To make sure the bottom of the pocket is flat, I first used and end mill and removed as much material as I could but stayed away from the line. If you look close, you can see the pocket isn't round (which is normal using this method). However, by using my boring head and a boring bar, I can make the pocket round.

Now you might be asking, why don't I just use my boring bar for the entire operation? Because a boring bar is made so it has clearance at the bottom, with only the point touching your work first. If I were to use the boring bar method only, there would be a series of grooves every time I adjusted the boring head to cut larger.
 

If you look close, you can see the endmill marks in the pocket on the left. This is unavoidable but a necessary evil by doing it this way. No big deal because those tool marks were quickly removed using my Dremel and a sanding accessory.
   

At the opposite end of the pocket, I'll be installing a 3/8" diameter pin to help locate the gold bars. The reason for this is because if you randomly placed the gold bar at the end of the balance bar, this would throw off the center of mass and wouldn't work right. What I came up with is to locate the gold bars on this pin so the center of mass stays constant. The gold bars in turn will have a 3/8" diameter pocket in the bottom of them. This way the players will be able to locate each gold bar easily and they will be in the exact location, no matter which way they are placed on the pin.
 

I'm using 3/8" hardened dowel pins for the pins. This way they won't wear out and should last for years. I had to shorten the pins by 1/4" using my lathe, which was really hard to do. The final length for the dowel pins are 1/2" and will be pressed in.
 

As I was doing some testing, I noticed the dowel pin was too heavy and nothing balanced any longer. To help off-set this, I added some 1/4-20 flat head cap screws to the opposite end of the pins.
 

The first change I made was to reduce the pin diameter the center only. By reducing the diameter by a small amount (arrows), this allows the pin to work more freely with less friction. Now the balance bar works much better, or with less drag making it more sensitive.
 

The pieces that you see below will become the gold bars. The three on the left are steel and the others are aluminum. Once they're painted, it will be hard to tell what material they are, but that won't really matter.