Bang! Zoom! Straight to the moon!

[pennymachines]

Good photo of the marquee on this site in the museum! Though on measuring my game it's smaller...

If memory serves, the present owner of 'Beat the Goalie' had that top made, so may have scaled it to fit.

I wonder if the different style marquees were originally each suited to a particular size cabinet?

I wonder too. Maybe one day we'll know...
Anyway, looks like you've found your top. Now what to call the game?

...we could make some new postings and lump each maker all together?

It's an issue I've thought about. The fanatics like you, me, BP and a few others can usually point someone to the hidden thread. Must admit though, I'd forgotten that Museum pic you found. I do have a solution though, which I've been working on since you were a little boy (or it seems that way ). Nearly finished. Watch this space...

[gameswat]

"Lucky Stars."

Or "Moonjammer"

Or….never rmind.

J Peterson
Eggnoggin' Head in America

Nice try JP but there is already an Allwin by BMCo named "Lucky Star". While out in my workshop just now I was thinking about it absent mindedly and came up with what could be perfect............................. " Over The Moon"

[john t peterson]

Quite perfect, Gameswat.

If you wanted to tweak it a little with topical reference, it could be "To the Moon, Alice."

J Peterson
Moonstruck in America

[gameswat]

Been busy making the missing marquee. On resizing and making a pattern from PM's marquee photo I found that when you folded the pattern in half the two sides were all over the place! While the "Wineasy" example was almost perfect when folded, though it is about an inch shorter in height once scaled. And you can see in the photo that the "Wineasy" example has the tongue and groove joints running horizontal, instead of vertical on PM's. I decided to use the "Wineasy" pattern but with PM's vertical joints. There were several reasons for this, the sign is already in the "Wineasy" example and fits the shorter size perfectly, and because after cutting separate patterns for the four pieces I found the horizontal joint version was going to waste a huge amount of my great old wood, compared to the vertical joint style which uses shorter pieces and better suited the particular offcuts of wood I had to play with. Otherwise I'd have ruined some lovely long quartersawn oak planks that will come in handy for other projects. When I get time I'll find someone with a large scanner bed to copy the pattern for the site.

[badpenny]

You're not wrong there Gameswat old bean.

I guess that's a job for the admin team, as the last thing we want to do is trifle the free flow of knowledge from the contributors by dictating how they contributing.

Should Mr.PM decide to authorise and delegate such activity then I for one would be happy to tackle some sort of cross referencing that would help the situation, also the 2004 Rioja is a particurararley fine example that examples the fine nuss ness of it ..... that

[gameswat]

PM, hard to tell from your photo but is this inner profile around the glass just a flat chamfered angle, or a slightly curved profile? And depth is going to be 1/4" I guess. Thanks.

[pennymachines]

It has two flat chamfers, as illustrated, but the edge between them is rounded off.

[gameswat]

Thanks PM.

[gameswat]

Finally got some blades made for my table jigsaw machine and cut out the marquee, then sanded into shape, as shown here. But before that happened I did a huge amount of work rebuilding the cabinet. A lot was wrong! To begin with the top and bottom planks had been reshaped to remove the profiled edge, possibly by an operator to modernise the shape, or possibly to hide damage to the edges? Could have been a later restorer though because the wood had been hacked at. The machine had been painted at least 5 times by showman judging by the thick paint remaining on the plywood back, and it didn't even get painted every time the front did. But by the time Bob obtained this old photo of my game you can see it had been stripped and coated in a yellow varnish or stain. And you can see that by then the bottom rhd edge was cut off flush with the side, as was the top lhd edge!? Strange, I've had this before but always on the same side, I guess to make a machine fit a tight space. Then later still the game was stripped again and stained a darker colour with wood glued on to replace the two side edges, except the grain was running 90 degrees the wrong way. Just to add insult to injury the cabinet had been sanded back several times using a rough grit orbital sander, rounding the hell out of every edge and leaving nasty swirl marks everywhere!!! I thought about trying to clean the top and bottom panels up then straighten the edges and glue matching grain back to then re -profile. But by the time I'd have cut it back there wasn't going to be much left. I decided to remake the top and bottom using old wood, then clean up the other panels and glue it back together. Was going well until I stripped the stain off the door to discover it's a different wood! And after refitting the cabinet it didn't actually fit correctly anyway as sat back a little too far. So meant making a matching door too. I recycled a piece of the old base wood to use in the bottom mid section of the new marquee though.

