If It’s an American Heritage, Beware of Dead Cushions

We were recently out on a job in Anaheim Hills, CA. The client hired us to disassemble their six year old American Heritage billiard table located in an upstairs bonus room. The first thing I do when when I arrive at a client’s home is to inspect the pool table cushions. Sure as the Sun rises in the East, this eight foot, Malaysian made American Heritage had two rails with “dead” cushion rubber. The reason why I say Malaysian made, is because the Ohio based manufacturer of this table claims that all of their pool tables are “American made”. Which is a big lie! There is nothing wrong with Import pool tables. In fact the manufacturer that we deal with for our own Import pool tables, namely the Fischer brand were actually made in the same factory in Malaysia. One of the huge differences between the two companies is that CL Bailey and Fischer tables use a totally different cushion rubber formula. Bailey’s cushion rubber stands the test of time, with a usable life expectancy of 20+ years. American Heritage cushions on the other hand have been known to fail in as little as 3 years.

So after pointing out the fact that two of the rails were already dead and the others would follow suit shortly. The homeowner decided wisely to postpone the pool table setup until we replaced all of the inferior cushion rubber. We wrapped up the all six rails and placed them in the recushion queue at our billiard shop. We returned about two weeks later to finish installing the entire pool table.