Rock it until the Pockets Fall Off

Here we are at Park Plaza near old town Orange, CA. We were initially called out to do a refelt on this 8′ Golden West pool table. When we arrived at this retirement home in Orange, I bounced the the cueball from a few of the rails to test them out and soon realized that the cushions were dead. The pool table was original except for the pockets which had been changed out on the last refelt job, approximately eight years ago. So that would put the cushion rubber somewhere north of 20 years old. The rails themselves were in terrible shape too. I think all of the corner pockets were used as crutches, because when I unbolted the rails from the table this is what the bottoms looked like. Where the pocket irons connect into the rail via the pocket bolts, all the surrounding wood had been fractured or completely broken. This will seriously complicate things, meaning that we can recushion the rails, but when it comes time to reinstall the corner pockets there will be no way of fastening them to the rails. So I either need to forgo the recushion job and try to purchase a complete new set of rails from the manufacturer and hope that they somewhat match the custom stain job that someone in the past has done. My other alternative is to cut out all the broken wood and splice in new wood, then re-drill new pocket bolt holes. Either way this is going to lead to substantially more cost to our customer. This is why we always say “DON’T SIT ON YOUR POOL TABLE POCKETS!”