I was called in by a Mrs Patel in Leicester to finish the install of a 10 ft Burroughs and watts 4 piece slate bed snooker table circa 1880’s .
Mr’s Patel’s husband had installed the table and put the frame up roughly level and repaired a Broken slate .
I went over a few weeks ago just to see what I was up against , the cushions required a re-rubber , and the table re-cloth in 6811 tournament cloth .
so I took the Cushion’s into the workshop to re-rubber and re-cover them to save time on the return visit.
Also they had two broken Brass top plate pockets , I never throw any old billiard table parts away and found two to perfectly replace the broken ones in my store room shed.
If I ever scrap a table I always keep the parts that I think may be useful in keeping other tables in use .
the next photo’s show how bad the broken slate was , Mr Patel had made a very good job of repairing the slate and filling in the slate joints , although I did point out that some extra under slate support would help to keep the broken piece in place especially if someone was to put their knee on it to take a shot further down the table, which he carried out and made a good job of putting a board to support the whole broken piece under the slate .
I checked the level and found it to be out by quite some distance , this shows that using a builders level can only get it to rough level , you really need to use an engineers spirit level to get it bang on .
the games room has to be cleared out now the table is installed the room was being used as storage until they bought the table , the room was built for Mrs Patel’s son , who is very keen to start playing snooker in his own snooker room at the bottom of the Garden .
the Burroughs and watts turned and Fluted leg table was built around 1880 maybe a little before that as it has a 4 piece slate bed rather than a 3 or 5 piece , having 4 sections the joint on the middle pockets are suspect to chipping as a ball bounces back off the middle pocket plate , so all the billiard firms stated to use 3 and 5 section slates so that no joint was ever going to be in the middle pocket . you may note that the table has the old top plate billiard pockets , these where discontinued around 1895 in favour of concealed pocket plate fixings into the end of each cushion rather than the bolt down finger of brass showing in the upper wood capping .
I am sure The Patel’s will find many hours of enjoyment in their own Billiard room at the bottom of their Garden , and keep their son occupied for many an hour .
