After seeing the threads from
Ixliam and
ThatPurpleStuff, I've been wanting to make my own Skee Ball machine. I wasn't real interested in the woodworking and ramp creation aspects of the project, so I tried to find a Skee Ball machine locally that I could fix up.
Eventually, I found a pair close enough to pick up, 1 in good shape, the other not so much, neither of them working.
I paid too much for them ($600 for the pair), but finding a 14' Skee Ball machine in MI is relatively rare as far as I can tell. Still, a far cry from the $75 Skee Ball machines I see people here talking about buying. I figured I'd put the prices up here for other future Skee Ballers as a point of reference.
Anyway, I got them home and had to figure out some way of getting them into the basement. The ramps on these machines are 10' long, so they couldn't make the turn to start going down my basement stairs. We ended up opening a window in the basement and putting them in through the window. 30 minutes and some red paint on my walls later, I had all the parts for both machines in my basement.
After taking stock of what I had, I figured out everything that was missing, both nets/frames, 15 balls, one service door, 1 net clip, 2 of the circuit boards, and a whole lot of bulbs. So I had a couple days of buyer's remorse, and then put up a
WTB post here and got started on restoring the lesser of the 2 machines. The machines weren't made by Skee Ball, but appear to be very similar in design. They have the "Winner" marquee.
The only other machine I can find that looks like them is a 6' model rented out by (
Four Seasons Amusements). From the stickers on the PCBs, they are from 1983 at the earliest. Given that the machines are over 25 years old, they have held up pretty well. Finding true replacement parts for them though, probably not gonna happen.
This machine had clearly seen better days though, and was originally constructed using glue and 1" staples. Someone had come along afterwards and driven screws into it to add a bit of stability, but it was still a mess. Aside from one problem area, the side panels on the cab were still in pretty good shape.
(more pictures at the bottom)
So I took out all the electronics (more on that later), all the screws, all the horizontal wood pieces, and then all the staples. The machines were made with 3/4" plywood, so I went off to Lowes and bought a 4x8" sheet of 23/32" sanded pine plywood to make replacement parts. Turns out the stuff I bought is about 1/16-1/8" thinner than the original, but that shouldn't be a big deal for what I'm doing (plywood comes in such weird thicknesses anyway).
Cutting everything up was pretty straightforward. Only tricky parts were getting the 15 degree angle on the front of the top piece, and routing out the edge of this piece. I only have a circular saw, so I made a little guide for it, set the blade at 15 degrees, and then just ran it along the edge of the piece to put the angle I needed on it.
Routing out the space for the T-molding was tricky, since it needed to be routed perpendicular to the face, which was 15 degrees off with respect to the rest of the piece. I have a 1/16" slot cutting bit, so still should be no problem in a surface-mount router. Don't have one of those that fits the 1/2" shank bit that I have
, so ended up just doing the cut with a table saw and a thin blade.
Is there a way to have my inline pictures be small, but clickable to expand the way the attached pictures are? The picture sizes I have right now are a little overkill.