(Topic ID: 105414)

CPR now has a widebody belt sander~!

By SunKing

9 years ago


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  • 98 posts
  • 46 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 9 years ago by Aurich
  • Topic is favorited by 4 Pinsiders

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61
#26 9 years ago
Quoted from Lovef2k:

It seems like it is basic plywood, why is it so hard to find?

We wish it were basic plywood. We started on cabinet/furniture grade Baltic Birch back in 2004/2005. It was indeed "basic plywood" - albeit very very nice - but the problem with any open market (non-custom) plywood, they all have paper-thin faces. Front and back. No thicker than a sheet or two of copier paper. They're called "veneers". Simply no good. No meat. No way to work the topside for levelling in the drum sander. One hair too deep, and now you're exposing patches of brown (the first ply).

Available thicknesses. The standard market thicknesses are either too thin or too thick (1/2" or 5/8" - no in between). A playfield is supposed to end up at 1/2"... so you can't start with 1/2"... that was the complaint with Fathom back in 2004. Fathom 2004 started with 1/2" stock... ended up at around 7/16" or slightly less, after all the levelling and sanding. 5/8" stock ends up at 9/16" or so... people say too thick... especially with a 1/16" clearcoat we were providing at the time... so ending with a 5/8" final thickness in reality, when we went the other way.

We 'suffered' all the way through to 2007 using Baltic Birch, and then switched to "real" gameboard wood from Weber Inc (dba American Hardwoods) where Churchill/Stern were getting theirs. Weber had the decades-old recipe and Churchill contract nailed down there, and you couldn't call off the street to buy it. They ran 18-wheelers full at a time for Churchill - their last and only customer for gameboard stock. They had been making it for decades. The Duba's swore by it. They graciously gave us permission to piggyback on their order(s). We did many runs on the real gameboard stock. It was a joy to switch.

What's the difference between plywood and gameboard stock? A ton of things. Like the KFC secret recipe, all the tensions and tolerances, adhesives, ply thicknesses, faces, etc... were all kept secret by the Weber prez. The official thickness of a raw gameboard is 17/32. You work the wood to 1/2". The faces are faces - NOT veneers. They are actual thick layers of hard rock maple on the front and back. Almost as thick as the internal plys of the wood itself. Lots of meat to work with. And you could choose either side of the wood as your topside. The gameboard wood didn't tend to "fuzz" around all the edges of the CNC cutting. So we saved a "Dremel out all the holes" step after 2007.

Weber was closed in late 2009. They were owned by a parent corporation that dumped the mill to pay off a lawsuit from a magazine they also owned (no shit). The Weber prez was pissed to say the least, as his 20+ year career was ended with very little notice. He went all vigilante, and passed the "secret recipe" onto the Duba's (at Churchill) and to us at CPR - so we could go off and try to find another mill with the capabilities.

Quoted from boogies:

I still have contacts to peeps in the industry that can get in contact with multiple suppliers.
I can try to get quotes for materials if needed. Exact specs of wood, size and quantity would be needed.

Oh woe is me, if you only knew. Churchill and us went onto another mill that the Weber prez recommended to us, which lasted from 2010 to 2012. They got the recipe correct, but their wood was notorious for warping. People can attest to this - CPR playfields from 2010 to end 2012 nearly all had a "bow" to them. That wood reacted to the tiniest of humidity/temperature changes like a bimetallic strip. We liked it and hated it at the same time. It was close, but it was never Weber wood. In 2012 they refused to make us any more - they simply wanted to make stock plywood without all the scientific specs & tolerances. Plus we had put them through customer service hell fighting over replacement shipments and partial refunds for twisting gameboards upon arrival. We shield the public from all the drama from behind the curtain, but if you all only knew. Churchill went onto making their own wood, out of sheer frustration. We ended up "mill-less" by early 2013, and running out of wood fast. Mike went on a speed-dating blitz with like 15-20 elite/specialty mills across the USA and Canada - all recommended by a specialty hardwoods guru here in Halifax. His rollodex was huge, and he knew all the mills coast to coast.

That dating phase lasted 8-10 months. Literally. It was hell on earth. Trying to get a load of real gameboard wood again - from a virgin mill that had never made it before. Mike started with 15-20 mills, over half wouldn't even consider making such a stock, right off the bat. So then down to 8-10 left. 8-10 left, and only 5 would play ball when it came to running samples. Of the 5 that ran samples, 3 didn't even do them right. Those three tried again and submitted redux samples. Those were also wrong and crap. The main problem was most of the mills were simply not capable of doing anything except "veneers"... their equipment wouldn't do thick "faces". There were 2 mills in the end, after 8-10 months, that proved themselves, and went beyond samples and made some small gameboard runs for us to test on (plus they wanted to test their repeatability of actually making the stock for real - not just samples). 2 of 20 mills basically made it to the end and were "worthy of a rose" (man, it was like a year long pinball version of The Bachelor). By end-2013, we chose one to make our 2014 wood (as they take 2-3 months lead time to make 1000+ panels). In the meantime, we had long fallen back onto Baltic Birch for a few runs...just to get by. It felt like we had gone back in time to 2004/2005, but we had to use something while we found a mill.

So we're onto this new stock as of 3 runs ago. It's the most expensive, but best wood we've ever used (their prices were outrageous, but no alternatives except between the two final mills). The faces on this stock are the thickest ever, even thicker than Weber's. We tweaked that in the recipe. As well as choosing ash cores instead of the traditional (brown) sweet gum cores. We're not going out courting more mills and going through that hell again. Most mills made it very clear - they don't want the challenge or the headaches to produce this kind of stock, in these relatively small quantities. They only want to pump out 4x8 sheets of easy stock for Home Depot type clients, all year long. Plus most only have that capability anyway.

We can get widebody sized gameboard stock if we needed it. We just have to make an order for that particular size. So nobody worry.

KEVIN
Classic Playfield Reproductions
http://www.classicplayfields.com

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