Building a Simple Pinball Game

When I was young, my friend Paul had a Japanese Pachinko machine. If you've never seen one of these in action, you are missing out. Little metal balls plinking back and forth down a maze of little pins. It is really something to see. Think of it as the love child of a modern pinball machine and the "Plinko" game from "The Price is Right" that grew up to be a slot machine. Anyway, it is fascinating to watch and fun to play with.


I really liked that sound and feel and always wanted one. Once I grew up, I found out that stuff like that COSTS MONEY! (Who knew?) So for Christmas about seven or eight years ago, I decided to make something similar for my daughters.


Before I share how I made mine - time to put that BA in History to use and share a little pinball history.

It all started because French soldiers brought a game called Bagatelle to America during the Revolutionary war. It caught on and stayed a part of the new country. Basically, think of it as a mini pool table with more holes. It has wood pegs blocking the holes to make it more difficult. Here is an old political cartoon with President Lincoln at a bagatelle table. (Jeeze, it must have taken cartoonists weeks to make these drawing. Makes you wonder if their editors were ever like, "This is great stuff, but the war ended six years ago so it isn't quite as topical as we'd like...) 


Eventually smaller tabletop bagatelles (begatellei? bagatelleum?) became popular as a saloon or parlor game. Metal pins replaced the wood pegs and it became more of a gravity game with a ball pushed to the top of the board and it finding its way through a maze of pins to various holes. In 1871 the patent was granted for the first plunger for launching the ball (replacing the stick) and pinball was born.

Pinball machines honestly have a bit of a shady past. They had a bad reputation partially because they were seen as games of chance and not games of skill. (The "flipper" didn't even come around until after WW2.) Free game tokens could be traded back in for cash, so they were in effect slot machines. Seeing as how those are illegal in most places, so were pinball machines. In fact, they were illegal in NY City well into the 1970s.


Study your notes on this. There will be a quiz on it next Thursday followed by everyone having to watch The Who's Tommy and pretend like they liked it.

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Now on to making one.


This was one of my "proof of concept/leap of faith" toys. I knew what I wanted at the end and knew what I had on hand to make it. When you make stuff like this just take your time and think a little ahead. You'll do fine.


I had a piece of 1/2" thick plywood that was 11" wide by 17" long. Most interior/furniture plywood will have at least one smooth side. Just be sure you are using a smooth side as the playing surface. Next I did my measurements. One thing is that you want to minimize stuck marbles. The average size of the marbles I have lying around is 1/2" so I knew the space between pins needed to be at last that wide. I also knew that I don't want any marbles to have a path to just fall straight through without some plinking around. So... I set up a pattern starting 1" down the board and marked each point with a pencil where the pins/nails would be in rows with offset columns. Each nail in the row is one inch from the next nail. The next row was one inch down and then offset by 1/2" with pins one inch apart. I then had a strip of 1/2" wood as my depth guide and just started tapping in the nails one at a time until I finished 1" from the bottom. It ended up looking like this:

168 3/4" brads each driven in 1/4". I know... I'm freakin nuts!

Honestly, you'd be surprised how fast this went. One thing that made it easy was that I was just working on a flat piece of board at this point. I had not attached the sides or bottom yet.

Next came the sides and bottoms. I had some 3/8" thick by 1 5/8" wide strips that I used for the frame on three sides. Across the top I used a piece of 1/4" thick x 1/2" wide trim to cover the end of the plywood. No fancy joinery here. I just used end buts, a little glue and few brass nails to hold it in place. Then I laid out the scoring area by cutting pieces of the 1/2" trim and gluing them on edge one inch apart across the bottom. Printed numbers on paper glued to spots finished this off.




I wanted this to be played anywhere so I added an adjustable leg to the back that lets you set the angle that you are playing at. I drilled a 1/4" hole into a 2 3/4" piece of the side/bottom wood. I then glued it off center on the back of the board. After it had dried, using a thumb screw, washers and a butterfly nut, I attached a 17" piece of that wood that I had rounded off its top.

