C.O.C.A. Times

tures. When I received this second set, I could see
that his game was related to mine but quite different.
(See picture of tall case "Domino".) Apparently,
when they named my game "Model 4", it was to dis-
tinguish it from earlier models. It should come as no
surprise to you that my reference books neither dis-
tinguishes between models nor lists any "Domino"
other than my "Model 4".
work disassembling, cleaning, polishing and
reassembling. It's mostly just grunt work and some-
thing I pride myself on doing well.
The final step was selecting new fabric to cover the
playfield. The original appeared to be a brown cot-
ton-like material. It was tattered beyond salvation
and try as I may, I was unable to find an exact match
for replacement. Rather than go with another mousy
I know you're sitting on pins and needles to find out brown, I elected to throw caution to the wind and
how this project turned out. So was I. Feat not, Dear selected a royal purple. It looks quite regal, don 't
Hearts. This is a tale of hope and redemption for the you agree?
mechanically challenged for I am their Poster Boy.
My main regret in the
With enough patience, good German meal polish, a
whole project pertains to
high speed Dremel and a digital camera, all things
the
recovering of the play-
are possible. My policy is to keep a detailed written
field. That regret is not
log in addition to pictures as I disassemble anything.
about the color, or the tex-
I started with the playfield. All the upper playfield
ture, or the actual fabric
brass was removed and cleaned. The lower metal
itself but something much
playfield was attached to the sides of the game with
more surprising that I dis-
screws. Removing those allowed me to extract the
covered
when
I
metal playfield. The fabric on both upper and lower
removed the tattered
surfaces was in pitiful shape and came off with little
encouragement from me. The biggest challenge of
cotton from the upper
the project was the fabrication of the replacement
playfield. Stripped
bare of their cover, I
lower metal playfield. Besides measuring and creat-
ing the cutouts, I had to remove and refit the circu-
saw the most amazing
lar domino and the brass ball view hole. After sev-
sight:
four little
.........__--"---'"""
demons.
If you look
eral false attempts, I was able to produce a reason-
able facsimile of the original. The saving grace was at the pictures, you will see the four faces penciled
that this area would be recovered in fabric again as in by the original workers.
was the original.
Three of them are coy little
devils but the largest one is a
The upper wooden playfield had the issue of the monster, complete with some
large crack diagonally across it. Once I had it type of stocking hat that trails
stripped of its shabby coverlet, I realized that the across the top of the playfield
two sides of the crack were completely parallel at all eclipsing the top ball exit
points. In other words, the board had cracked and hole. What do you think this is
someone had, for a reason I cannot understand, all about? Why would work-
pulled the two halves apart and fastened the upper men take the time to hide
portion with a screw so that the crack was institu- these scamps under almost a
tionalized. The fix was as simple as loosening the century of obscurity? Slow
screw and mating the two pieces together again.
day at the factory? Fired from
the
Victorian
Christian
The mechanism was about what I expected: a lot of Greeting Card Company and
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