Cloth cleaning

[David Pleym]

Ok so this has likely been thought of before but I play on an ordinary club table and try to look after it as best I can with brushing , blocking and ironing it prior to each time playing on it. Invariably because it's in general use when I come in its usually dirty which is a pain. Bought my own brushes and napping block as the ones in the club are done but I recently bought a big lint roller and it's one of those that's reusable, you just wash it. Made of some kind of rubber type material and is very good and doesn't leave any sticky residue at all. Just wondered if anyone had used anything similar for lifting dirt, crumbs , hair etc from the cloth or whether anyone has any views on if this would damage the cloth or not?

Cheers

David

[luke-h]

for napping the cloth and lifting a bit of dust i order some free flotex carpet tiles wrap them round a piec of wood and secure they work very well.

[itsnoteasy]

for napping the cloth and lifting a bit of dust i order some free flotex carpet tiles wrap them round a piec of wood and secure they work very well.

Lad at the club has done this, they do a great job.

[luke-h]

Lad at the club has done this, they do a great job.

best thing you can use, i brushed flotex'd then ironed the other night and i think iys the first time the balls ran true so is ideal at laying the nap back down.

free samples are available from forbo and many others online worth taking advantage of.

[David Pleym]

Cheers folks

Samples ordered ��

[Tommykiid]

To add another question to this thread can you use an ordinary clothes iron to iron the table without damaging the cloth ?? ( dont have access to a proper table iron at the minute and badly needs a ironing )

[philip in china]

Yes, you can. That is what I used for years on my 10' table. Be careful, of course, but yes it works fine. Just slower than with a snooker iron as it is so much smaller.

[djax]

Hi Philip, Is humidity a problem for you in China? I was wondering if that was the case, does it necessitate ironing the table more frequently?

[philip in china]

Perhaps more of an answer than you bargained for:

In cases of high humidity you should iron more frequently. Actually here it doesn't matter. We get high relative humidity in the summer. When it is summer the AC is on most of the time and that dries the air quite a lot.

My table in europe is similar- in Bulgaria high RH is in the summer so I do run the AC but as there I am paying for the electricity, it runs a good deal less than here where I am not! So on a humid day in the summer I will go into the snooker room, switch on the AC (saying a little prayer for whomever it was who invented AC) and then proceed to iron the cloth before I play. I then play and generally when I finish I brush, block and iron the table again. My table, there, gets too much love really but I am obsessive about such things.

Also I have a waterproof plastic cover for the table and that always goes on after I have played.

BTW I leave China in 52 days to live, permanently, in Bulgaria. So if anybody wants a 10' table, complete, you can have it. The only problem is you have to come to Sichuan to shift it!

[djax]

Sounds like a great deal of ironing takes place Philip. You think the cloth suffers much for that amount of attention? BTW, best table I've ever owned was a 10'

[philip in china]

Once I am there permanently it probably won't get as much. If I am there for only a few weeeks I tend to have so many other things to do within a short time, that playing takes a bit of a back seat. Once I am in a normal rythm there I shall play more so the cloth will be in generally better nick.

I am still on the original cloth. I have a spare for when it needs to be replaced but that won't be for a long time yet.

I do have to be careful on the relative humidity as there is a grand piano in the snooker room as well and big fluctuations of RH are murderous to pianos. Actually big fluctuations in RH aren't good for most things.

[djax]

I too have similar issues. This time of the year, because I bike race, the table only gets used for a couple of hours each week. Which means I only iron once a month. Come September, when racing and training goes on the backburner, then a great deal more use is had out of it. Funnilly enough, my game improves enormously during those winter months.