[gameswat]

One positive about remaking the top and bottom panels was I could slightly shrink the cabinet size to better fit the door, which after shrinkage and over zealous sanding was a bit gappy.

[bryans fan]

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this master class on how to restore /conserve a machine. Done with integrity.

[gameswat]

Thanks Bryfan, just figure you need to put back at least as much as you take from this site to keep the equilibrium. Without Penny Machines and all the collectors filling it my work would've suffered terribly! So many large and small mysteries of mine have been solved right here in cyberspace thanks to the help of others who appreciate all the small details that make up these fascinating machines. Cheers to everyone's help and a great 2017.

[gameswat]

Doing some more research today trying to find exactly what the top glue on trim piece for this marquee looks like and went through my old AAM mags to look at Steve Hunt adverts as I remembered he was trying to buy BMCo machines. Found this Wineasy photo in a mag dated Jan 2003 with my style marquee but missing the trim. On closer inspection it's your marquee PM! I scanned and blew it up to size and laid it over your marquee and they are one and the same, though the advert photo doesn't enlarge well here of course. The woodgrain never lies, easy matches are the V grain in the middle of the top section (partly covered by the black line added by PM on his ) and the small triangular lighter wood piece just to the right of "T" in the word Latest.

[pennymachines]

I was careful never to call it my marquee, because, as your brilliant sleuthing has revealed - it's Steve Hunt's. He kindly lent it me to copy (a long time ago) and it was only your query that reminded me I still had it. I didn't know it was part of a complete machine. I must return it to him at the first opportunity, and hopefully retrieve something he owes me at the same time...

I think the arched glued-on piece should have a moulding profile similar to the edges of the machine top.

[gameswat]

Well thank goodness that non-mystery has been solved. I feel a right Scooby Doo. I'm sure you would've gotten away with it too if it wasn't for those darn meddling kids. What other spare part crimes have you tried to pull the wool over our eyes with all these years!?! Though isn't the UK law fairly strict about the lax return of borrowed vintage machine parts? Pretty sure the sentencing had something to do with hard labour in an electronics workshop repairing solid state Gottlieb pinball MPU's and Space Invader circuit boards!...#$%^*)$%&*(

[pennymachines]

What other spare part crimes have you tried to pull the wool over our eyes with all these years!?!

I have a machine Clive Baker lent me about 20 years ago. I told him he can have it back as soon as he remembers what it is.

[gameswat]

Time is such a weird concept..............I vividly remember watching a news report about it being 20 since Sgt Peppers was released, the year was 1987, and as I was born in 1969 that seemed like forever ago!?! Now 20 years ago seems like only.... yesterday, and all my troubles seemed so far away....... I've now been working on machines for 4/5ths of my life, believe it or not I started restoring for my father in the late 70's! To keep me off the streets a tad my folks made me go into the workshop for a weeks work every school holidays from 9 years old. And being the boss's son I was the lowest of the low, below even the work experience kids. My dad operated a lot of pool tables from the 60's onwards and by this time they needed decent work. So once the workers there knew I was coming in they'd save up the crappiest jobs for me, literally a pile would be awaiting me. Quite often I had to sand and polish alloy feet and corners from tables that had had the old chrome already stripped, leaving me looking pitch black by the end of the day. Then I had to paint strip the old finish from the tables, re-stain, then varnish. And the first time the chippy (not sure if you call carpenters that in the UK?) told me everything I needed was laid out ready to go. So after a full day working outside the table looked great. I proudly showed the chippy my job and he just laughed, saying look at your brown hands, why didn't I ask for rubber gloves because it'd be a week until the stain wore off.................... And he was one of yours, a Pommie!!

[gameswat]

From what I could decipher this is pretty close to what the pediment piece should look like. All routing is done so next job is an oval pattern to cut the glass.

[ddstoys]

Looking fantastic mate.

[widget2k4]

Absolutely brilliant mate you have some talent.