This week I have been over to Nether Broughton in Leicestershire .
My work was to strip down a very old Billiard table and re-rubber and try to make the pocket openings wider as my client was expressing concern over not being able to pocket the balls .
This being the old top plate billiard table built before 1895 , the woodwork would not allow for me to open the pockets up by simple trimming extra off the rubber curve as it entered the pocket .
this would be my normal method of opening a pocket up , as plenty of rubber on a modern table and the wood work is wider .
so the only solution was to rasp the slate falls further in on the corner pockets , this had been done before but not to a good standard .
before the cutting of the rubber and the rasping of the fall inwards .
all cushions on and measured to make sure we cut accurate the openings .
once the rubber had been shaped and undercut , the covering of the cushions begins .
Cushion now covered and ready to be refitted to the table
the table is now complete and ready for play , but my client is replacing the old metal shade with new LED lighting
the pocket opening after we had rasped the slate fall further in by 1/2 an inch !
the falls are now set at 3.3/4 inch at the fall but close to just 3 inch at the rear , a common thing with these old billiard tables .
I prefer not to do this and keep these old billiard tables as original as possible because that was the opening that was being played on in pre 1895 for billiards .
but it has not made it too daft and like buckets , these old tables are very difficult to play the modern game of snooker on , my client requested that I open the pockets up and after some discussion this was only going to be the best way to do this apart from replace the cushions with modern ones .
When I completed this table over two days , he asked me to go around the corner to look at a friends pool table and pull this in at the same time if it where possible ,
I did this by taking the cushions off the pool table on the first day and taking these home and re-covering them in the evening , and bring them back the next day so I only had the bed cloth to fit to this pool table .
this is how busy I am at the moment , right up to Christmas day we are booked out .
