A Rarity of table design from Thurston .

[Geoff Large]

today I have been dismantleing a table in Richmond near london , the House ( a very large Georgian property ) apparently belonged to Tommy steel the actor in the past .
Anyway a Rarity of a table in that the cushions have slate insert blocks inserted into the main body of the cushion to make them heavy , these where in direct competition to burroughs and watts steel block cushions around the turn of the century 1890 to 1910 ish .
they where called Adamant ( no not Adam Ant ) cushions by Thurston , and are extremly heavy , giving a more firmer cushion to bounce off .
A cross section of this cushion can be found on Norman Clare's web .

www.normanclare.co.uk/DOY_No4_cushions.html

the table also had a corner pocket plate that screws on one side into the end cushions only and a square lug that locates into the side cushions , the middle plates both having square lugs .
not many of these around , the table is insured for £10,000 although it is a oak thin square leg and has no good looks about it , I suspect if it belonged to Tommy steel then that is why they are basing it on that valuation .
the table was removed for a TV film crew to film in the room for 4 days , part of an itv drama series out next year , next week after filming I have to put the table back up and recover it .

[100-uper]

Interesting to see these curiosities are still out there. State of the art in it's day of course. According to the Ludgate magazine ( 1894 ) the Adamant cushion "renders the cushions very fast, and so deadens the sound of the ball when striking, that the game played is almost noiseless." It was also supposed to "add considerably to the resiliency and life of the cushion [rubbers]."

Lots of billiards records set with this cushion fitted to the table, including William Cook's 42,746 with the anchor cannon. The last advert I saw for them was dated 1909, the same year that the "Thurstonic" cushion was introduced as their new top-of-the-range. Although they would almost certainly have continued with the Adamant for some years after this, maybe right up to the war.

[noel]

Geoff, that's interesting!
If you can take pictures of the re-assembly I bet many people here would enjoy seeing that!


Cheers!


=o)

Noel

[Geoff Large]

I could take picture's but only with the property owners permission , you see some could use the images to make a break in to the property , we as billiard fitters have to respect privacy laws . which is why I do not give out exact addresses of the property that I am working in
I can take a picture of the cushion though and the pocket plates which I have come across before .

I have also come across a modern copy of these thurston adamant cushions in a Leicester club , though these had steel inserts not slate . and the build quality was rubbish . low quality wood used .

as burroughs and watts steel block cushions took off , they became the prefered cushion , so thurston discontinued their adamant designed cushion .


I am not a big fan of steel block cushions and can vouch that these Adamant cushions are of comparable quality in the accuracy and bounce comparison , steel block cushion surrounds/cappings or freize's as some call them , tend to warp and not sit correct when offered upto the steel plates , with these adamant designed thurston cushions it is not a problem as they are made just like a normal cushion apart from the slate insert .

[Geoff Large]

another unusual design for a billiard cushion that I have come across is the steel ribbon slip , for holding the cloth into the rebate , this table was an Orme and son's .

When I first became a fitter we had abench fitter who did all the rerubbering back at head office workshops .
He would also at the same time take out the steel ribbon and make the rebate a normal wood slip width approx 4mm .
I thought he must have converted all the orme steel ribbon cushions on our rounds , But he missed one in loughborough .
I know how to fit the steel ribbon , but believe me they could and will catch a few experienced fitters out if they have not come across one before .

[ryanah147]

A modern version of the Adamant cushion was manufactured in Northern Ireland by Conway Bros during the 80s, but instead of slate it had a steel insert. It was very cumbersome to cover, not only for the weight, but some times the steel insert ran the full length of the cushion leaving very little room to staple on the inside ends of the cushion.
Last year whilst cleaning out my workshop I came accross pieces of steel ribbon slips which I held on to from my earlier days in the trade. Just like Geoff we used to plough out a rebate for wooden slip. 90% of the steel slips I came accross were half rusted and would break when removing them, others could be very stubborn to remove and care had to be taken that no damage would happen to the edges of the cushion capping when removing same.
A few years ago I fitted an American Snooker Table and instead of slate it had a thing called `Slatron`, all it was was a glofified levelling compound. It didnt have nuts embedded into the slabs like the standard table. When the cushion bolts were fitted they went through the cushion body and through a 2x2 slate lining where you then screwed on a nut and washer.
I came accross this `levelling compound` again about 4 years ago on 9ft Brunswick American pool tables, and although they went together ok, the only real good part about them is that they were nice and light to handle. I was disappointed that a company with such a reputation like Brunswick used this compound rather than Italian slate.

[Mike P]

Geoff, sounds quite interesting, hopefully you can post some pictures.

Mike

[Geoff Large]

I was going to post some pictures but the return part of the job ( re-install table ) was sub contracted out to our london part time fitter , and I was sent to finnish off an outstanding order that had to be finnished on time in Gainsborough , shame realy becuase I have only worked on two of these adamant tables in the past .