It’s been tough to find time to work on the lane of late but I haven’t been completely useless. I did find the time to get the bowling lane completely leveled. Man that lane is heavy! 🙂 I had to be smart and use a prybar and a small piece of 2×4 to lift the lane up enough to shim it where I needed to. It wasn’t off very much but it has to be as close to perfect as I can get it in order to give the most fair and realistic bowling experience. I checked the lane every foot along the way and it is now perfectly level.

I have also finished and attached the cushion in the back of the pit. I am very happy with it.

My wife bought me 5 yards of black vinyl for my birthday (Thanks Honey!), WAY more than I needed, but that’s fine, especially since I have zero experience in working with vinyl.

Basically I measured how much of the area needed to be covered with vinyl. Allowed a couple of inches of extra material on each side and cut it. I attached the bottom first (from the inside) then inserted my “padding” (a couple of 16″ pillows that together span the 32″ pit), pulled the vinyl tightly over it, pulled it over the top/back of the pit, folded it under itself and then put some heavy staples in it. Not sure if it was the best way or not but it works for me and I think it looks great.

Since I now have the lane leveled the next step will be to attach the 1/2″ MDF underlayment for the lane surface. I’ll let you know when I get that finished and probably take some more pics.

I also need to add some polyurethane on the gutters. I used 3 coats of oil-based paint and they look great but I want to give them a little extra protection.

Thanks for stopping by and I’ll keep you posted.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 11th, 2008 at 7:48 pm and is filed under Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.