A gentleman I had corresponded with who was also building a half-scale lane told me about some exact half-scale pins he found online. I shared the good news with my soon-to-be bride (who could not be more supportive of me and my dream, thank you Baby!) and she went out and contacted the company and surprised me with a new set of exact half-scale pins and an exact half-scale bowling ball for my wedding gift.

The pins are amazing, they are manufactured just as regulation-sized pins are, made of wood and plastic coated. They even have a glow effect under black light. They are amazing and very realistic, just exactly what I needed. So I knew that I could move ahead with the exact half-scale lane project now that I had the perfect pins and ball to compliment it.

Here are some shots of the new pins and ball.

New pins under the pindeck light

Artsy, outdoor shot of a pin

Left to Right: new pin, new ball, original, antique pin

Below: Pins under blacklight

Since I didn’t have the room required for a regulation-sized lane (it’s nearly 78 feet from the start of the approach to the end of the lane on a regulation lane) I started working with scaling the lane down to a size that I could put in my basement. Then I realized that the pins and balls have to be scaled to match whatever scale you are using or it will not work. I decided to use half-scale dimensions for the lane and looked for exact half-scale pins and ball.

I ran across an antique set of pins on Ebay in perfect shape, they were solid maple pins with 2 hand-turned solid wood balls. They were slightly less than half-scale so I started to make all of my dimensions off of that. The calculations weren’t nearly as easy as just dividing everything in half.

Here is the original/concept pindeck and pins. To match the scale of the ball and pins the lane is only about 18 3/4 inches wide. The pindeck is 3/4″ MDF with about 5 coats of polyurethane on it.

Below is the original game we played. We used the 4 foot pindeck, attached to an 8 foot piece of 3/4″ OSB flooring with a couple coats of polyurethane on it. I even made a makeshift ball return. My daughters and I had a lot of fun playing.