[Jukebox-list] 3W1 questions

[Joey McDonald]

Doug,

I have been restoring 6 wallboxes over the last few months. I think Ron is right
about the color variations. There is variations in the color of the white and the red.
As well as the "font" of the buttons. 

I bought 3 NOS sets and they do match each other. Not cheap.
I used 2 sets for the wallboxes and 1 set for my Seeburg C.

If you look at enough of these wallboxes you will find that some
have had a few of the buttons replaced and they never match. I guess replacing a button that has 
been broken , missing, burnt or whatever will look better than a damaged one.

A set of matched buttons looks way better than a mismatched set. I asked a similar question
about a year ago with a few replies. One was the sanding reply. I did not try that.

First I would clean them. The best way I found was to use "MR Clean Lemmon".
It comes as a liquid. Get a spray bottle and mix 50/50 with water. Lay out a towel
that you don't mind ruining and lay out the buttons with the white side up. Spray the buttons
lots and watch years of grime slide off. Rinse them in water and repeat untill no more dirt comes off.
Then, turn them over and clean the rest of the button back. 

This will completely clean them. Some people have used "simple green" as well.

To shine then up you can hand polish with various types of car polish.
I would use a polish that does not contain wax in it. Wax will yellow again.
I used the Meguirs polish. On easy off easy. Shines up nice.
Novus would work good too. Pinball guys use Novus alot.

To whiten a button to match the set better can be done with bleach.

Mix 50/50 with water. You can dip the button the be whitened in the bleach.
Don't use the fancy color safe bleaches. Get the real stuff.
Dip for no more than 5 seconds at a time. It will whiten quickly. You can do the
complete set but get them matching as close as possible first then dip the whole set
to get the white you want. 

A tip here is to dip the buttons but dont have them touching eachother. 
This is important. 

There is alot of these wallboxes out there. There is not as many that are nice ones.
It took a bit of time for me to buy 6 that were complete and not rusted inside.
I bough nice cleans ones to start with.

I sent ot the chrome to be plated. Each wallbox is $200 CDN for plating.
That's the cover, coin entry casting and top ring.

Victory Glass now has a listing for this buttons set and will be available
in the near future. They are in the online catalogue as "available soon".
But it has said this for 3 months now.

Hope this helps.

Joey McDonald