July 2022
Time to make: 3 hours
Finishing: 1 hour
Original design: Bill Macfarlane
OK I've got to admit I looking forward to on our way to Philmont is the penny arcade in Manitou Springs. Being a kid enjoying pinball machines and being at the beginning of quarter sucking video games like pong, space invaders, and pacman (yeah I'm that old), I was amazed when I saw my first penny arcade. One of the games that stuck out was a Williams 1957 baseball game. It was a two person game (one if you were really coordinated) in which one person pitched and one person batted. The pitcher would press a button and a steel ball shot out from underneath the game right around the pitcher mound. The cover would quickly close and the "ball" would streak towards the batter. The batter had a lever and when the lever is pulled the bat would swing and depending on how hard the lever was pulled the bat hit the ball with more force. The ball would then roll up the game, hopefully hit one of the ramps sending into the double, triple, or home run areas.
What a fun slide to design! I started off gluing a picture of the bed of the game to an angled piece of maple I had as scrap. I don't know the angle I used as I just kinda winged it. Next the the scoreboard area and that was made from a piece of a heavy cardboard material which I glued the scoreboard picture to. The sides some 1/8 inch thick scrap I had just cut off another project and I glued them to the bed and when they were dry, I sanded them down till they were approximately at the same angle as the bed. Next came gluing the scoreboard to the bed. The bat was carved from a small piece of pine and the ball is a steel bb both glued to the bed with super glue. I did something a little different for the coloring of the slide as I used brown and black permanent markers. I like how the brown marker gave a look of wood grain. A couple coats of poly finish it off.
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