I have had to replace one cloth due to it being ripped and now another in the space of just a few days of the opening of this local club.
I did not carry out the re-covering of any of the tables in this establishment , but I have found two reasons why these cloths are very easy to rip while playing snooker
first reason , the tables where re-covered around 12 months ago way before the club actually re-opened, so are due for a re-stretch of bed cloth , the table cloths will slacken off over a 12 month time period and are due to be stretched .
but the other reason is more alarming in that the fitter who carried out the re-covering of these tables have not put enough tacks in ,
the spacing down the side of the tables are 10 to 12 inch apart which is shocking work and would cause the cloth to be slack from the first few days as the cloth will have not have enough tack down places to make sure the cloth stays tight ,
I am not going to name names of which firm carried out the re-covering 12 months ago , but here are a few photo’s of why the table cloths are slack and ripping easy from cue stabbing.
A photo taken from under the table , we found only a few tacks on the side of the cloth and these where spaced out 10 to 12 inch apart , the cloth would become very slack between these tacks
As can be seen I did this to every table and found the cloth to be alarmingly very slack to the touch , so much that if you rub your fingers down the cloth it rucks up in front of them as pictured in the photo.
This photo of one of the re-placed cloths , showing my tacks are anchoring the cloth down every 5 inch at least , in this case every 4 inch .
this is what will happen if a cloth is not tight enough , I know this can happen even on very tight cloths but it is very rare , tight cloths tend to just result in a cue stab
Slack cloths almost always end up with a L shape rip like this one
I am sorry to say for this club Manager who has successfully ran another club and also played snooker for many years , that the clubs tables are in need of every table cloth re-stretching ASAP
Without the table bed cloths being tightened back up due to not fitting tight enough by putting enough tacks in and also the time scale of re-cover to opening the club of 12 months , these snooker table’s are going to all end up with torn bed cloths.
