I was called by phone booking to re-cover and repair a coin mechanism of a winner supreme pool table local to me
This table was located in a post office sorting warehouse and is used 24 / 7 by different shift workers
so it has seen some real use over the years it has been in the place.
The last firm to re-cover it just bodged it , re-covering over three to four sets of previous recovers staples , the cushions where not really good but I had to recover them just for this last time .
Next time the table will be having new cushions or they may replace the whole table with a brand new one .
The following photo’s should show just how this table had seen abuse over the years from over use and from the previous firm who maintained it.
the first problem I had to overcome was not a faulty coin mechanism ,
as described to me over the phone , but a die cast part of the tipping tray , this had broken , my finger is pointing to it in the above photo.
The next photo above , shows me holding the die cast part ( which is the cue ball separator ) back into position that it should be , this Alloy die cast part also had a hole for the end of the tip out tray to locate into .
without this being in the correct position the tray would not flip out the balls and the cue ball separator did not work .
The only way to repair was to totally replace , but because we do not carry this part around with us and we would have had to order it from the manufacturer taking around 4 days to get it , the following photo shows how we got around this
a small frame tie flat bar was used with two self tapping screws , believe it or not this repair is a solid permanent fix , and it preforms as good as new .
Now the shocking previous re-cover that another local firm had done , I have come across this firms previous bad workmanship before , and I am not impressed with any work they do .
this is not me saying this because they are in competition to me as they are also local to my area , but because it is simply bad workmanship which I have to put right , but it also shows after completion of the job that my workmanship is top class , and my new client is over the moon with the work I carried out to rectify the previous bad workmanship.
The slate before I stripped the old cloth off the previous recover cloth is hiding the shocking glue residue over many years of spray on glue applications
this is really bad , lumpy old spray on glue well within the ball playing area . this table is just in a canteen rest area , and not in a club where a pool team would play , just imagine the comments from the pool players when a ball rolled down a side cushion was rolling all over the place because this is under the cloth !
the whole slate showing the area of spray on glue that the previous firm had used , I tried to get as much glue off using acetone and sanding down any rough area’s I did improve it , but it will take a good half a gallon of paint stripper to get this old glue off .
This is how a slate should look with no glue on any playing surface , I put all my cloth’s on with contact adhesive , spread by comb spreader direct to the area that is under the cushion and on the side of the slate , at no point do I build up glue under the cloth where a ball has to roll within the confines of the games playing area .
this is one reason why so many clubs and pubs with top players and decent high standard players use GCL billiards to re-cover their tables.
the finished table after a GCL billiards re-cover , as you can see the outer cabinet has also had some wear and tear with the melamine pealing off from the end cushion surround .
I also fitted 6 new ball rail runners to this table ,as the old one’s where falling apart .
I like to think that GCL Billiards brought this table back to life from a scrapper to a table that can now be played to a decent standard .
