The new owners of this seven-foot pool table decided on refelting it when they visited our Orange County pool table service center. One of our display pool tables is set up on the floor with Khaki cloth on the slate and Ocelot Beige on the rails. This seemed to spark some interest in the two young ladies from Tustin, CA. They fell in love with our animal skin printed cloth. The couple had recently purchased a used pool table from Craigslist, and the guy who delivered it claimed to have installed new rubber cushions.
Fast forward to our appointment day for the pool table refelting to be done. The girls had chosen to pair our faux Zebra skin with black billiard cloth on the slate bed. My assistant and I started to install the Zebra cloth into the tops of the pool table rails. This is where I started to notice that the rubber cushions were loose or coming off the rail entirely. My hunch was that the slipshod mechanic who had installed the new cushions did so by using the incorrect type of adhesive. Alarm bells went off inside my head as I began to realize that this rogue pool table mechanic had taken advantage of these two unsuspecting young women.
Next, I whipped out my trusty Starrett 98 machinist’s level to confirm my suspicions. Sure enough, the darn slates weren’t ever leveled at all! Standing at the side of the table near the corner pocket I rolled one of the balls slowly across the felt towards the other corner pocket closest to me. I was amazed to see that the ball had drifted off course towards the side pocket by about eight inches. When I told my client the bad news, that I’d have to take their rails into the shop and re-glue each piece of cushion rubber with the correct adhesive, and that I’d have to start from scratch on re-leveling the pool table. She responded by saying, “Yeah, I thought the deal the guy was giving us was too good to be true. Go ahead, we just want it done the right way!”