Routing the shooter lane groove.

Next up is the groove in the shooter/plunge lane that keeps the ball centered in front of the plunge rod and guides it up the center of the lane.  Since I don't have one of them fancy cnc router things (yet) I needed to devise a alternate method, and I chose the hand held router and a template.

I measure the Close Encounters groove and it extends 10" up from the plunger cutout and is a total of 1/8" deep at the plunger end, tapering to 0" at the upper end.  As best I can tell the diameter of the groove is 1-1/16", remarkably (or not so much) the diameter of a standard pinball ball.  Of course this is all based on a late 70's Gottlieb pinball, other manufactures may vary.

To the left is the template I devised clamped in place.











To the right is the router after cutting the groove showing the round nose bit I used.  The bit is only 1" diameter, but I could not find a reasonably priced 1-1/16" bit and after doing a slight bit of touch up sanding this should work just fine.

Here is the bottom side of the template showing the two supports I put on to get the slope right.  The one just to the right of center is 10" up from the bottom edge and 1/8" thick to set the slope.  The one on the right was made to fit the space to match the slope and provide more support.



Closer view below.