Wood Lanes Resurfacing Technical Question?

[Rick H]

Has anyone every seen this before?
My resurfacers just spent 13 days patching my lanes? They ran into replacing over 428 feet of both pine and maple and the bill for replacing them was more than the resurfacing costs. To make matters worse, it looks like now that they have pulled out, they will have to come back and replace a bunch more boards. Here is what is happening.... the boards they are replacing are boards that they have sanded through. Evidently, the original lanes were composed of some boards that had factory patches in the 2 3/4 vertical boards..... lets say the patches were only 3/8" thick..... and now over the years, they have finally sanded through them leaving boards that are paper thin. The bottom of these paper thin boards still have the factory stamps with numbers on them.... why were they spilced or patched at the factory? Why are they at different depths? They think they find them all and then run the MINI over the lanes prior to the base coat and up pop a bunch more? Will it ever end? After they left, we have found a bunch more that are starting to curl up from the urethane. Anyone out there that can give me any advice on this????
Thanks, Rick

[Lanedoctor]

Re: Wood Lanes Resurfacing Technical Question?

How old are these lanes? I seriously doubt that they were patched at the factory... most of the old wood lanes were built on site- a board at a time... I am guessing that you are probably getting down close to the nail line on your lanes. You will be getting close to that point in time where you will have to decide on replacement. If you are not down to the nails yet, then I can only guess that the lanes were neglected when they were new, and the patches that were installed were not put very deep. It does seem a bit unusual to have to replace much in the pines though...At any rate, you still have only the same options... patch em, cover em, or replace em... I would be willing to bet that the next sanding will be worse than this one, and every one after that will also be bad...

[8270king]

Re: Wood Lanes Resurfacing Technical Question?

Just before our Anvil was put down we had some of the paper thin boards on our lanes.

If they were ever patched when they were new the patches are now thin.

Your house prolly had an obsessed lane man back in the 60's.

Lane men use to buff the lanes every night with the rotary machine and burlap bag.

If a board needed patched they just did it.

Jerry

[the old dirt man]

Re: Wood Lanes Resurfacing Technical Question?

KING:
how do you know about burlap bags [img]/content/btubb/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/confused.gif[/img] your not that old!! do you know where the burlap
bags came from. you must have been talking to some old timers. [img]/content/btubb/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif[/img] do you remember when they put varnish and sheilack on the lanes too!!
do you remember when they used wooden balls. [img]/content/btubb/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/eek.gif[/img] do you remember when the pinboys could give the bowlers the finger!! and they would laugh. :p boy how times have changed.
no more fires on the lanes. CUJO

[Rick H]

Re: Wood Lanes Resurfacing Technical Question?

More info about the lanes...... we have 24,split center, the last 8 installed about 10 years ago and are in primo condition with american Brunswick A2 machines, the first 16 are japanese Brunswick so possibly lanes were from Japan also and installed here in the late 70's. The resurfacer said we had another 20 years worth of sandings (which probably equates to about 6 more times @ every 3 to 4 years) on the first 16 and most of the patching were on lanes 1-12 with almost none on 13-16. They took guardian off two years ago that had been on about 10 years (believe it was a perry austin guardian test house originally since there headquarters at the time was in Des Moines close by)anyhow, they ran into about 20 nails per lane at that time as compared to only about 5 this time. Can't see where the thin boards could have possibly ever been patched by a lane man.....no evidence of any routering or wood chiseling anywhere below the patches and each paper thin patch had blue or green numbers stamped on the bottom of the board. I guess the big question now is will we keep finding more and more and more. I was under the impression that the lanes are about 2 1/4" thick, (I know we didn't have to shim the AMF bumpers on the first 16 lanes)..... not sure what I'm going to do with the dozen or so boards I've found curling from the top coat since they left......we had to have them resurfaced this summer before the state tourny comes to town in February........ 24 lanes resurfacing bill was about 11,500 and another 10,000 for replacing boards....... should maybe they have just kept sanding each lanes untill they sanded through most of them...... going to have to look at lane overlays someday anyhow.....

By the way, I managed a 10 laner when I was 21 in the early 70's and I buffed the lanes with an army blanket every day after taking the fly sprayer to them......

[Mike Stalker]

Re: Wood Lanes Resurfacing Technical Question?

What a nightmare, sorry to here about your dilema.

Rick I have a friend who may be able to tell you more about that patch material.

