Scratch Built Gap-Win

[ollie h]

I haven’t posted for a long time as have been very busy with work and two young children but plan to contribute more where I can to keep this brilliant forum alive for all our fellow collectors to enjoy.

Please find enclosed some photos of my scratch built Bryan’s Gap-Win project. Just got the brass parts back from the platers so have now managed to re assemble everything and fine tune where necessary. Other than the ball maze all the internal parts have been handmade by myself to replicate an original and luckily I had an original to measure from and make patterns for the external brass playfield parts. Fortunately my dad is an engineer so I got him to turn the payout knob, thumb stops and we made the trigger handle out of cast brass and a steel shaft. The track, ball tilts and backplate are stainless steel. The corner castings I sourced on eBay years ago and are aluminium funnily enough but look the part and do the job.

The cabinet for me was the easy part as that’s my trade but I do have one last thing to replicate which I haven’t managed to measure or get a photo of as I only borrowed the door from a 4 square. This is the metal cash drawer that attaches to the back of the oak front.

Has anyone got an original that they could kindly photograph as I’m sure it will be fairly simple once I know the construction?

Hope you enjoy the photos and look forward to hearing from anyone.

[arrgee]

Absolute amazing job you have done ollie h. Very skillfully done. You should be very proud. I am sure William Bryan would be impressed with your work. It is great to see that there is still such skill out there - well done.

[bryans fan]

Excellent job!

[bryans fan]

20240222_101213a.jpg (79.23 KiB) Viewed 3309 times

[slotalot]

WOW!!! Superb job, well done.

[wembleylion]

Beautiful job. There is a lot of mechanism here to reproduce. Well done.

[special when lit]

Amazing! There's a lot of talented people on this forum.

[arrgee]

Just a thought ollie h, as it is such a good reproduction, will you date the machine or put some kind of inscription inside. It is easy for us all to recall in say 10 or 20 years (if we are still here) 'oh yes olli h made that' but in 50 years time?

[fruitbowl]

Excellent build. Did you have any problems getting the finished job to run smoothly?

[ollie h]

Many thanks for all the lovely comments and interest, and a big thanks to Bryan’s Fan for posting the crucial photos I needed of the lower cash box. This looks pretty straightforward so I will dig out a piece of Galvi tin and form it the best I can.

With regards to getting the machine to run smoothly, it was a bit of a fiddle to get the correct length of the chains to reset the levers and the other bit that was a headache was getting the right weight and pressure on the little steel retaining levers that keep the ball levers from moving once the ball has lowered them (too much and the ball won’t push them down and not enough means that they tend to move and reset themselves during gameplay).

As someone also mentioned I will inscribe my name and year somewhere on the machine for future collectors to identify.