The higher the angle the faster the ball drops. At the lower angle the balls are less likely to leave the table while falling. You can drop pennies and dimes as well and they are fun to watch, but they tend to get stuck on the 1/4" dividers at the bottom. (So maybe use thinner dividers or no nails directly over the holes.)




So there you go. Here it is in action.





We've played it as just highest score with each marble, high score with five marbles or "first one to twenty." It has held up pretty well over the years. Just the occasional nail straightening or the support arm being re-glued.

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Making a Toy WW1 Tank (Part 4)

British Tank	Part 1	|	Part 2	|	Part 3	|	Part 4
German A7V	Part 1	|	Part 2	|	Part 3	|	Part 4

So the last things to do are make the sponsons, assemble, paint and finish the toy. (And play with it before I have to give it away.) All in all, not so bad and not too many surprises ahead.


The sponsons on the sides are a defining feature of British WW1 tanks. I want them to move but still be sturdy. It would be nice to have the gun barrels move left and right as well as up and down, but at this scale they would have been a little fragile and probably a bit droopy. So a few doodles and a test cut or two later a pretty simple solution came up.

I took another piece of 2x3 and drilled a 3/4" hole through it with a spade bit. Then I took a 3/4" piece of dowel and set it down into a "V" made out of... you'll never guess... the little support corners from a clementine box! (Clementine boxes really are the onions of the frugal toy making world.) I drilled a 1/4" hole about half way through that dowel and then inserted a piece of 1/4" dowel into it. (Don't glue it into place yet though. If you do, you won't be able to make some of the cuts coming up.)

Drill all the way through and make sure you have a thick enough piece of scrap under it.	Simple jig that makes it easy to hold any size dowel in place. The triangles are glued down.

I cut the large dowel down to about 1 5/16" with the 1/4" hole being in the middle. I didn't want too tight of a fit because I want the gun to rotate without binding. With the barrel dowel in place I checked the fit and marked the widest point in the arc of the barrel rotation and then made straight cuts with the bandsaw. I tested the fit and made sure the larger dowel could rotate freely but not be pulled out to the front. Then I trimmed the sponson to the rough width and length.

I rotated the barrel through 90 degrees and marked where I need to make the cuts.	Here is the "rough cut" of the sponson along with the 1/8" plywood that will make the roof and floor.

I used clementine wood that had printing on it for the roof and floor. I just made the printing inward facing because often that paint will "bleed" through the acrylic craft paint I use to finish toys. (Note to self - look for non-toxic primer.) I have plenty of clear wood I could have used, but I wanted to leave a little proof on a hidden inside part of the tank that this had been built using food box wood. It might seem psycho, but I felt like it was a little "shout out" to Homer McNeil and his toys.

Use enough glue to get a solid seal all the way around. Use clamps and be sure not to get any glue on the dowel that holds the barrel. It needs to be able to rotate freely.	Don't glue the barrel in until after the top and bottom have dried and you have finished shaping the sponson.

I used a combination of the bandsaw and belt sander to get the final shape I wanted. There was a wide range in the shapes of the sponsons on the British tanks depending on the model number and the number of guns it carried. The next one I build might have a smaller dowel and barrel towards the back to house a machine gun. Anyway, mine doesn't match an exact version, but it captures the general idea.

Obviously, you'll need to make two sponsons. Make sure that your cuts and sanding match up.  Now you can glue the barrels in.

Here we go, the home stretch. I painted it olive drab with the red and white recognition stripes at the front.
I glued and clamped the sponsons one at a time so that I could be sure to line them up how I wanted them.
I did change the location of the nylon clacker to the back of the tank and held it in with a small brass screw. It sounds better clacking "in" rather than out on the gear and it looks like it will be less wear on it. (Actually, I'm gonna keep an eye on it to see if it holds up. I might experiment with a thin metal one instead.)

