Caille 4 Reel Superior Jackpot identified

[coppinpr]

I've got the machine in my possession now (although I don't own it). It is a Callie and not a copy in the real meaning of the term, but it has had changes.
I now know its history. It was working in an arcade in Wales from the late '30s until 1949 when the operator pensioned it off. He had several and offered one to the present owner's father who was a friend of the operator. It was used as a curiosity within the owner's house while his kids grew up and was stored away around 1960. After the father died the machine went to his son the current owner who (I'm pleased to say) wants to keep it in the family.

My guess is it was imported for arcade use and was converted to 1d. It has lost its escalator (which should be visible through the right side window) which has been replaced with a straight drop for the 1d. The jackpot is, I think, a replacement and now uses 1d with the auto feed removed and a hand feed slot added to the lower casing. This brings me to that lower casing. My guess is the machine had a new lower casting fitted as part of the UK refit to suit the payouts and the JP. (Didn't the bigger revampers do this a lot I seem to remember?)
One thing I can't understand are the holes drilled in the lower casting, clearly drilled in careful and specific places, but what do they do?
I'm going to clean and possibly repaint it as the owner recently had a friend try and paint it gold. It didn't work! I can of course replace the top card and reel strips BUT it's going to be hard to position the reel strips correctly, especially if the payouts were changed during the ve-vamp.

[highfield]

Please post pictures as you work on it.

[brigham]

That MUST be a Jackpot Front off something else.
Have the wooden sides been cut away to make it fit?

[coppinpr]

No.

[coppinpr]

I've disassembled the Callie now and it's very interesting. I've not worked on one before. As far as the case and castings are concerned, all the castings have the same bolts holding them in place and there are no cuts in the wood to indicate any changes ( I still believe the lower front is a purpose made replacement fitted when the UK re vamp was done). The jackpot is fitted to the casting and is an interesting affair in itself,

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It's large and has a reserve activated by the cam which also advances the counter every time the jp system runs. The large area on the left is just the delivery chute for the normal payouts.

the jp is hand-fed from the top and the tube under the entry acts as the reserve jp.
The first thing I thought about the mech was "same theory but a different way of doing it" and "much lighter built than machines like mills". Lots of parts on the mech that are slightly different from Mills and the like, the clock is not driven by a large spring like the Mills but by a lighter spring that is connected to one of the bars the clock moves as part of its job, the springs on the rachets are much nicer than Mills, simple bent wires and fixed to the top making them easy to remove and replace, they look light and flimsy BUT my guess is these are original and once I freed up the rachets they work perfectly after over 90 years (I found a date stamped on the mech 10/31) the "dog & cog" unit is also very different and again much lighter built. The fourth reel is smaller than the other three and I'm sure they squeezed it in to fit the dimensions of the earlier three reelers.

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One thing that is not lightly built are the slides, they are massive, the top slide is over 3 inches wide and all are large and very thick.

Two questions: next to the dog & cog there is a small, free-hanging pendulum, not attached to anything other than its hook. It looks to be adjustable. What is this for?
And next to the reel bundle, on the right side, is a well-made, obviously original counter. This counts from 1 to 7 and clicks once every play. Why?

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[coppinpr]

As an update to the above post,
I found out today when I cleaned and serviced the jackpot that the "reserve" jackpot is, I guess, not a reserve at all as we know it. It would seem that every time the cam operates just one coin falls from the reserve tube into the jackpot. What I can't find out is how this reserve activates other than by hand. There is no mechanical linkage, BUT this would mean loading the reserve tube from outside the machine, then removing the mech and working the slide with the raised lever over and over again to refill the JP. The counter would show just how many coins you added in total. A bit convoluted, but it would mean the man in charge of the money could load the reserve at any time, and then leave it to the engineer on duty to refill the JP as needed without any risk to the cash. Does anyone have any other ideas on this?

[coppinpr]

update two
had to post this, I re-sprayed the castings today and was thinking about what to do with the holes in the lower casting, When I looked closely two do not go all the way through but the third turns out to be the answer to the JP operation, its actually a kind of keyhole, rather than a key it takes a thin rod with a hex head. you load the reserve jackpot from the slot on top of the lower casting and the coins sit in the reserve tube. then you insert the hex bar from the front of the casting and rotate it, every full turn activates the slide on top of the jackpot unit allowing one coin to drop into the jackpot clicking up the counter on the jp at the same time (interesting but slow) anyone else seen this type of thing before?

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[coppinpr]

Well it's finished. I sprayed it "white gold" which is more towards silver than the first photo shows. Mech degreased, cleaned and lightly oiled, a couple of new springs and everything works as it should. All castings removed for spraying, new satin finish on the wood case, all new artwork and that makes a huge difference (I need to drop the strip on the first reel a tad).