The Sands Mechanical Museum
News!
updated March 2018
We did a major update of the entire website. Dates were changed, services were updated, and art website were removed.
The Pocket Watch Museum is finished. We have worked hard to establish some prices, usually about 20% below what we think they should be. The entire collection is for sale. The list of watches is kept up to date and watchs that have not been sold should indicate the price.
The artist website we developed has been removed. The artists have moved their artwork to a commercial site.
We are busy creating YouTube videos of our lastest restoration work. We have published a series on how Shoot the Bear works and what the inside of Rudy on the Funhouse pinball contains.
The Sands Mechanical Museum
The Sands Mechanical Museum contains many mechanical wonders, including antique coin operated games, nimble cars like the Super Seven and Elise, and unusual time pieces. While it is a virtual museum, many of the mechanisms are real and can be seen by appointment.
The goal is to reference the wonderful world of mechanical marvels, to astound and amaze you with things mechanical, both old and new. We want to show you how things work. There is a sample of our work to show how varied our interests are.
The arcade games are often ingenious in their design and construction. They seek to entertain. The Lotus Elise is a very advanced automobile, providing more entertainment than just the ordinary travel appliance.
Welcome! We hope you enjoy your visit.
The museum has four major wings:
- coin op game museum (http://www.coinopgamemuseum.com)
- nimble cars (http://www.sandsmuseum.com/cars)
- pocket watch museum (http://www.pocketwatchmuseum.com)
- the Sands Mechanical Museum (http://www.sandsmuseum.com)
Coin Operated Arcade Games
Coin operated machines are the perfect thing to have in a mechanical museum. They are the results of the best creative minds of their time, and are built to entertain. Through time, they show the current state of mechanical and electrical engineering.
- Mechanisms see how the mechanisms inside the machines work
- Coin Operated Machines
- Chicago Express - an old pre-flipper pinball with ramps
- Confucius Say - a unique table from the 1920s
- Contact Jr. - historically significant, first to use electricity
- High Speed - an example of a full restoration
- Knockout - an old pinball machine with boxers fighting in the middle
- Ritz - art deco pinball, very simple
- Shoot the Bear - shoot at a ray of light at a little mechanical bear
Nimble Cars (Automobiles)
Automobiles are mechanical wonders. They can be basic transportation or they can be fun. These three cars all share one characteristic. They are nimble.
- Nimble Cars
- Lotus Elise from Lotus, a very light and minimalist car
- NSX is Honda's engineering master piece, an amazing car
- Super Seven, a street legal race car
Pocket Watches and other Time Pieces
- pocket watch museum has some antique pocket watches
- Spilhaus Clock, designed by Spilhaus and built by Edmund Scientific, shows the position of the stars, tides, phases of the moon.
- Geochron, shows the sun lit portion of the world and time on a scrolling map of the earth
- Lunarium shows the moon relationships, position of the sun and earth
Stuff
- Sail boat, radio controlled model, using high technology materials
- Sous Vide Temperature Controller, a new, scientific method of cooking with a precise temperature controlled water bath. Eggs are divine, as are steaks
- Matching Colors to Repair Clock Faces, by John B. Lord Sr., reprinted with permission from the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors journal.
- There are some jigsaw puzzles here as well.
- Velodyne ULD15 subwoofer amplifier repair and documentation
- Replace lamp in Itty Bitty Reading Lamp with a light emitting diode (LED).
Notes:
To find out more about the museum or to contact us, please visit the contact page. The staff of the Museum create web sites and are proud of their concert music sharing forum. You can see the cars' site map and the coin operated games' site map. The site maps for the pocket watch museum is accessible from the index pages.
Services available at the Sands Mechanical Museum
- We used to do Museum quality restoration of old coin operated games (1930-1960)
- Radio control model sailboat construction
- Automobile suspension tuning
- Frisbee dog training