Connelly rail height
Greetings,
It has been a while since I've posted, but you may recall that I've been in the process of getting an older Connelly 'Ultimate', back into playing condition. I had some questions about rehabilitating the rails, but ended up buying brand new rails from Connelly.
Well, they finally completed the rails and I picked them up yesterday.
The old rails were approximately 1-3/4" thick (subrail and rail cap), and used Artemis K-66 rubber.
The new rails are 1-1/2" thick, and use Championship 'Tour Edition' K-55 rubber.
And now the kicker: The nose height of the new rails is ~1-5/16"!
When I discovered this, I figured something
must be wrong, so I put the rails back in their box and headed for the Connelly customer service and operations center here in Phoenix. I also took along one of the old rails.
I told Norm Saunders that, "there must be something wrong with these rails." (I think Norm is their head customer service guy - he's the person that originally took my order for the rails.) I showed him the comparison between the old rail and the new, and how the old rail had a nose height of 1-7/16", and the new rail had a hose height of ~1-5/16". He said that all their rails were 1-5/16", and that it was the BCA specified nose height. He pulled out a specification sheet to show me, but for some reason the nose height was not on that sheet. (Of course,
I knew that the BCA spec. was 1-7/16", because I read this forum where all you smart guys write about such things
)
We measured some of his other tables (they have a showroom at their customer service center), and sure enough - ~1-5/16". Norm said, "We use the same height as the Brunswicks." Oops! Not so. We measured a Brunswick, and whatd'ya know: 1-7/16".
Since they had a table set up for shooting there in their showroom, I decided to see how the rails performed. They seemed lively enough, and my super-high-english test failed to cause a ball to leave the table. In fact I was a little surprised at how hard I could hit a ball that I had cued with maximum topspin, and not have it so much as
think about coming off the table...
Since I had, apparently, got what I paid for - i.e. these rails are the same rails that they put on all their tables - I figured I had no further basis for complaint, so I went ahead and brought them home. We applied the stain last night, and will put the topcoat on today. We had completed the refinishing of the rest of the table last week, so this is the final step before re-assembly, leveling, and recovering... realkingcobra needs to get himself out of the snowy north country and get down here where it's sunny and warm!
Anyway, needless to say, when I got home with the rails, I immediately went to the BCA and World Pool-Billiard Association sites and found the reference to the nose height. I called up Norm one more time and had him go to these websites to see for himself that these rails were not within the specifications of either the BCA or the WPA.
Norm was a little surprised. He told me that this subject has
never come up. He told me that they had just sent 9 tables to Las Vegas for a BCA event, and the subject of rail height
never came up. I asked him if there was any question in his mind as to whether those tables were using the same rails as the ones I had just received, and he said absolutely not. In fact, he said, "We get those tables back, and then re-sell them." He told me that his good friend Dave Pearson (the Speed Pool champ) plays on their tables, and the subject of rail height has
never come up. He also told me that they (Connelly) were going to provide a table for some pro's demonstration video that was going to be filmed up in Scottsdale (today), and he was going to check that table, and one of the aforementioned BCA event tables for nose height, and he would get back to me.
Well, there it is. The entire pool-table-making-world makes rails with a nose height of 1-7/16", and Connelly makes rails with a nose height of ~1-5/16". What do you think about that?
- s.west
