Post #360341 by AkuAku on Sun, Feb 10, 2008 7:29 AM

Hey there, been awhile. I'm back in Australia now with this machine safely sitting in my workshop. One of the first things i did on unpacking this piece was to strip back the red and blue paint to see what was going on underneath - well, not even a spot of any other paint there, just a burnished finish to the alloy surface. I'm pretty well certain the castings were left just like this from new, without doing anything it's already a grey stone looking finish. I also stripped off the layer of added oak side veneer, which shows the grey painted finish underneath. I tracked someone down in the US who can make me a perfect set of replacement reel strips using the award glass artwork, though still haven't found the time to organise that......give me a break, I currently own just over 100 other vintage coin-op machines all needing at least this much work or a lot more!!! And after a lot of time spent searching the net I've still not found any photos of these machines inside the AkuAku resataurant. Very frustrating to say the least. There has to be images out there somewhere.....................................................I did find photos from Thor Heyerdahls book, Aku Aku "The Secret of Easter Island" and after seeing images of the complete stone carvings, head and body, it seems to me that the reason my cabinet has shoulders down on the sides is that the missing stand was the matching body! akuaku