In some earlier posts I had mentioned that we had some Christmas gifts under way in Jay’s workshop that I couldn’t yet share with you. The gifts have all been given, so now I can reveal them to you, too.

Little bowling alleys!

Jay 3D printed the bowling pins.

And he made the little shooter that you use to roll your marble down the alley.

He also used his laser cutter to cut out all of the markings that go on the alleys. The pattern called for these to be inlays, but that wasn’t happening.

I made bags to hold the bins, shooter and marbles when the alley isn’t in use.

Of course I used cat fabric!

(Interesting aside… as I am writing this post I looked outside and saw our neighbors walking down the sidewalk with bowling ball bags. If we’d only made them one of these they could have stayed home and bowled!)

It nicely fits all 10 pins

Plus the marbles and shooter

Jay is so proud of how he painted the lines on the pins so nice and straight. I was upstairs working on something when he came bounding into the room telling me that I needed to grab my camera and come downstairs.

He had a pin on the lathe (he’d left little holes in the bottom of the pins when printing them). Then he used his brush to paint the lines as the lathe spun them around.

That’s using your noggin!

He was able to paint all of the lines on the pins in a relatively short amount of time.

He made three bowling alleys, so he had 30 pins to paint.

Chester and I decided to see how it would work.

She thought that the object was to get the marble. She didn’t care what happened with the pins.

“We are supposed to knock down the pins? You don’t care about the ball? Well, that’s just dumb!”