The phone was ringing all through Christmas and new Year , I am sorry if I left a few phone calls unanswered but we decided to have a long break over the Christmas holiday period and start back on the 5th of January with a good 10 day break from work .
We have had bookings and inquiries to move various tables around and also the re-covering and re-rubber work is also starting to roll in .
It seems I am on the phone every day ordering in cloth for work booked in . so if you have a table that is requiring work in the near future or not too distant future please book us early as we are very popular and do not charge VAT .
please also look at our for sale section and look into past pages to see if any table takes your fancy , all these tables are being sold direct from the private seller , and from past experience of sales from this web site , I can inform you that some Bargains have been found like the one above which was just £450 , mainly due to re-location and house sales , but also from sellers who just want to use the room for other use.
we are also being asked to open up pockets on tight tables by not only private households but clubs and even Snooker Teacher Instructors who give lessons on the art of the game , it is now known that a much more open pocket gives you confidence to build high breaks and this enables the person to gain interest as well as accuracy when they go onto playing on tournament pockets which are a shade tighter by around 1/8th of an inch , if you get bored with a tight pocket table you are less likely to practice ,but on a table with wider pockets you can rack up some decent breaks then this removes the mental obstacle that you are not good enough and builds confidence to make higher breaks on even tighter pockets .
We can open pockets from the match size of 3.5 inch to 3.5/8th and 3.3/4 inch , anything above this then I think is a step too far .
Also the table age and cushions design may limit us to how we can open pockets up as some tables narrow as the ball enters the pocket , the more modern the table the less likely this is going to be the case .
another table we have opened the pockets up on , and we managed to do this without having to re-cover the cushions with new cloth , but we cannot guarantee this to be the case on every table , it depends on how it was recovered last time and if we can remove the tacks or staples without damage to the cloth .
This is how the rubber looks under the cloth
we are also experienced in maintaining steel block cushions , some firms shy away from these type of tables but not GCL billiards , Geoff is highly experienced in working on them
I am now going to show a photo below of a very bad re-rubber , this is one that was posted on a web site by a snooker enthusiast in Portugal , you can see why i say very bad when you look at how the rubber has been butchered and hacked at in trying to form the curve of the pocket . it looks more like a faceted edge of a 50p coin rather than a smooth curve to template !
the photo from Portugal click on photo to enlarge for a better view of rough cut , Re-gluing of loose rubber is not going to solve the rough cutting of the rubber in the above photo , the rubber in the corner pocket opening should be made as smooth as the photo of the steel cushion rubber in the photo above this one , this is how GCL billiards would rectify this problem , so if you have rough cut pockets and they have left enough rubber on like this one, I could improve the cushions cut and smooth this all out like in the steel block photo .
But if they have cut too much off then you may be better off having a complete new re-rubber of the cushions .
Now I am not going to flame the guy who did this as he has not had any formal training in re-rubber of cushions , the problem with many want to be billiard table fitters is they think they can learn the job in under 3 weeks , I can assure you it takes around 5 to 8 years to develop into a good billiard table fitter .
Click on photo’s to enlarge
a close up of how the rubber should be cut and smoothed out on a standard wood cushion . now look at the photo above this one to see a bad cut , just imagine how a ball will react when it hits all these cuts and divots and lumps , and also the cloth will split on the sharp rubber , yes rubber can cut the cloth if it is left like the rough cut in the photo from Portugal .
just to round things off , this is how your table should look after a successful; re-rubber and re-cover by Geoff at GCL billiards .
if you want an experienced Billiards fitter to work on your Bar billiards / Snooker or Pool table then Phone Geoff on 07753566064 or email c.large@btinternet.com
