New sub rails

Emptyn0r

Registered
Hello all. I’m currently looking for help and advice my rail assembly for my Brunswick 8 ft table are ruined. I’m fine with making new rails but I can’t find plans anywhere to make new ones, or is there a place I can get mew ones made that would not charge me an arm and a leg.
 
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Lawnboy77

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Not a mechanic here but just want to throw out my two cents. If you have the old rails then you have all the plans you need. If you have access to some machinery (planer, joiner, table saw etc.) and basic woodworking knowledge you should be able to accurately replicate the subrails, or in the case of the old hardwood rails, make completely new ones. What Brunswick model?
 

Emptyn0r

Registered
It’s a Ranchero they were made in the late 70 early 80s if I remember correctly but the rails are made of mdf and got damaged but I’m wanting to change the rail rubber to diamond k55 and I think the table now has centennial u23 so the angle won’t be the same and I have all the tools and machines to make new ones and my father is a master carpenter just need to be pointed in the right direction to make new ones
 

Lawnboy77

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Sounds like you are all set. The key will be rail height and achieving the cushion nose height of 1 - 29/64 (where ball contacts). Once you determine rail thickness (probably around 1- 3/4") should be easy math to determine angle for cushion mount. There are diagrams around the internet for the two major profiles, K-55 or K-66 that list all key angles, dimensions and so forth for the subrails. You might want to verify your rail thickness first to determine which profile you need prior ordering rubber. If you are going from a typical old Brunswick, or some other odd ball profile, to new Black Diamond K-55 then more than likely it won't be as simple as recutting the sub rail to a new angle. If you do that alone I think you will lose the proper play field dimensions, plus pockets won't be quite right, so you may have to cut off the old poplar profile and add a new section of poplar, then cut the new angle. I have plans to do that myself on an old Anniversary, but I think I'll just start from scratch and replicate the rails correcting the dimensional problems that a previous mechanic did when they merely cut off the sub rail to the correct angle without adding poplar to ensure that the original dimensions were maintained. It's a pretty expensive endeavor considering the cost of mother of pearl sights, the hardware, the head rail data plate and the walnut and poplar required.

Edit: I didn't know Brunswick used MDF for their rails. You might be better off just finding a good used Gold Crown instead of trying to overhaul an MDF table. I don't mean to be a snob in regards to an MDF table, just trying to be honest with you. A good Gold Crown can be found for pretty cheap these days and you will have a table with poplar rails that is already tuned for top-notch play, and 10 years from now it will still be worth what you paid for it. The old Gold Crown I and IIs may require some subrail work to convert to new K-55 profile.
 
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bradsh98

Bradshaw Billiard Service
Silver Member
I didn't confirm, though I'm pretty sure that this table has 3/4" slate, and a weak frame design. Building new hardwood rails will not be cheap, even if you can do the work yourself. Even so, the table just simply does not justify the the time and effort that you would be putting into it.

Lawnboy77 is right, you would be much better served by finding a different table - one with solid wood rails.
 

Emptyn0r

Registered
The bed of the table is 3/4 Slate not backed. The base is weak, the rails are made from mdf. I have found 2 sights to order new sub rails. K55 for 117 plus shipping and k66 for 135. I want to put diamond black k55 on the table i cant pay over 200 for rubber.
 

realkingcobra

Well-known member
Silver Member
The bed of the table is 3/4 Slate not backed. The base is weak, the rails are made from mdf. I have found 2 sights to order new sub rails. K55 for 117 plus shipping and k66 for 135. I want to put diamond black k55 on the table i cant pay over 200 for rubber.

Anyone will sell you anything, as long as your willing to pay. Now, if what they sell you don't work, that's of course on you, not them!!
 

fastone371

Certifiable
Silver Member
The bed of the table is 3/4 Slate not backed. The base is weak, the rails are made from mdf. I have found 2 sights to order new sub rails. K55 for 117 plus shipping and k66 for 135. I want to put diamond black k55 on the table i cant pay over 200 for rubber.

