1934 Stoner Super-8 Restoration: The Magic Button

The Super-8 has a feature dubbed the Magic Button. I am not sure why they advertised it as such as it is not a button at all but maybe it is magical... :)

This is how the feature works.

If you are having a really good game and you have used up all your balls and most are in high scoring holes but a few landed in the bottom where they all are valued at 100 each (there are no zero spots), you can push in a rod (the magic button/rod) under the coin slide before entering another coin and it will only return the balls in lower 100 spot and leave the rest on the playfield so you can continue your game.

The way it works is this. Under the playfield there is the shutter which when pushed forward by the coin slide returns all balls other than the ones in the lower 100. At the same time the slide pushes on a metal piece under the 100 hole which swings towards the front of the machine and drops any balls held there.

Under the shutter there is a metal piece that when the slide is pushed in, it pushes the metal piece forward and moves the shutter towards the back of the machine as normal. The metal piece under the shutter is hinged however so when the magic button rod is pushed in, it tilts the metal piece back and up so that when the slide is pushed in it goes under it and thus only releasing the bottom 100 hole captive balls.

In the attached pictures you can see the hinged part under the shutter and the metal piece under the 100 hole.

Hinged piece attached to the shutter. When lifted the coin slide cannot push it.

100 hole ball return piece

The machine was missing the magic button rod so had to make one out of 1/4" steel rod. I needed knobs both for it as well as the ball loader rod as it was missing. I could not find plastic ones to match the one on the plunger so used wooden ones which are very close in shape and will paint them black when it is warmer out. To prevent the magic button rod from being pulled all the way out, I drilled a 1/4" hole in a superball and slipped it on. It is snug enough to keep the rod from being pulled out but can be slid off if I need to take the rod out.