907-278-7665 That number is for AAA Billiards. Jerry Hannah is his name, he's not cutting lanes anymore but he may be able to steer you into the right direction.

Suunds like it may be more stress and cost effective to just cover them now.

I'll patch your lanes at that price. Have router will fly. Good Luck and tell Jerry hello for me.

[SVLFever]

Re: Wood Lanes Resurfacing Technical Question?

Rick,

I am curious, who is doing the resurfacing work?

Fever [img]/content/btubb/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/usflag.jpg[/img]

[EDJ]

Re: Wood Lanes Resurfacing Technical Question?

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Rick H:
The problem your Center is having is not unsual for the age of the lanes. The majority of wood lanes were built in place and would not have factory patches. The patching that was used may have come from Brunswick or AMF and have part No's stamped on them. The lanes have about one inch of wood that can be sanded before you reach the nail line. New patching is 3/4" thick and probably was installed about 1/2" deep with the rest being sanded or planed off. What you are seeing is the bottom of old patches, in all likelyhood the lanes were over patched many years ago when finishes and lane conditioning procedure were not very good.
Patching these thin boards can take time, which is the main cost of patching. We average 2000 - 2500 feet per year of patching in our area, because of the cost and time we try to spread this out over 2 - 3 years for a Center. We can easily spend as much time on patching as we do resurfacing.

EDJ
Niagara Lane Service

[cobow]

Re: Wood Lanes Resurfacing Technical Question?

here in australia we normally patch just before resurfacer is due in & we do it ourself. is this not normal in the u.s ?

[Lanedoctor]

Re: Wood Lanes Resurfacing Technical Question?

well, it used to be normal, and it is still preferable to do it that way, but in reality, there are fewer and fewer guys out there who know how to do it well. (and that even includes some of the resurfacers I have seen...) The "old pros" are becoming fewer and fewer...Hey, I am not knocking the sanding crews at all, but the fact remains that to make money, they have to schedule as tightly as they can... and when they run into a job that requires the amount of repairs that this post has mentioned... well let's just say that I would prefer to do my own. Craftsmanship = Time X Money

[raymond]

Re: Wood Lanes Resurfacing Technical Question?

yes do the lane work your self, its not hard

[Ted]

Re: Wood Lanes Resurfacing Technical Question?

HI all! As a resurfacer, we have seen a lot of work that is less than desireable - but - this MAY not be the result of a past mechanic or resurfacer with an erection over the new router. We have seen MANY of the lanes that came back from Japan in the mid 70's that were patched by the Japanese. A multitude of patches everywhere because they didn't like the looks of the board.
After reinstalling over here, and many years of resurfacing since then, those patches (now veneer boards) pop up - sometimes only after the base coat. Some were initially patched properly, others not. Bottom line for this situation - repatch!

[felix]

Re: Wood Lanes Resurfacing Technical Question?

Ted [img]/content/btubb/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/usflag.jpg[/img]
AAAH Soooo; dubbayou-dubbayou-dabbayou Japenese Lanes dot kahm. [img]/content/btubb/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/eek.gif[/img] Yep I have them. [img]/content/btubb/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif[/img] Installed in "79", must of been one of the Lucky ones that were installed & patched properly. Except for the pin spots, which are paper thin and change 12-30 per year.
As for sanding/screen&coat your curios felix would like to know about everyones $ dollar amount for sanding/screen & coat. Also How Often.
I am on an everyother year sand & opposite year screen & coat. 24lanes 9 thousand sand - 4 thousand screen & coat. Both include patch work & glo finish. Would like to go every 3years sand and screen and coat 2years in a row. But as of yet it hasn't happened. Forgot to mention that the lanes were injected in "79". [img]/content/btubb/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/cool.gif[/img] Also sanding the 4th [img]/content/btubb/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/mad.gif[/img]
felix

NOTHING BEATS WOOD

[8270king]

Re: Wood Lanes Resurfacing Technical Question?

Felix,

WOOD SUCKS!

You are spending $500 per month for wood lanes.

We would lose at the minimum $1500 for closing 2 days for a sand job.....plus clean up labor....etc.

For $1000 per month you could have new synthetic lanes that your open play customers think look like a million bucks.

JMO

Jerry

[felix]

Re: Wood Lanes Resurfacing Technical Question?

Ouch!, Jerry;
That hurts, but then again the truth can.
WOOD _ucks ROTFL