It sounds like that table is not worth making new rails for. If you cant spend over $200 on rubber how are you going to build rails? Surely you will have far more than $200 invested just for wood. If you want to the same cushions Diamond uses I would think you would want to copy Diamond rail dimensions and adjust the length and width accordingly.
 

speedi

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Making new rails

Hello all. I’m currently looking for help and advice my rail assembly for my Brunswick 8 ft table are ruined. I’m fine with making new rails but I can’t find plans anywhere to make new ones, or is there a place I can get mew ones made that would not charge me an arm and a leg.

I made my own 9' table 8 years ago using the step by step plans in Fine Woodworking Magazine, issue #75.
There you can find the kind of information you need to make your own rails. Of course, you will have to adjust for your table size and also adjust for the pocket size that you want. The plans are for use with K-66 cushions. The fact that you have the old rails to measure is a plus because you can compare the issue #75 dimensions with your existing rails.

All Fine Woodworking magazine issues are available on line for a small fee.

Hope this will help you out.

Speedi
 

fastone371

Certifiable
Silver Member
I made my own 9' table 8 years ago using the step by step plans in Fine Woodworking Magazine, issue #75.
Speedi

Pictures please or like everyone likes to say, "it didnt happen". :smile::smile:

I really would like to see pics of your table. If I was going to build my own table considering Im a metal guy I would definitely make the frame out of steel. To me that seems like it would be easier and better than wood. Steel will never change shape and it seems like it would be easier to fabricate a slate leveling system. Thats just me though.
 

speedi

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Pictures please or like everyone likes to say, "it didnt happen". :smile::smile:

I really would like to see pics of your table. If I was going to build my own table considering Im a metal guy I would definitely make the frame out of steel. To me that seems like it would be easier and better than wood. Steel will never change shape and it seems like it would be easier to fabricate a slate leveling system. Thats just me though.

That is a very peculiar reply to my post.
I posted many photos and lots of details in this forum back in 2009-2010 when I built the table. It is played on nearly every day and has had hundreds of complements from accomplished pool players. If you are interested in seeing the photos and posts you can find them under 'Speedi'
in this forum.
 

speedi

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Steel shape

That is a very peculiar reply to my post.
I posted many photos and lots of details in this forum back in 2009-2010 when I built the table. It is played on nearly every day and has had hundreds of complements from accomplished pool players. If you are interested in seeing the photos and posts you can find them under 'Speedi'
in this forum.

"Steel will never change shape"?

Tell that to the maintenance man that has to heat up a 16" inside diameter steel cylinder with 3" walls and then put a set of precision steel roller bearings in dry ice in order to get the two parts to mate with one another.

A shop heater blowing 68 deg. heat in the vicinity of a lathe will change its alignment enough to throw the turned parts out of spec. "Steel will never change shape?" Good luck in making your steel table.
 

Lawnboy77

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
That is a very peculiar reply to my post.
I posted many photos and lots of details in this forum back in 2009-2010 when I built the table. It is played on nearly every day and has had hundreds of complements from accomplished pool players. If you are interested in seeing the photos and posts you can find them under 'Speedi'
in this forum.

