Well I drilled my first ball today. Plugged it yesterday. Tried a board members suggestion and used plumbers putty for dams. Worked real well. Finishing off the plugs didn't turn out as smooth as I had hoped but they're not in the track area. Gonna have to work on that. My drilling jig consists of a 3/4" plywood vertical v-block mounted to a 3/4" plywood base. I put a piece of drillrod in the chuck and space each side of the v-block 4.25 inches away from the center of the drill rod. Then clamp the plywood base to the drill press table. I was having trouble coming up with a ball holddown so took an old junk ball and held it down by hand against the sides of the v-block and popped a hole in it. Worked ok so i did the real one. Came out pretty decent. I drilled it with the goal of having all the pitches at zero. I don't have anything to check pitch on my proshop ball so I figured 0 was a good place to start. My proshop ball fits well so I copied the layout on to the Lane #1 Tsunami H2O. The only thing I did different was to use a drill for the thumb that was the dia of my thumb thickness not the width. Then I ovaled the hole out using a dremel and a workout tool. Layout is 4 x 3. Went to the alley and put 4 games on it. My thumb came out of the ball real easy. Didn't have one ball that felt like it wanted hang and it didn't feel like I had to squeeze to hang on to it. After the 4 games my hand felt good, no sore spots. I realize my drilling setup is crude but I didn't want to dump alot of money into equipment and then find out I couldn't do it. All in all I'm happy with how the ball fits and I'm definitely having alot of fun.
Dick
