A Look Through The Eye Of A Bowling Ball

July 5, 2025 by Fenix Guthrie 16 Comments

If you are anything like us, last time you went bowling, you thought more about how the ball came back to you than actually knocking down the pin. Perhaps you even wondered what it would be like to be a bowling ball making its way back through mysterious and hidden machines. [Wren] and [Erik Beck] did as well, so they set out to make a bowling ball camera to find out.

At the heart of the contraption is an Insta360 X5 camera nestled between water-jet cut metal plates. Because each lens of the camera has a 200 degree field of view, anything in the overlap of the two lenses simply does not appear, so the two metal plates likewise, do not appear. This does leave a somewhat noticeable seam down the middle of the footage, but overall worked out very well. To prevent vibrations in the bowling ball, it can only be rolled along the plate line, making said seam appear in all the footage. Because the stabilization is happening purely digitally, and the camera itself is spinning with the ball, motion blur became an issue immediately. Fortunately increasing the shutter speed fixed the issue, along with an increase in ISO to compensate for the decreased exposure.

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Bowling With Strings Attached: The People Are Split

November 28, 2023 by Kristina Panos 52 Comments

There’s a bowling revolution in play, and not all bowlers are willing participants. In fact, a few are on strike, and it’s all because bowling alleys across America are getting rid of traditional pinsetting machines in favor of a string-based system.

In hindsight, it seems obvious to this American: attach strings to the tops of bowling pins so they can be yanked upward into holes that settle down the action so that the pins can be reset. In fact, European bowling “houses” have used string pinsetters for decades, instead of lumbering machinery that needs regular maintenance and costs several thousand dollars a month to maintain.

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Beautiful Table Made From A Bowling Alley

December 11, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 29 Comments

table

For a workbench, desk, or even a dining room table, there’s nothing quite like a massive piece of laminated maple put to use as the surface of a table. Whether in the form of butcher block, a shop class table, or in [Dillon]’s case, a reclaimed bowling lane, laminated maple provides one of the best possible table surfaces.

A while back, [Dillon] found someone on Craigslist willing to part with an eight foot section of a bowling alley for about $300. After trucking this two and a half inch thick, 250 pound monstrosity home, work began on converting it to a dining room table.

Bowling alleys are constructed by workers laying down maple strips and nailing them together one row at a time. This provides a stable surface when mounted on a concrete platform, but is completely insufficient for a table. To keep his bowling alley table from sagging, [Dillon] routed out three slots for aluminum bars going across the width of the lane. These bars were then screwed into each individual maple strip in the lane, resulting in a very sturdy surface.

The strengthened lane was then resurfaced with the help of a huge industrial belt sander and finished with a satin polyurethane. The legs of the table are made out of CNC’d 18mm Baltic birch plywood held together with metal fasteners.

The end result is a beautiful table ready to last 100 years. Considering [Dillon] spent less than $1000 on this table – and the price of eight feet of 2.5″ butcher block – we’re going to call this a win for [Dillon], his kids, and grandkids.