This week I have been over in Northamptonshire to start the work on a large snooker club which has 12 full size snooker tables , 2 american pool tables and 6 UK supreme pool tables.
I started off on monday to recover the three Supreme Pool tables , and found a few faults and gave advice accordingly to sort it out going forward on the next recovers.
Photo of pool table area , the dots are dust particles from the recovering the flash is bouncing off them .
The previous firm had swapped cushions over , by bringing second hand already covered cushions they swapped the good cushions with this miss match set of 3 red rubber , 2 black rubber and 1 blue rubber , all these rubbers offer different rebound value and are all on one table so a miss match .
My recommendation is to buy a new set of cushions and replace next time round and try and match up with other cushions to get all black rubber sets .
Once sorted out the cushions should never be mixed up , always recover and put the same cushions back on each table they came from , as the pool team will be used to the bounce and it could spoil their game to put rubbish dead cushions or mixed up cushions like these on when they have had good rebound cushions in the past.
Another mixed set this time 5 old red rubber cushions and one newer Black cushion rubber .
From Tuesday to Friday we re-covered 6 full size snooker tables in the upper room , this room also had a match set of riley steel Block cushions fitted , all the tables where Square legged Karnehm & hillman tables , these are very good tables to work on , but they had a right cowboy re-cover them last year and he had stapled all the bed cloths on and used the lower grade 6811 CLUB cloth when they had ordered 6811 Tournament gold .
the two photo’s above showing that the last fitter had stapled the bed cloths on , these where badly fitted cloths with loose centre pocket falls , long club cloth nap which made the tables very slow , they had only been on a year , and it was the club’s intentions to reuse these cloths on the downstairs tables but they where well past their sell by date .
Always have a bed cloth tacked on , with heads of tacks showing proud so that any future re stretching can be done with ease by simple flick out of bed cloth tacks by leaving space to lever each tack out with a screwdriver , this has been the prefered method of attaching cloth for over 100 years , staples are the prefered method of attaching cushion cloth but NEVER on a bed cloth .
this is not the first time I have come across this fitters work , last year I did the sister club to this establishment and that cloth was taken off after just one months use .
I was told by one of the local snooker players who was speaking to this fitter a year ago , he had told him that he had been in the trade of fitting snooker tables for over 30 years , well all I can say he must have taught himself , because a time served fitter would never do this type of cowboy work , and I know he is still out there doing it and is based in the London Area so buyer beware as they say .
The Match table has steel block cushions on , giving a better truer bounce .
The corner pocket opening on the match table is 3.5 inch at the fall , I have measured all corner pockets and they are all the same , the last fitter had them al at different sizes , and on all the tables he had just used a speed drill to tighten the cushion bolts up , and not nipped them up tight after with a brace and socket , I made sure all bolts where nipped up tight .
Next week I will return for one more snooker table re-cover , and two american pool table re-covers in Strachan super pro speed cloth with 70% merino wool to 30% man made fibre , this is the best speed cloth to use , not only for fitting easy , but for playing on too .
we are very busy at the moment , a few Saturdays to also fill in before i go away on holiday , as I do not want to turn work away while it is coming in like this .
A busy firm should explain a lot of things to people , it is only busy because we care about what we do and the way we go about it , using good quality cloth and good time served Workmanship , and lastly we listen to our clients , we do not miss inform them just to make a quick exit , today for example , when I had finished al the tables I cleaned up vacuumed the floor , then checked all the levels of the tables in the snooker room .
Then got the client to inspect , I knew though by feedback from the players that they where very happy with the work and cloth used.
