Bowling Alley Maple Lanes - Guaranteed Nails?

[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....