I have been over to the Cueball Club on Mansfield Road in Derby today to finish off the work of three full size re-covers on their snooker tables .
today I was working on table 1 in the corner of the room .
cushion stripped and recovered in the thicker Hainsworth Smart for better wear on the cushions , I find that fitting Smart cloth to cushion is much better for wear ,than the thinner match cloth which easily splits on the facing edge and down the middle pocket falls where the ball makes contact with the wood end of the cushions and does not last long .
so we have gone with match cloth on the bed and smart cloth on the cushions , my client at the Cueball ( Danny ) preferring Hainsworth over Strachan cloth .
here I have stripped the bed cloth off the slate bed and I am starting to fit the match cloth to the table .
stretched at each end then the middle falls are stretched and tacked .
at this point I have to fit a large clamp to each side of the middle fall to pull each corner out , this prevents me ripping the cloth , and getting wrinkles in the centre slate fall .
Match cloth whether it is Hainsworth or the Strachan no10 is one of the hardest cloths to stretch out .
the cloth is thinner yet it is very unforgiving when it has to form around corners or falls like a centre slate fall .
thus the clamp is used to help things along .
I have wet the centre slate fall , this helps to form the cloth into the fall and look better , the cloth will shrink a bit into the fall as it drys .
you may see some odd fading’s on the TV table around the centre falls this is Starch , I prefer the old fashioned water damping rather than the starch for fitting wool napped cloths .
the damp cloth is also better to grip than shiny dry cloth so I keep my hands damp at all times when stretching cloth on to gain ta very tightly fitted cloth .
with the corner slate fall area pulled and tacked down and the ends stretched , you can see the wrinkles have been pulled out so it is now OK to take the clamp off .
you have to relocate the clamp at each side of the centre fall you as are pulling towards the corner pocket fall , so 4 operations of clamping and unclamping and pulling out of wrinkles .
as you can see a p erect fitted bed cloth around the centre slate falls , this is the hardest part of any stretching and fitting of bed cloths on snooker tables .
a corner pocket opening .
the centre pocket opening inwards view from inside of the table playing surface shows not wrinkles .
and the same on the corner pocket opening viewed inside the tables playing area towards the pocket .
the completed table 1 ready for play .
