wooden ball cups

[boatman37]

just wondering if a wooden ball cup would have any affect on the ball. maybe oil from the wood? I have a small CNC machine in my garage and made a ball cup out of wood. need to order one but figured until then i would just make one. plan to make a few more for my teammates and engrave their names in them. So any idea if the oil or anything in the wood might affect the ball? Not planning on staining or painting it unless i would need to to seal it. just going to leave it plain pine

[bowl1820]

Shouldn't be a problem, they sell wood ones.

[boatman37]

Cool. Will get a pic of mine and upload it. The one I made earlier has my name in it. Next one I will get a pic before the name is in it.

[Phonetek]

For the longest time I used the cups electrical tape came in with a towel over it, never hurt a thing, yours should work perfectly

[Davidjr113]

From another forum.....

Quote In the current (October) issue of BJI, there's a round table summary of 3 dfferent bowling technical people suggesting ways of preventing cracking.
Hank Boomershine of Roto-Grip/Storm strongly suggested my idea: keeping balls in their original plastic bags. He has an experiment running: storing balls on wooden and metal racks. He suggests that the wooden racks draw the water from balls allowing them to crack, while metal does not Unquote

Personally I am going to try storing mine in large heavy duty freezer storage bags as my racks are wooden and being a snowbird, they could sit awhile

[boatman37]

Here are the first few. The one with Dan in it is slightly different as I wasn't sure what depth I would need so you see there is a 'step' inside the lip. It wasn't deep enough so I drew up a 2nd cut about .15 smaller diameter than the first one. The 2nd and 3rd ones I just deepened the initial cut. The total height is .75", 5" diameter, and .60 deep. Could have made them a little better quality but it will get the job done...lol

[bowl1820]

They look pretty good, Though I might would take some sandpaper and round the edges a little where the ball sits. Plus maybe fill in the engraved names with black or color filler stick would look sharp.

[boatman37]

Those just came off the machine when I took those pics. I will scuff them slightly to get rid of the burrs. I could even round those lips off using a different bit but these were quickies to give to my team. Not going to do anything else with them but they can color in the names or stain them if they want. The one that says Dan is mine (because that's my name...lol).

With wood (especially soft wood like pine) you have to be careful with bleeding when you use color. If I were to shade in the names then I would use a product called Signmask and cut into that then seal the letters with a few coats of shellac then paint the letters. Too much work for all these are going to be doing. And with the smaller letters there is a chance the signmask gets ripped then you end up going 'out of the lines' and making it look worse. A few nice coats of stain will make those letters stand out a little more and look pretty good. I might stain mine later but I plan to give these to the guys Tuesday so not much time and they can stain them if they want.

These blanks were actually bought from a craft store. I had planned to make the whole thing from scratch but wife wanted to stop at the craft store and I saw these so bought all 4 they had left. All I did on these was draw it up in my CAD program and cut out the 'dish' and engrave the name. I have one blank left but the last 2 I do will be from a piece of 1x8 so it will be from scratch. I already have the program done for those. Just have to put it in the machine, clamp down my 1x8 and hit Go. I'll post pics of those when they are done. Probably do those tomorrow.