Bowling Alley Maple Lanes - Guaranteed Nails?

[Patrick Irish]

My father helped remodel a bowling alley, he’s a contractor, and years later due to Covid they have to close. They’re offering my dad I think 18 lanes of material. Most of the lanes are maple and some are a newer phenolic material.

Will the maple lanes be guaranteed to have nails? Trying to decide if it’s worth are time to mess with. Would have to store it etc.

[Mel Fulks]

I think we've seen this before. Last report I saw said the stuff is so full of nails and glue that it's not worth the labor to
reuse.

[Matt Day]

Cutting it into table tops might be okay. Just be prepared to loose a few blades.

[Bradley Gray]

Oldham neg. tooth nail cutting blades are cheap and awesome.

[Jim Becker]

Major number of nails in my experience...apparently, that's how they do the laminations...nails and glue, one strip at a time. Ok to use for surfaces if you cross cut/rip with something that can handle nails and then sand for surface, but otherwise, limited utility. Unfortunately. It's a lot of nice wood that often has to go to waste because of the embedded metal.

[Patrick Irish]

Thanks guys. Maybe we’ll cut one up and see.

The new phenolic stuff is weird material. Thin like 1/2” or 3/8” but dense and heavy! Hard and bits too. Not sure what would be made with the fake stuff either. Garage shelving maybe.

[Steve Jenkins]

I made a few conference tables from lanes. To remove the finish I used my belt sander for about 1 minute then called a friend that finishes hardwood floors and he took care of it in just a few minutes.

[Richard Coers]

The hard maple bowling lane my friend got from a client to make a desk had no glue at all, just nails. When cut to length, a couple short strips actually fell out. He talked the guy into letting him start from scratch for the desk and did inlays for the arrows. No gaps in the joints, a much better alternative to used bowling lanes.

[Steve Demuth]

Full of nails. About 5% steel by weight, in my experience.

They still make good countertops - the island in our kitchen has been in use for 30 years - you just have to use the right carbide blades to cut, and assume you'll have to add new side pieces to cover the nails you cut through.

[Ron Selzer]

I use them for countertops in the shop, definitely go thru the blades

[Tom M King]

I use a section of it for an assembly table. I never thought about disassembling it. It has the synthetic top, over the old maple flooring, which is over a framework of White Oak, and Yellow Pine, with the framing bolted to 1/4" wall angle iron. It's a section a little over 8 feet long, and weighed enough that I moved it with the front end loader. It is Very flat though, and stable.

The synthetic topping is solid phenolic. You can machine it with either metalworking tools, or woodworking tools. I use it for router table tops. It's very stable, flat, and has a nice, fake woodgrain pattern.

I would never consider spending any time to salvage any wood out of it.

[Lewis Mills]

I'm a little late to this discussion, but I just yesterday got a piece of a lane myself and started researching. Here's an excerpt from an old (2006) post on the WoodenBoat forum:

"Bowling lanes . . . I was in the bowling equipment biz for many years and can fill in some details on lane construction. Most lanes were built using maple in the approach and the ball drop portions of the lane as well as in the pin deck area. The bulk of the lane out beyond the ball drop area was southern yellow pine. Individual boards were random lengths from 4' up to 16'. Milled dimension was 1-5/64" X 2-3/4" with a T&G on the wide side.
Construction involved stacking the boards one on top of the other vertically like pancakes, driving nails thru the tongue on 8" centers. A carpenter (or a two man team) would move up and back over the full length of the lane (80') nailing on a full course before starting the next one. This would be repeated until the stack was as high as the final required width of the lane (42"). The rest of the nailing crew of perhaps 6-8 carpenters would then stop their own work and as a team lay the finished lane over into its final resting place. It was tremendously heavy and the lay-downs required much care.
The nailing crews were pros with a hammer, I got pretty good myself. It was a matter of pride (and sometimes money) to be able to stack a lane in good time. There was more to it than just pounding nails fast and accurately. You had to grade the boards, decide which edge would show, worry in the stuff that wasn't straight and read the grain so your nail placement didn't split the board. Additionally you got quick with a back saw as the ends of the boards often needed trimming for proper butts and knots needed to be cut out though most of the lumber was beautiful & clear.
Nailing the maple was interesting as we used 8-d case hardened chisel head screw nails (also the reason you guys are having a hard time drilling holes and cutting the old lanes). You had to hit them right otherwise they would break off and fly across the jobsite like a bullet usually sticking one of your fellow workers in the back or butt (everyone always faced the same direction because of this, last thing you wanted was a piece of nail in the eye). Rookies always were put down on the last lanes so their poor nailing efforts would simply ricochet off the wall. Sometimes they would go straight up and knock out the overhead fluorescent light bulbs so you got good at bailing out. If you were good you could sink a screw nail in 3 hits but starting out new guys could be seen pounding on the same nail for what seemed like minutes. The jokes and derision would fly!
Nailing the pine used a fairly conventional mild steel sinker, 8-d. This is where you could fly setting nails fully with one blow. The reason the lanes were so thick was so they could be resurfaced periodically. Over the years the wood removal from sanding would reach the mid-point (the T&G) and the nails would start to show. They would appear as just the edge of the heads at first but then eventually (a few more years) the full length of the nails would be revealed by the big drum sanders.
The owners of the alleys were saved when some bright folks started to introduce synthetic panels to be installed over the worn out lanes so as to avoid the high cost of conventional lane replacement.
….
[Y]ou have a piece from the ball drop area if you have the inlaid dots and it is maple since this was the most abused portion of the lane (other than the pin deck). The black stuff on the bottom is a variation of roof cement applied to keep moisture from the foundation area below the lanes from penetrating the wood from below. You might also have some angle irons or wood cleats across the width to inhibit buckling & warpage. The tar also insured moisture balance in the lane considering there was also a heavy finish on the top (lacquer for years then urethane). If you have glue dripping out the bottom then the lanes were injected with epoxy late in their lives in order to extend their life. A hole was drilled from the surface of the lane down into the T&G and an epoxy mixture was pumped into that gap under pressure. It worked pretty well for the old lanebeds that were getting kind of mushy as a result of the thinning cross section and all the ball impacts. Look on the top and you'll see the small injection holes. The bottom of your lane is still quite meaty and there will be no fasteners in the areas under the tar so plane away with abandon!"

