Expert: Rodger Knutson - 1/27/2010

Question
QUESTION: Hi there from down under,
I am fascinated by the really old pinballs especially the Shyver Cannon Fire Jr. It looks to be made alot of timber and that is my passion the old American stuff. I have gone as far to design and build my own style rolltop jukebox out of exotic timbers. Do you have a Shyver available to go to a worthy home and be restored to it's original glory or do you have pictures of one and I will build my own interpretation.

Regards

Jady

ANSWER: Hi Jady

Nice Work! Your a craftsman! I personally don't have a cannon fire Jr. pinball but I have answered questions about that model here, and you can do a search here for cannon fire and see all the questions and answers listed. Maybe someone will read this and be able to help you out, and if they do and respond to this, I will write you back for contact information and I can revise my answers here and get back to you again. As for helping you obtain correct photo's to take out to your magic room where you do all this fine work, (I love work like this!) yes, and you can obtain the photo's your requesting by following this link:

http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=4971

Also this will show you which books will have information about this Cannon Fire Jr. Pinball game listed in them.

Congratulations on a fine Job, and maybe someday I would like to come down under and box a Kangaroo, swim with the crocks, and hug a koala bear. If I tried any one of these, I think that I would never forget it, Right?

Take care Jady, and thanks for writing!

Cheers

Rodger Knutson

http://www.coinslots.com

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hi Rodger

Thank you very much for your response. I am very confident that I can reproduce a similar machine (my way of respecting the original designer as I love the style of machine for the day). My only challenge is the kicker design / cannon design. Is there any modern kickers that would suit a new manufactured cannon and if so can you point me in the right direction. Better yet does anyone have a cannon that I can get some detail pictures of.

Your help would be much appreciated, and yes I think you would remember the croc, though in zoos the kangaroo and koala are able to touched / pat.

Again thank you for your help.

Cheers from down under

Jady

Answer
Hi Jady,

Did you look at the close up of the cannons at: http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=4971

It looks like there may be a electric solenoid in the cannon that shoots against a pin, or uses its own armature as a pin to bump the pinball. I would think that something could be adapted to work inside a home made cannon using the solenoid idea. Outside of this, I don't know who or where you could find parts. It could be possible that you could locate original cannons on pinball web sites, ebay, or pinball magazines and pinball machine dealers, all good places to start a search. Maybe you could find a very bad condition cannon fire jr. machine and use all the original parts, which would work really good in your case. But, it's going to take some digging on your part to try to locate this stuff. Give a try at searching for parts on ebay and under pinball, or pinball parts, maybe pin table parts, or even under arcade, searching both here in the U.S.A. and maybe other country's. Good luck Jady, and if you do build one please send me a photo OK? My email address is Jackpot7@q.com  please do me a favor and leave some feed back here at allexperts for me, the feed back is my only pay and thanks for spending hours helping people here.

Thank You
Rodger Knutson
http://www.coinslots.com