Today I was called back to a club that had a re-cover from GCL billiards a year ago , I reminded them that the bed cloth would now be requiring a re-tightening of the bed cloth by taking it off and re stretching back on .
so today was the day I visited them to do the work .
The tables are old Burroughs and watts and an even older George Wright .
The table I was re-stretching was the Steel cushioned Burroughs and watts , the George Wright got a free service of Brush iron mark out and re-spot nets and leathers straps and nuts all checked while I was doing this work.
you may notice small pads around the pockets resting on the legs , these are pre ball rail pads , where you had this between a bag net and the wood work to stop balls hitting the wood and to protect the ball , they are still in situ on the table and I have never taken them off in 40 years of working on this table.
they are stuffed with horse hair.
here are a few more photo’s of the Burroughs and watts and George Wright table during the re-stretching of the cloth , also some photo’s of the old life pool board and period framed rules that have hung on the walls of this club for many years .
this George Wright has the leaf carved pattern on each knee panel , the lower design has leafs carved to look like a face , This is a typical George Wright design as is the reeded legs .
the boards are in a bit of a state with buttons missing off one , and they have the oak board with the mahogany table and the mahogany board with the oak table , this was done by the builders when the table’s where relocated upstairs around 20 years ago .
they where still painting the walls when we put the table upstairs so we let them fix the boards up , when we went back to do a service some months later we found they had mixed the boards up .
When I re-stretch a bed cloth , I always use Acetone to erase the old baulk line and D , if the correct pencil is used there is no problem erasing this line , but if permanent marker or white tippex pen is used the results may be a mess , so always use a proper soft lead pencil for marking out and you will not have a problem when the time to stretch a bed cloth has been reached .
Both table have suffered X rest nibble at the end’s of the frame work , the George Wright one is very bad , this is one reason I do not like to see Rest’s on a table after an expensive renovation of the polish to woodwork.
The rest hook’s on this table look a bit of a home made version , Those nice carved knee panels are lucky to have survived the knocking of the x rest against the woodwork when replacing back on the rest hooks .
Stretching a bed cloth prolong’s the life of the cloth , and you have less chance to cue rip a cloth on tight cloth , but on slack cloth it rips very easy , also the area of track marks around the pocket fall is moved as is the position of the spots , the ball travels faster over a tight cloth .
and the slate is cleaned of chalk dust and the table checked for level .
you can see how far it has stretched around the outside edge by looking at the bolt holes , to see how far they have moved away from the cushion bolt hole .
