This week I had the pleasure of working on this very nice large bulbous fluted leg Burroughs & Watts Billiard / snooker Table circa around 1910 .
My client was having problems with the rubber not bouncy enough , and the pockets where not all the same size .
I stripped the table down to find the last re-rubber by Burroughs and Watts was in 1954 , my client had purchased the table from another firm who had claimed to have completely refurbished the table , this was not the case as the photo of the rubber proved having 54 code year on it .
the other firm had made fantastic job of the re-polish though as the photos show , so full credit to them on that part of the refurb work .
Photo above of the actual rubber I took off the table , showing the 54 date code , most rubber made had a date code on them a practice still used on Northern rubber , which now has a boxed moulded in date code where the year is present then 12 boxes with dots in it showing the expired months , so if a rubber had 24 on it and then 5 boxes with a dot in them , the date of manufacture would be 2024 and the month of May . as can be seen below in this advert by Hainsworth who own the rights to Northern Rubber now .
The above date code on this advert example is 2018 and 7 dots in box section = July .
you can see the next year is 2019 an boxes have dots in them , each dimple dot is drilled into the casting as each month ends forming a moulded raised dot , a simple method .
The old method of dating rubber was just a stamp on top of the rubber which is easy to sand off , so that is why they switched to the moulded box dot method of dating rubber .
Above old method of dating rubber was a stamped on painted print , easy to remove .
so that is why they switched to imprinting in moulding, of box month dating and year .
If you see this has been removed you know someone is trying to hide the year it was last done
also look for the yellow dot in Northern Rubber , this to stop the Chinese copying it .
The yellow dot insert is your guarantee it is Genuine Northern Rubber as used on Professional TV Tour tables , by World snooker .
Here are the finished photos of my clients table , as you can see my Client has a very nice bottom of the garden games Room , the table has heated slates , and I have changed the rubber to Northern Rubber , cloth used was Hainsworth Match cloth on the bed , and Hainsworth thicker smart cloth on the cushions , as these take a lot of wear , more so than the bed cloth .
The ball rails where also changed for more modern chromed type with 4 rail bars in them and the two spot end rails where extra long to collect more red balls at that end .
I would also like to point out that the cushions mahogany is extremely heavy , these would play the same as steel block cushions , they where made from Cuban Mahogany , a very hard and heavy wood just like lignum vitae as used on crown bowl balls , and it is extremely rare to find these on a table , and as a Billiards fitter of 48 years now , I can only say I have only come across a dozen tables on my rounds in the past , out of thousands of tables I have worked on to have these fitted .
So if you are lucky enough to have one of these sets of cushions on your table , you are very lucky .
In 1910 a table like this would have been the same price of a terraced or semi detached house , so this table would have been in a very rich household , and from the labels on it from the previous firm that moved it , from the Bath area of UK when it was first installed .
