Another salvage job!

[philip in china]

That one on ebay is a joke. The vendor will be lucky if somebody will remove it for free.

[perpetualboredom]

If it was in a house and needed to be removed then yes, but as it's outside and presumable doesn't need to be moved I'd guess the slate etc has some salvage value.

[philip in china]

I have a few wood burning stoves and wood fired central heating. So I could find a use for the rest of it.

[Kryten]

I don't have the room to upgrade to an 8 foot I'm afraid One day though, should my numbers come up on the lottery (and I start to play it) then a requirement in the new house would be a potting shed!

And good god @ that full size table, they're having a laugh? I'd love to get my hands on it, but on a full size, if it was ever going to be worth doing something with I'd do all the woodwork and then hand it over to experts to complete. However even if it was free, I couldn't see that being cost effectively.

[Kryten]

So near completion it's great! I'm very happy with results so far.

Cloth to go on, it's a darker shade (pool) cloth but still brings up the wood nicely and works well with the brasswork.



Stretched and fitted well, extremely happy at this point.


I had to use a few tricks though; due to the extra depth from the new timber under the table, it wasn't possible to pull the cloth down over the middle pockets. I therefore used the pool trick, cut up close to the playing surface and stapled down to the timber, then used carpet adhesive to stick a strip of cloth to the pocket inner. Looks surprisingly good, I wouldn't have minded doing it all over the table but the corner pockets stretched over nicely.

It was time to start looking at the pockets. I had to cut down the leathers, which led to a problem; I hadn't thought ahead, and cut at an odd number of holes meaning I couldn't thread the lace through neatly. I therefore drilled 2 extra holes.


I also found the brass screws I had bought were particularly crap; 3 snapped off with torque. Took half an hour to extract 2 of them, but given up on 1. Glued the screwhead to the brass plate from the bottom to give the illusion of it still being there.

And the current state:



Strings need tightening a bit, but I'm quite happy. The only thing really letting it down for me is the nets, they don't hang right and that'll mostly be down to them being for full size tables. I may well redo them in the future.

I don't have much left to do - stain and fit the buttons to cover the bolts, tighten a few strings and mark up the cloth. If I have any stain left over I'll probably also stain the new timber under the slate - entirely unnecessary of course but if anyone ends up getting drunk under my table they won't notice!

[itsnoteasy]

Tell you what would look good Kryten, and that's a before and after picture side by side, just to show how far the tables come. Looks great that.

[rdp50734]

That looks so much better!

How much would you say it has cost you to complete it?

[Kryten]

Will do a before and after once it's 100% complete. It's playable as it stands though

Rough costings:

Cloth, rubbers, nets and leathers - just over £70
Misc hardware (bolts, T-nuts etc) about £20
Stain, filler, decorative bits - just over £20
Timber, about £15
I could do with buying a few more bits and bobs - decorative wooden panels to go over the bolt holes, and I need new nuts and dome nuts for the ball runners, the ones I originally ordered are a smidgen too large. That's only another tenner's worth though.

So all in all probably around the £140 mark. With the table costing me nothing other than time, I'm quite pleased with that. It's difficult (but possible) to pick up a slate bed 6 foot for less or near that amount, but mostly in a very well used/aged condition. It's not something I would fully recommend doing if you just wanted to buy a table on the cheap due to that, however it's a lovely project to get stuck into.

[itsnoteasy]

It's not always about the money,it's bringing something back to life, you should be very pleased with yourself.

[Kryten]

So, I'm just about done It's taken a while but I think patience this time has paid off.

The last thing I needed to find was covers for the leg bolts holes. I couldn't find anything particularly suitable off-the-shelf, however I was eyeing up some lovely architrave mouldings which would have been lovely. However at over a fiver a piece and needing 8, I wasn't able or willing to spend that much.
http://travisperkins.scene7.com/is/image/travisperkins/C1875_121242_00?$normal$

Instead I went for a semi-DIY option.



In the middle is one of the original panels that come from the table. Either side, are some more mouldings from Wickes - a 2 meter length of which was only £4 and that was more than enough to make up some mouldings myself. Decided to only mould the bottoms of them as that's all that'd be seen.
Unfortunately as they are pine, the grain isn't quite right but when stained up they looked more than acceptable.
I got those and the buttons stained up and fitted with the aide of some decent double sided tape. The buttons were just a smidge smaller than the holes but the tape acted as both adhesive and a shim allowing for a tight fit. Again, a slight annoyance here is that the original holes were not all centered. They didn't look too bad when they originally had the old coach bolts in, but when I'd bored them out to 25mm for sunk bolts and the buttons, it makes it look a little more obvious. I had seriously considered finding a way to fit sliding panels but found it would have been cost prohibitive and wouldn't have looked that good either.



Below you can see the pockets are quite baggy and difficult to get them to sit flat with the runners but I've actually managed to improve them since taking the pics yesterday evening. And yet again as I look at this picture I realise I've forgotten to tighten that pocket leather again!



And the finished product:



I have a few niggly things to do. I'm still struggling to find dome nut for the end of the runners as they appear to be imperial rather than metric. The old ones don't polish up, so they're on there and keeping everything together but just don't look too nice.

It plays very well indeed, the bounce on the cushions is awesome compared to the far smaller rubbers on the last table. My 1 7/8" pool balls look tiny on this though, so have ordered a 2" set. Had a couple of games of snooker though and it plays really nicely. The slate is fantastically level and once I'd gotten some help to lift it, using some vinyl floor tiles to shim and level, it's spot on.

All in all, to get it to this standard from how I picked it up below, I'm very happy indeed It even feels hard to believe it's the same wood & brass as in the picture below!

Many thanks to everyone for the kind comments and good advice as usual, it's certainly helped a lot!




PS: I'm trying to sell my old table and not having a lot of luck. If anyone's interested please let me know. It's far from perfect as it was my first attempt but it may well suit a collector or similar.

[Erwan_BZH]

Massive congratulations Kryten! You can be very proud of yourself

[Geoff Large]

Well done

you have incorporated some good upgrades to the table with those cushion bolts on the claw nuts to under slung thicker linings rather than the wood screws
just one improvement you may want to do , unpick those pockets and take the nets up a loop both on the plate and on the under wire this may sort tour sagging nets out , also sew all the loops of string up you have them alternate at the moment

have look at the leathers on these tables to see that all the holes in the leather have been sewn up with no missing loops .
http://gclbilliards.com/re-stretch-t...ar-birmingham/

[Kryten]

Lovely, cheers Geoff I made sure those were not laced up too tight as I wasn't happy and would need to have another go. I'll give that a try

[rdp50734]

How much are you looking for your old table?

Where are you based?

What size is it, sorry if Ive missed these details.

[ADR147]

I have really enjoyed this thread. Made my day!