I have been over to the New Rushcliffe Arena Leisure Centre this week to deliver their old snooker tables back .
the two tables where dismantled and taken into store and bubble wrapped two years ago .
the old snooker room of the now demolished old Rushcliffe Arena from 2014 , tables being dismantled and bubble wrapped .
this week we returned the tables to find a Large new Leisure Centre had been built on the old site of Rushcliffe Leisure Centre.
we rebuilt the frames and leveled them , then placed the slate on , then leveled again and set the joints correct and skimmed with filler .
the tables have 5 sections of slate around 2 inch thick .
these two tables where built around the late 1980s , and are actually metric sized , made by Thurston when the governing body was going to go over to metric sized tables .
they are around a couple of inches shorter on the length and width to a normal full sized table .
the governing body then refused to change over , I think Thurston must have made a couple of hundred of these metric tables around the 1980s/90s , and I have another on my rounds in a British legion club in Derby .
You have to be careful when marking out as all the measurements are different to a normal full sized table .
always take note of your surrounding walls and fixingswhen deciding on which end to break off from or the Baulk end as we call it .
The cloths where laid on with the D end ( Baulk end ) to this end , and that is because we have a wall of glass to the right of this photo , if we where to place the D end at the other end then from a break off if hit hard some balls may come off the table at speed and break the glass wall .
This was a concern to me , and I often wonder if architects play snooker ? if they did then they would know low down glass is a hazard for snooker balls flying off tables .
have you spotted the other obvious mistake they have made ? the lighting is for a 6ft pool table , too small and the wrong type to have above a full size snooker table .
don’t worry I put them right , they are either going to hang the old shades back up or fit new modern twin tube high frequency units up .
Table one all done sporting new Strachan 6811 tournament 30 oz cloth and New high quality nets and leathers and fitted too .
now you can see the hazard of glass going all the way down to the floor .
This is not the only sports centre to have this design , I recently did the Nottingham University sports centre with three table in a very similar room using the same type of glass wall .
Nottingham university sports centre Glass wall to left of tables .
the new sports centre will look like this , Rushcliffe Arena I am sure will be a huge asset to the surrounding area
with new swimming pools gym , volley ball sports hall , snooker and indoor bowls to name just a few of the activities on offer .
I would like to thank Helen Penniston of Rushcliffe Borough council and Arena for putting GCL Billiards bid forward and securing the work for us , Helen worked closely with GCL Billiard to make sure the refitting of the tables was a smooth operation .
We worked to a date and time schedule and the work was carried out without any problems , access was sorted for hassle free installation .
