Bowling Ball and Pin
08/08/1999
Sometimes I wonder why I do some of the things I do. This project was definitely one of those. I was sitting around one day pondering what my next project will be, and couldn't decide. Then my wife and I went bowling and I had a brainstorm. Why not practice making curved shapes with square blocks and make a bowling ball and bowling pin? And lo, it was.
A standard bowling ball is 8.59 inches in diameter. My bowling ball is close to that, measuring in at 8.75 inches. I could have made it closer but I wanted an even number of bricks for each diameter. The widest diameter of the ball is 28 bricks, and it is 23 bricks and 1 plate tall. The thumb and finger holes are lined up approximately where my fingers would fit on a real bowling ball. I could pick it up and roll it if I so desired. The entire ball took about 10 hours from design to completion to build.
A standard bowling pin is 15 inches tall, and mine falls almost exactly at that point. It is 40 bricks tall and 16 bricks in diameter at its widest point. The shape was transcribed from a picture of a bowling pin, since I didn't have a real pin available to work from. I think the result is pretty good. The pin took me about 5 hours to design and construct.
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