A scornful look from a black cat isn't required at this stage, but it seemed to be help.	The infamous "clacker" in place. Cut from a surplus nylon Venetian blind slat.

The large letter/number combinations at the front of the hull were unit identifications in WW1. The smaller numbers at the back were tank serial numbers. I personalized the tank for my friend's kid by making his birthday the serial number and used a play on his name for the unit ID. I painted the letters and numbers using a very fine point brush and... yes... a toothpick.

The tops of the tracks are painted grey.	I did add small driver shields and painted small slots on them.

The last thing I fixed was the machine gun. I really didn't like how the 3/16" dowel looked. To fix it I drilled a 1/16" hole in the center of it and then expanded that hole with a 1/8" hole (doing it like that prevented splintering) and then put a piece of 1/8" dowel into that hole.


After the painting was done, I gave it a coat of spray acrylic and then gave it a test run on the floor.





All in all, not so bad. Nothing too tricky (although there must be an easier way to make the clacker... just saying.) Without the paint, I think this could be knocked out over a weekend without any problem.

Here are the rough plans as a cutting guide. BE SURE TO SET THE IMAGE TO PRINT LANDSCAPE! The tank tracks should be a little over 8" from tip to tip. I tapered the back of my sponsons but like I said, I might add smaller guns at the rear on the next one. (And there definitely will be a next one.)

British Tank	Part 1	|	Part 2	|	Part 3	|	Part 4
German A7V	Part 1	|	Part 2	|	Part 3	|	Part 4

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Making a Toy WW1 Tank (Part 3)

British Tank	Part 1	|	Part 2	|	Part 3	|	Part 4
German A7V	Part 1	|	Part 2	|	Part 3	|	Part 4

I want the tank to make a noise as it is pushed. This is the "clacker" idea I mentioned earlier. Looking at other toys and thinking about cardboard in my bicycle spokes (I never would have ruined a real football card) I knew I needed to make a geared wheel with something flexible that intersected it at a right angle. As the wheel turns, that flexible something would make a clicking noise with each tooth on the wheel as it passed.


I used a 1 1/4" hole saw on a 1/2" piece of oak. (What? Toy Making Dad using using real wood? Scandal! -I know, but in fairness, it was a piece of scrap and this part really needs to be made out of hardwood.) This fit perfectly in the space I had on the axle between the other two wheels.


I used to have a job where one of the "guiding principles" was "Why make it simple, when you can make it complex?" With that, I present the 5 step program that takes about 4 times as long to type as it does just to make the silly geared wheel:

1. Take a 1 1/8" in diameter by 1/2" thick wheel with a 1/4" axle hole and place it over a drawing of a five pointed star and mark the points of the star on the wheel.
2. Give the wheel a turn so that those marks were now in the valleys of the star points, and then mark the points again.
3. Draw an interior circle on the wheel at the depth you want each gear gear to be.
4. Draw "v"s down from one point to the interior circle and then up to the next point for all ten marks.
5. Carefully use a band saw or a coping saw to cut out the gear.

If you use the band saw, make a simple jig with a 1/4" dowel sticking up out of a board. Then set the wheel down flat with the dowel through the hole. Carefully complete the cuts by moving the jig into the saw and then pulling it back out, rotating the wheel to the next position and then repeating all the cuts until you are done.


This is what I ended up with. Pretty cool but still functional and sturdy. Since my wheels are inside the toy and I don't have a lot of extra room, I test fitted and assembled the wheels and axles before I glued the sides to the hull.

The 4,865th test fitting	Mmmmmm, glue sandwich...

I tested the clacker with a small piece of vinyl and I got the sound I was looking for. I won't mount the vinyl until the very end though. I glued and clamped the center hull to one side of the tracks and let it cure overnight. I painted the inside areas that I would not be able to get at once the tank was assembled. (I also gave that area a quick spray acrylic seal.) Then I put in the axles and glued and clamped the other track side to the hull.

