Basement Arcade Skeeball!

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Imgpoz:
Now that all my pieces were cut I started the router part. I was lucky enough to have a hand-me-down router & table from my father so the budget was spared putting out more money. The Flush trim bit for a router is an amazing thing and I definitely am a novice when it comes to router experience; these are amazing tools if only I had the time & patience to master it. These are pretty easy to use, but the gist of it is, (with your good template on top and the raw piece on stacked under it) the spinning blade will keep shaving the bottom piece of wood, until you trim enough off that the roller piece on the top of the bit finally comes to rest next to your template piece. I’m sure others can explain it better, but see picture below and it will make sense. You will need to adjust the depth of your router, based on the thickness of the pieces you’re cutting, depth of your router table, etc.

I placed the new piece to be shaped on the bottom and my good master template on top. In order to keep the pieces of wood together (so the router can shave the bottom piece down to make it identical to the master template), cut strips of duct tape and roll them so they're like double sided tape. Place the wood pieces together one on top of the other (good on top/to be cut on bottom). Some overlap should be present all around. I then wore work gloves (A MUST!) and moved the template pieces as one, shaving each side with the flush trim bit. BE CAREFUL because depending on the angle you move around the trim bit, the router bit will cause the combined piece to ‘kick’ out of your hands and you may lurch forward onto to router bit (I’m not saying I did this, but not coincidentally I did take a slice out of my thumb that day; that’s why you wear gloves…)

I decided that my alley width would be 19”, so my math told me I was going to need 38 template pieces cut. Fortunately, I found some ¾” scrap in my pile so I wound up needing less overall cuts…

Imgpoz:
So you may be wondering why I duct taped the pieces together… its not only because I wanted to keep the pieces together when routering but also because when done routering I needed to drill a hole in the front and back parts of the pieces, so I could use a 24” dowel to hold the finished stack of them neatly together & lined up. I used a 5/16” diameter dowel and got 2. Use those as the top and bottom securing rods. Be sure to cut the hole while the pieces are still duct taped together so the holes line up exactly.

Imgpoz:
When everything is cut, routered and on the dowels it should look something like this. It took a decent amount of time and concentration to get here, but I really am glad I did this part early in the build and I feel empowered that what comes from here on won't be as hard! Note that somehow I was just shy of 19”, but since I intend to cover the alley and ramp with cork I figured this would work out ok down the line.

Imgpoz:
Now, its time to wood glue everything together a couple of pieces at a time, using clamps to keep things nice and tight while the glue dries. I glued 3 together at any one time and kept adding a few more every 2 hours, so the glue had time to set. Somewhere along the way I acquired a power sander so when everything was dry I gave it the best sanding I could and voila! I definitely didn't sand the ramp to be 'babies bottom' smooth, but the big lumps and burs are off and when I lay the cork on top it should lay pretty well. I decided to leave the dowel rods on for now and not trim them, that will come in later once I figure how to permanently connect the ramp to the sidewall pieces.

thatpurplestuff:
Very cool, welcome to the Skeeball club! Great progress so far!

One thing that looks a bit concerning is the last pic of the hop ramp. Hopefully it's just a distorted pic, but it looks like the right side of it warps up a bit compared to the left? If it's not just a weird pic, I would highly suggest you get that part level before trying to mount it since that could really throw a wrench at you when you try to get everything to fit together.

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