Aristocrat Clubman & Clubmaster

[drphat]

Wasn't happy with my sanding and paint on the two larger panels. The two pics show my first attempt. Have now been stripped, sanded and primed. Pics to follow.

[drphat]

Finally got the chrome pieces back. Started the red inlay straight away. Sorry about light flashes.

[drphat]

Final piece, ARISTOCRAT badge.

Handle is a little hard to get in with the new plating.

[badpenny]

You can get a belt of carborundum that goes on a belt sander.
Cut it open, wrap it around the boss, grip it with one hand and turn the handle, you'll only need a few microns off.

BP

[treefrog]

Just thought I would do a bit of an update on the timeline of the Aristocrat history. I was always very confused by the machine mentioned in the timeline Mr PM created with the New Clubman, as it looked the same as the Clubman. I then noticed there is a picture posted by Gameswat in the resources of a machine that fits timeline wise in 1954/55 which appears to have an appearance of a Clubman top and Clubmaster lower, with the associated name on the front and I suspect this is the elusive machine and design.

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There is an interesting article in Loose Change from Jan 1994 about the history of Aristocrat and they mentioned that only about 1000 of the new and standard Clubmans were made. This then mentioned a new machine called the Clubmaster being introduced in 1955, much more ornate, and with a run of only 2000 machines, which was then replaced by a machine just called 'the Aristocrat', in 1958, which was the first machine to have the new Aristocrat name on it. I suspect they got this the wrong way round as we know there are many Clubmasters (would not be surprised if more than 2000 exist today), and they also have Aristocrat written on them. What is interesting is that Aristocrat developed their own Bonus feature which, although we saw an electric version on later '60s machines, was a simple mechanical version of Mills Bonus, which was supposed to be much more reliable with less components, which initially paid 18 coins like Mills and then they reduced it to 10 coins with a version called the Reward. I had noticed the patent picture on this site of the Aristocrat had an empty space in the centre top without the ornate metalwork and wondered what this was, as below: