Nestled in rural Dunn County roughly halfway between Menomonie and Eau Claire sits Restoration Station, one of the few repair shops for vintage jukeboxes that remain in the country.
DUNN COUNTY (WQOW) – Nestled in rural Dunn County roughly halfway between Menomonie and Eau Claire sits Restoration Station, one of the few repair shops for vintage jukeboxes that remain in the country.
John and Pat Cartmill are the proprietors of the business, and John has spent the last 14 years professionally returning old jukeboxes, arcade machines, and much more back to their original glory.
Restoration Station is located on N4066 810th Street, Elk Mound, WI.
“There’s not many of us around that do this,” John explained as even when he started there was a network of dozens of jukebox repairers with decades of experience who’ve slowly dwindled away over the years.
“Do you want it working? Do you want it working and semi-cosmetically cleaned up? Do you want it up to where it’s going to be a showpiece in the house? Do you want it as close to new as possible? Or do you want museum-quality, and that’s the five levels that we go on,” Cartmill said.
With restoration projects, Cartmill noted that each machine is different when it comes to the work goes into it.
“Other ones that are rough we’ll take them right down to the bare bones and either refinish them, repaint them, some of them have laminate that you have to re-laminate on the outside, we’ve had some we’ve had to actually rebuild and rebuild the whole case on it,” Cartmill said.
A tabletop jukebox restored by John Cartmill. These jukeboxes used to line tables in diners and allowed restaurant-goers to pick the songs from their own table rather than have to get up and go to the main jukebox.
Preparation is also important for each project.
“You can buy manuals online for just about every jukebox, pinball machine, and arcade,” Cartmill said. “The parts on the other hand are a little more difficult, now there are some — almost like salvage yards that have jukebox parts and pinball parts that you can buy used, same with neon you can buy used, other times you have to find an original piece.”
Cartmill said he’s never had to use traditional advertising, as word-of-mouth is enough to keep him busy with the dwindling number of jukebox restorers across the country.
“Well the biggest thing is that unfortunately we have to say no a lot just because of the amount of large projects that we get called on and some of these restorations have been here two and three years just because of rarity on parts,” Cartmill said.
According to Cartmill, there’s also work that he needs to outsource like chroming or neon bending that also suffer from declining experts which leads to further delays.
As for his future, Cartmill said he plans to continue his work until he is physically unable to do so and that with well over 100 machines at his shop, he has enough work for several lifetimes.
Generally, Restoration Station is open from Tuesday to Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and also has some restored arcade machines, jukeboxes, neon signs and more on-hand that are for sale. Next door Cartmill’s wife Pat runs the Patty Shack which is an antique and art studio which is also open during the same times.
Some of the vintage bar decor that John Cartmill has on-sale at the Restoration Station.
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