would like to give away a little secret here.
As far as painting
laquer paint you put on with a brush.
Ben says he uses Q-tips to remove paint from the top of the letters and
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