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Bowling Pin Setting: How Pinsetters Work, From Pinboys to Machines

After every ball, something has to clear the fallen pins and, at the end of a frame, set a fresh rack of ten in a perfect triangle. That job is called pin setting. For the first half of the 20th century people did it by hand. Today it's machines, of two very different kinds.

Pinboys

Early bowling alleys employed pinboys (or pinsetters), often teenagers, who sat in a pit behind the pins. After each ball they cleared the deadwood, rolled the ball back and reset the rack. It was hard, poorly paid and sometimes dangerous work, with heavy pins and balls flying around, and it slowed the game down.

The automatic pinsetter

The breakthrough came with the automatic pinsetter. AMF's machine, developed from Fred Schmidt's design, was introduced commercially in the early 1950s, and Brunswick soon followed with its own. These free-fall machines collect the pins, sweep the deck, sort and turn the pins upright, and drop a full rack onto the deck. They made bowling faster and open around the clock, and helped fuel the 1950s bowling boom described in bowling in the 1950s.

String pinsetters

A newer approach ties each pin to a string. After a ball, the machine pulls the strings up to lift the pins and lowers them back into place. String pinsetters are cheaper to buy and maintain, use less power and need less mechanical skill to run, so they've become common in entertainment centers and outside the US. Since August 2023, the USBC certifies string pin bowling as its own, separate category of competition, with averages kept apart from traditional free-fall bowling. Pins on strings do behave a little differently, which is explained in string vs free-fall pinsetters.

What happens during a frame

  1. The ball and pins fall into the pit.
  2. A rake or sweep comes down to protect the machine and clear the deck.
  3. Standing pins are lifted, the deck is swept, and the standing pins are put back.
  4. After the second ball (or a strike), a full new rack is set.
  5. The ball returns to the bowler through the ball return.

For the mechanics in more detail, see how bowling pins get reset, and for where the pins should stand, bowling pin setup and spacing.