I wouldn't be able to paint inside the wheel  wells if I waited until the tank was done.	Clamped up and curing. I tested the alignment  several times to be sure the tank rolled evenly.

In researching British tanks in WW1 there seems to be some real question as to exactly what color they were. Most of the museum examples around the world have them in either an olive green or a darkish brown. The brown is pretty classy honestly, and my next one will be that color but I went with the olive green for this one. Mainly because that is what I saw in my mind when I first started thinking about how to build this.

I did add white and red recognition stripes to the front of the tank because they were used in WW1 and on British armor up through the early part of WW2. While not to scale... they seem to class it up a bit. I used regular masking tape. (I would have used the blue painters tape... IF I COULD HAVE FOUND IT!!!)

So, all we have left are the sponsons with cannons and final assembly and painting.
(If you just can't wait... you can see the completed sponsons in the background of the picture above.)

On to Part 4 - The Sponsons and Final Assembly

British Tank	Part 1	|	Part 2	|	Part 3	|	Part 4
German A7V	Part 1	|	Part 2	|	Part 3	|	Part 4

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Making a Toy WW1 Tank (Part 2)

British Tank	Part 1	|	Part 2	|	Part 3	|	Part 4
German A7V	Part 1	|	Part 2	|	Part 3	|	Part 4

I edited the tank image down to just the side view using MS Office Picture Manager but obviously, you can use any image manipulation software or the photocopier of your choice. I then resized it using PowerPoint because it gives a very easy inches scale to follow. (I used the profile I found on http://www.the-blueprints.com/ but I'm not showing it as part of the template I'll include in Part 3. As cheap as I am, I not willing to take other people's work and pass it off as my own.)


I decided to use some IKEA bed slats that I had been given by a friend. (These are not to be confused with the IKEA bed slats my in-laws gave me...) The slats are 3/4" thick and 2 5/8" wide. I cut two pieces about 9" long and then "sandwiched" both pieces together using double sided tape. I sprayed one side with spray adhesive, let it sit for about five minutes and then applied the image. (By letting it set up for a few minutes, it makes it easier to remove the paper later.) Then... off to the bandsaw and the belt sander!

	If you can't get the cuts to be a smooth as you like either because of inexperience or having not the right blade; don't despair. Try and make "relief" cuts perpendicular to your main cuts. You can always smooth things later (especially if you have a wicked cool belt sander.)
	These are the finished tracks. I drilled two 5/16" holes along the bottom that will hold the axles for the wheels. The holes are 2" apart on center and 5/16" on center from the bottom. (Did I mention how wicked cool belt sanders are?)

I cut the hull out of one piece of 2x3 (which we all know is really 1 1/2" x 2 1/2" grrrrrr). I had a general idea of what I wanted the shape to be, so I just drew it directly on the wood. Again, I'm not trying to make a scale model. I'm trying to make a recognizable toy. The picture above shows the axle holes already drilled, but actually I test fitted my hull against one side of the track to be sure my axle holes were in the right place before I drilled those holes.

Looking at historic photographs and line drawings gave me the general layout I was looking for.	After cutting out the general shape, I test fitted it and cut the wheel wells.

I drilled a 3/16" hole right in the center of the front cabin of the hull (facing forward) about 1/4 deep. This will hold a dowel that will be the hull machine gun. You could make the dowel 1/8" but it might be a little fragile for how it is going to be played with. Besides, I've seen some pictures and documentation that said this machine gun was sometimes a "Lewis Gun" which had an oversized cooling sleeve around the barrel.(Hey, I thought you said you said you weren't trying to make a scale model and that you were just trying to make a toy... - QUITE VOICES! I have to use my History degree every once in awhile!!!)