I found this interesting and helpful - hope you do, too!

[Davee Baker]

25 or so years ago I got a 8 foot section of a bowling alley for $10. 42" wide lamination of 1x2 Southern yellow pine strips. Actual joinery along each strip to mate with neighbors on either side. 2.5" nails every 7 inches going straight across the 1" dimension holding 3 strips together in every lamination. Lots of nails in there! I built a post & beam base out of 4x4 DougFir with storage underneath and its been a workbench ever since. Really solid workbench with a lot of mass!! There are cast iron T beams underneath to keep it flat, 5 feet apart. I had to add numerous metal corner brackets to keep the base I made from wobbling or racking (not sure of the term) due to no corner to corner support.

Its a great workbench and also serves as a social area when guests are over and we're playing darts.
I located in with short side against the wall, so either long side is free to stand at. Shop lights above it!!

449213

[Lewis Mills]

They are currently dismantling a bowling alley here that got badly damaged in the tornado a few years ago. I literally got to walk in and place an order: "I'd like six and half feet of the maple section at the beginning of this lane, please." I got the 6.5 foot section of maple for $12/linear foot,which seems like a pretty good price. It has been drilled and epoxy-injectedwith a row of 1/4 inch holes into each seam every foot. The epoxy has beenforced out into long SHARP ribbons on the bottom face. Very heavy, and with the epoxy injection it is very rigid. I don't think I'll need any corner brackets on this one to keep it from wobbling.

[Rob Sack]

If you have a Sawstop, be sure to put it in bypass mode.

[Lewis Mills]

Thanks for the warning! I plan to use a cheap, well-used blade in a wormdrive circular saw. And goggles for sure.

[Paul F Franklin]

One of the guys on the current shopnotes podcast episode was talking about his benchtop made from a bowling alley section. You may wish to check it out. I believe you can get the video and audio versions on ytube. Or the woodsmith mag site for sure.

[Brian Tymchak]

Thanks for the post Lewis. That was extremely interesting.

[David S Arcoleo]

I just bought a bunch of bowling alley maple.

Two primary ways I can see. First, and preferably, just strip / refinish the top, cut to length, turn into table/whatever. By far the most efficient use of the wood. Cutting across the grain, yea, you’ll hit nails.

The other way is you pull the nails from the outside, using a pneumatic nail puller if you have one. Then pry that slice of wood off, rinse, repeat. This leaves you with no damages blades, and no nails in the wood. Of course the wood isn’t perfect rectangles, so you have to plane/cut it to dimensional lumber if that’s what you need. Some wood is wasted, but now you have way more flexibility with what you can do.

[Alan Lightstone]

I briefly bowled professionally, before I came to the decision that I was going to starve and went to medical school. Definitely was one of those 10,000 hour persons.

I can't believe I never knew that the boards were nailed down. I always assumed that they were glued down.

Oh and "pneumatic nail puller"??? Who knew.

For nostalgic reasons I would love something made out of boards from a lane. But no way I'm going to potentially sacrifice a blade, or worse if I forget bypass mode, a blade and cartridge on my SawStop.

[Jim Becker]

Alan, I don't know about "nailed down", but the strips of maple are not just glued. In at least the highest stress areas, they are also nailed laterally during the lamination. In know that from experience...and some ruined tooling.

[Alan Lightstone]

Well, bowling balls I've had chipped (lots and lots of them) I always attributed to the equipment. Now, hmmm....