Hey Pinballer. No, I never did accomplish that. Life changed and so did work. I'm constantly swamped just trying to catch up so never got ambition enough to really even start. I strongly doubt I ever will.
If a guy wanted to, he could make some round hole cutters using simple pipe. You'd have to figure out a way to spin it or have a lathe, but the cutter itself is simpler. You just find some metal pipe such that the desired cut diameter falls anywhere between the inside and outside diameters of the pipe walls. Basically you could use a file if no better tools are available. Just use a round file on the bore and a flat file on the outside, and while the pipe is spinning, bevel the outside and inside to a sharp cutting edge. If the resultant cutting edge is too small, you bevel the inside more to push the cutting edge outward and vice-versa if it's too large. You can just fiddle back & forth until it's the correct size.
Once you get the circle cutters made, you can simply stick some masking tape to some rubber or other cutting mat, then (the important part) just push the cutting edge down and SPIN the cutter slightly to cut the circle out. If you do like Clay did and whack the cutter with a mallet, you'll smash & roll the cutting edge, plus the cut won't be as clean either. I explained this to him at the time, but as you might already know, he's a little bull-headed.
If you want a physical ring to align the inner/outer circles, I suppose these days a guy could 3D print a simple ring thing to aid that.
Thanks on the price advice. I'm not sure yet if I'm even interested in having a pinball machine again, but I might look at the thing tomorrow anyway. Been blowing money on a slightly more expensive "hobby" lately. Here's a video showing my latest toy, just picked it up a couple days ago.
I saw machines like this playing soccer in a video a while back. It would be interesting to set up something near a hill and see if you could set up a pinball game!
