Introduction

Welcome to Small Scale Bowling. This website is dedicated to my on and off again 30 year project to build a scaled down bowling alley for the home. This is a 1/2 scale rec room style bowling alley. I am currently designing and building a semi-automatic pinsetter. Photos and progress updates are in the works.

Brief History

About 30 years ago I had a an interest in designing a 1/3 scale bowling game. My vision was a game suitable for home recroom use, much like a billiard table. I built two such 1/3 scale games. I still have the original. I also built one of the 1/3 scale games for Youngstown State University's student center.

I also had a desire to design and build an automatic pinsetter. I spent considerable time in the early 80's on the pinsetter project. I managed to build some working mechanisms.

I revived the project again in the early 90's to attend and display the game at the IBPSIA trade show in Milwaukee. I changed the scale from 1/3 to 1/2, thinking that 1/2 scale would be more realistic while still being small enough for home use.

In a short period of time (probably less than 3 months), I designed and built the 1/2 scale game for the IBPSIA event. I had the pins lathed at a local wood shop, I had a friend cut most of the wood. I spent many days building the beast! As before, this was the alley only - no pinsetter. In the gallery pictures, these are the lane sections that have the blue stripe.

Some time after the trade show, the 1/2 scale bowling project got set aside again. Recently however, I have begun work on it. The most recent changes include a new 8 ft lane section and new pins and ball from Linds. Total length of the lane is now 24 ft, about 6 ft shy of full 1/2 scale length. And the new pins and ball are extremely realistic.

Half-Scale Mechanical Pin Release Prototype Completed!

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