Webelos Craftsman Project - The Pinball Table

Last year, my Scouts were Webelos I’s. The boys wanted to build something that they could really have fun with for one of their Craftsman projects.  They came up with the concept of each Scout building his own pinball table with a bumper layout of his own design.  Interested in seeing more?

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Full plans will be available sometime in the future.

A Narrative

This was a ton of work, and it is the best thing I have done with my Cubs yet.  I was totally blown away with the boys achieving so far above what is expected for their age level.  A BIG plus was the individual time I had with each boy and parent!

It started as discussion with my Scouts about projects for our Craftsman pin.  I had put together a list that included some of the ideas from the WEBELOS book plus a few of my own.  I made up voting sheets for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.  During the discussion, one of the boys threw out the idea of a pinball table.  I looked at him kind of strangely, scratched my head and asked him "what kind of pinball table?"  He described a pine box with pegs and rubber binders for bumpers and wooden flippers.  All the boys picked up on the idea and it wound up #1 on 6 out of 7 boys lists.

I have a small basement woodshop and decided that if the boys were enthused about it, I wouldn't hold them back.  Here are the steps we did in preparation for construction:

- I did some R&D on the materials (available pine lumber dimensions, hardware availability for ball launch, rubber binders from the local office supply store, pinballs from local arcade repair/supply).
- The boys drew up their own no-rules pinball table.
- A friend with a real pinball table has an owners manual that shows some of the planning that went into figuring out the angles of the possible shots.  I shared an example of this with the boys and we discussed how game  designers go about planning a table.
- I came up with a basic box layout with launcher and chutes and drew up full-sized templates on poster board for each boy.  Manilla file folders worked well as cutouts for bumper shapes based upon the rubber binder sizes.
- The boys spent half of one meeting creating their layouts. There was lots of discussion and interplay between the boys regarding what and who's were the best ideas.
- The instructions to them were that they could do anything they could imagine,  even beyond the cutout shapes.  However, if it was something unusual, they had to be able to figure out what materials and how to build it.
- The next meeting, the boys made any last design changes and I met with each of them one-on-one to review their plans.  A number of them had things that they couldn't describe how to build.  A couple of them had electronics that their parents were not willing to spend for.  We had some bumpers that had to be moved around to accommodate the 1.06" ball.  A couple of the boys  came up with some real creative and feasible additions such as PVC tube for shutes.
- Then we dug into building.

In building this, I had a practical (and safe) limit of having tools for and working with two boys at a time (with at least one other parent present). Working with their parents, we scheduled each boy a 1.5-2 hour working session each week.  It took 6-7 weeks to complete.

This was not a kit project and the boys didn't get fully detailed instructions.   Each boy measured, figured, marked and cut almost everything.  Teaching the boys measurement fractions, adding, dividing and simplifying 1/4ths, 1/8ths, and 1/16ths, was a challenge.  Some boys picked up on it.  Some didn't.  These are 4th grade boys and this was 6th grade math.

I really wanted the boys to think through the project construction.  For example... We glued and nailed the sides of the box onto the bottom.  The bottom was 5/8"  think and the nails needed to go through the side and into the center of the base.  I had the boys think through where it was best to put the nails, figuring out that they needed to divide 5/8" in half to find its middle, and mark a line 5/16 of an inch up along one edge of the sides to position the nails.

The boys used the following tools in the construction:
 - Eye and ear protection
 - Hand tools (awl, coping saw, hammer, sanding block, mallet, wrench, and clamps)
 - Measuring tools (tape measure, speed square, and fine ruler)
 - Glue
 - Cordless drill/driver
 - Drill press
 - Scroll saw
 - Power mitre/chop saw

The drill press got a real workout.  We used a number of different bits including brad point and forestner.  Plus, a sanding drum saved a bunch of time.  The scroll saw was a real stretch for the boys, only one of them was not up to its challenges.

Here are the only things that I did for the boys in the construction:
 - Cut the base to dimension and routed the 1/4" deep channels to hold the chute walls.  (Table saw and routers are far too dangerous for the boys.)
 - Cut the fiber board into 1 1/2 inch strips for the chute walls on the table saw (the boys still had to measure and cut them to length).
 - Cut the bottom portion of the paddle to the correct thickness dimension (again, on the table saw).  The boys had to cut the length, including its curves and angles.
 - Cut the curved piece for the top of the launching chute (fingers needed to get too close to the scroll saw's blade).
 - Cut the metal pegs and ground the edges smooth for the paddle pivot (not a chance that I would have Cub age boys cutting metal)
 - Built the legs and marked the holes for attaching the legs to the box.

I really struggled with whether or not to build the legs for them, not wanting to take away from their sense of accomplishment.  Having the box level was going to be very important to how usable the game is. Level legs are really tough even for an adult amateur.  The boys had put so much effort into the box construction and had risen far above what is expected at their age level, it was worth having me build the legs and insure that they attached in a level fashion.  To achieve something approaching 1/64" accuracy and I use a marking knife when doing this by hand.  But, the boys drilled the holes and installed the anchors into the sides of the box for attaching the legs.  They just didn't do the measuring and the marking for where the holes needed to be.

Project cost for supplies was only $30 per boy, with $8 of that going for two pinball balls (one of which was given to the parents for safe keeping).

We spent a full den meeting playing with them and had a blast!  It was worth every minute.