What to do with old pinballs?

Nerbflong

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Okay, after changing the pinballs in all my machines, I'm sitting on a pile of maybe 24 pinballs. What they heck to do with them??

I can't just bring myself to recycle them, so shiny and round. A few have earned me some great high scores. Others have been cussed at. I'm guessing it would look pretty strange to see them hung on the wall with "scored over 2 billion on Theatre of Magic" or "This one loved the side lanes" or "Right down the middle man"

Right now the cats like to bat them around on the floor. Surely they aren't to be cat toys?
 
Throw them in the tumbler and make them shine a bit. Then stack them up top of a big super-magnet and make a toy out of it.

cheers
/Tim
 
Right now the cats like to bat them around on the floor. Surely they aren't to be cat toys?

While they may make excellent cat toys, they also conjure up cartoon-like images of you walking into the room carrying a wedding cake, stepping on a pinball, landing flat on your back with a cake falling from the sky upside down in slow motion... No, might want to stick with ping-pong balls for that purpose.

They're a bit on the heavy side to use as golf balls, and they're not grippy enough to use as replacement mouse balls. Foosball might work OK - but they might break the feet off the little foos-men. Far too small and light to be shot-put. Too heavy for slingshot ammo. Might work well as a shooter marble, although a bit hard on the thumb. They don't taste particularly good, so as a food they're not useful. They only bounce on concrete, and not very well at that, so "superball", they aren't.

Maybe you could do something creative? The magnet-scuplture toy would be fun, but I'm sure there are some other cool things you could do. How about getting a piece of wood, drill 12 almost pinball diameter holes, evenly spaced in a circle, pound pinballs into them with a rubber hammer, and mount a clock movement in the middle? Better yet, you could use a piece of a scrapped playfield or cabinet side.

Or you could just leave them in your junk drawer, so next time a friend wishes he had his own pinball, you could reach in the drawer and give him one.

-Ian
 
I keep mine in one of these:

gumball-machine-stand.jpg


It looks great!
 
I'm planning on putting them in a clear acrylic tube from floor to ceiling. Now if I can only talk the wife into dancing around the 'pinball pole'.
 
In all seriousness, if you have a quality tumbler, just polish them up and swap them around every six months or so.

Oddly enough, with that many in the tumbler at once, they should polish up even nicer since they will be rubbing against each other and hard-burnish to a very nice shine.

-Hans
 
Lol, great suggestions!


So the options are:


Interactive magnet toy art: time to tear apart a microwave


Pinball clock: I'll have to ponder making that one


Gum ball machine: I like this idea. I'll have to keep an eye out for a machine.


Tumbler polishing: I have a vibration tumbler I use for polishing tokens so will try this.


Surgery: Balls of steel the epic pinball battle?


Ammo: Time to build a bigger slingshot




Also been pondering making an interactive Rube Goldberg thingy out of them. (As if a pinball machine isn't already) Or some strange art deco piece. Hmmm.
 
Hey tell ur buddy burt to get back with me about this sys80 sounds board i am hooking him up with!
You realize burt posted in this thread right below lindsey, right?

If you're putting the balls in the polisher, does that really fill in the nicks and dents on the balls, or just shine them up and remove the fog?

Also, that gumball machine looks like a total bad-ass idea for pinballs! Gets my vote!
 
If you're putting the balls in the polisher, does that really fill in the nicks and dents on the balls, or just shine them up and remove the fog?

From my experience, no, the polisher would not take out nicks and dents. It would as you said make them very shiny nicks and dents. Granted I have never tried this with pinball balls, but I use to work at an automotive manufacturer and we tumbled a lot of parts and it would not take away they dings.
 
Leave them in for a few days to a week and it will shine them up really nice. At least you can use them in ball roll tilts, instead of sacrificing a nice new one for that. I've put the best tumbled balls in games and they work fine.
 
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