Okay. Let's test fit it and see how we are doing. I took some 1/4" dowels and slipped 1 1/4" in wheels on them. These will go inside the tank body so that they can't be seen from the outside. (By the way, some of the wheels marked as 1 1/4" at craft stores are simply not that size at all. A reliable source for the correct size wheels is http://www.craftparts.com) 

Grab the double face tape and then line everything up, give it squeeze and see if it rolls.

The space is going to be tight for the "clacker' I want to place between the wheels, but we can still give it a try.	It rolls well and is starting to take on the classic tank look I'm shooting for.

So far, so good.

On to Part 3 - Making the Clacker

British Tank	Part 1	|	Part 2	|	Part 3	|	Part 4
German A7V	Part 1	|	Part 2	|	Part 3	|	Part 4

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Making a Toy WW1 Tank (Part 1)

British Tank	Part 1	|	Part 2	|	Part 3	|	Part 4
German A7V	Part 1	|	Part 2	|	Part 3	|	Part 4

The origins of toys I make generally fall in three categories:

• Builds from online plans or more likely books I've collected.
• Trying to mimic a folk toy I've come across.
• Just making them up as I go. (The ever popular "proof of concept")

I've made several toy tanks over the last couple of years. I think the best one I made was a WW2 M3 (also known as a Lee tank) that I made for the son of a friend of mine. It clearly fell into the third category. (It was built before I figured out the digital camera, so that is why the picture looks like it was taken in a Tunisian sandstorm.)


Well, my friend is coming back to the US this summer after being stationed in South Korea, so what better way to say welcome home to him and his son than with another tank?


So, let the "let's just start making this up as we go" process commence. We already have the idea - a tank. But what kind? I know that I'm not making a scale model. What I'm trying to do is make a toy that has the look of a tank and is fun to play with.


About a year ago I stumbled across the Homer McNeil Wooden Toy Collection at the Ames Historical Society's site. I was blown away because during the 1940s Mr. McNeil made toys for his children out of food crates and office equipment (which sounded strangely familiar.) It really struck a chord with me that his kids held on to the toys for all these years. They were obviously made with love and meant a lot to his kids. If you get a chance, click on the link above and give it a look. It is well worth it.

One of the toys is this "WW2 Tank." Now, it really isn't a model of a particular tank, but you can tell just by looking at it that a) it is indeed a tank and b) that it is meant to be played with. It is a toy. Those are some of the qualities that I want to try and get.

The trapezoid lozenge look to the tracks is really reminiscent of a British WW1 tank. It is a really distinctive feature of those tanks. Another interesting thing about those tanks is that they didn't have a turret on top of the tank, but rather had their main armament in "sponsons" mounted on the sides of the tanks. Besides actually being a naval term, I think that this gives them a "land battleship" appearance. It also led to "male" and "female" models of the tanks. The males had six pounder cannons in the sponsons and the females mounted machine guns in those positions. (And yes, they built some with male AND female sponsons on either sides of the same tank, but I'm gonna take the high ground here and for once in my life not make a smart-alecky comment about it.)


Okay. So I'm decided on a WW1 British tank. I'll make it a male tank so it will have guns that can be aimed on both sides. I think it will have a good retro look. I'm also thinking about having some sort of clacker attached to the underneath of the tank to make a clacking noise as it is pushed across the floor. (Because as we all know, "The tracks on the tank go 'clack, clack, clack', ...'clack, clack, clack')


So, like I said, I'm not trying to make a scale model, but I do want it to be recognizable. So I need the general proportions and I need to decide on the scale I am going to build. I recently came across a site that I highly recommend  - http://www.the-blueprints.com/. The Blueprints site contains THOUSANDS of line drawings like the one below. This drawing gives me a pattern that I can use to cut out the logenze shaped tracks and gives me the proportions I need.

 

On to Part 2 - The Construction

The images can easily be resized to the scale I want.

British Tank	Part 1	|	Part 2	|	Part 3	|	Part 4
German A7V	Part 1	|	Part 2	|	Part 3	|	Part 4

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