That's an awesome table you made! Here are a few pics of the rails and a leg of a table that my father and I made back in the late 70's. Having trouble posting pics to the forum these days so not many pics yet, but hopefully this will help anyone wanting to build rails. It's very doable, but extremely expensive. When we built this particular table we used wood from trees that were cut down on the family farm in Kentucky so the expense was drastically less than if you are having to buy the hardwoods today. I was about 16 years old and was obsessed with pool at the time, and still am, so I decided to copy a table from the local pool room that had old pre-war T-rail C.C. Steepleton tables, beautiful tables. I had to modify the design though since those tables were oversized 8s (46 X 92) and mine was going to be a standard 8 (44 X 88) with vertical bolt attachment rails. I do know that I made many mock ups with various angles and different hardwoods, such as ash, poplar and oak. I loved all the various woods for sub rails, just settled on poplar because of it super stability and the fact that it was a pain the ass to drive staples into the other hardwoods. Those rails in the pics performed great over the years, to be honest they were probably cheaper rubber than what's on the Brunswick Anniversary, but they really performed better than the Anniversary I have now. I used 1/4" flat steel as a nut plate for the rail bolts, used the dado head and cut a blind rabbitt/mortice in the bottom of the 3/4" walnut rail cap and designed it to where the caps could be removed. No feather strip on these since the rail caps were removable. I probably will modify these 44 X 88 rails with a 1/4" feather strip rabbitt though. One other modification that I want to make is to decrease the sub rail depth to the standard 2 inches. I suppose Steepleton tables were a bit over the 2 inch standard back in the 30s and I was merely copying their dimensions as much as possible. Once again I don't think I would do this kinda operation on any table that doesn't have solid hardwood rails, just not worth the expense and trouble. One other thing I want to mention before the mechanics beat me up over this copying a T-rail designed table. I didn't use the old pre-WWII rail cushion profile as the template. I bought K-66 profile and just adjusted the bevel angle to get 1- 29/64ths nose height at a sub rail height of 1-3/4". It ended up being a bevel angle of 20 degrees. Although I think in hind sight it would of been better to use K-55 profile for that particular rail thickness. One of the mods to this old family table will be to recut the bevel angle to use K-55 rubber and I should be able to do that without having to add poplar to the subrail since they are about a 1/4" too deep anyway.
 

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Lawnboy77

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Here is a pic of the rail attachment design. This was my Father's idea, if I remember right I was leaning more toward a standard figure 8 type design, but he thought that was not structurally sound since poplar was the choice for sub rails and screws strip out easy going into soft poplar. He was right, I hear from mechanics on the forum here that is a major complaint on the figure 8 design is that those screws holes strip out bad if overtightened by inexperience mechanics. In the design that my dad came up with the screws that hold the 1/4" steel are not under a stress load at all, they are just there to keep the plate in place during assembly.
 

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Lawnboy77

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Here is a pic showing the channel I removed on the underside of the walnut rail cap. I suppose it would be considered a blind rabbitt/mortice. If you go this route the rail bolts need to be custom cut for length though. No problems with chopping bolts to size.
 

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speedi

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Here is a pic showing the channel I removed on the underside of the walnut rail cap. I suppose it would be considered a blind rabbitt/mortice. If you go this route the rail bolts need to be custom cut for length though. No problems with chopping bolts to size.

Thank you for the complements. With all the information that has been posted I think Emptynor should be well on his way to fixing his rails.
It's great that so many people have spent the time to offer their suggestions.
Good people on AZ Billiards!!
 

fastone371

Certifiable
Silver Member
"Steel will never change shape"?

Tell that to the maintenance man that has to heat up a 16" inside diameter steel cylinder with 3" walls and then put a set of precision steel roller bearings in dry ice in order to get the two parts to mate with one another.

A shop heater blowing 68 deg. heat in the vicinity of a lathe will change its alignment enough to throw the turned parts out of spec. "Steel will never change shape?" Good luck in making your steel table.

I meant that within reason of course. How about "steel will not change shape as easily as wood will"
 

realkingcobra

Well-known member
Silver Member
Here is a pic showing the channel I removed on the underside of the walnut rail cap. I suppose it would be considered a blind rabbitt/mortice. If you go this route the rail bolts need to be custom cut for length though. No problems with chopping bolts to size.

Screw up a rail bolt in that flat iron and you'll have a hell of a time trying to fix that rail bolt, there's a reason no rails are designed they way you pictured that rail, it's called a nightmare to repair.
 

realkingcobra

Well-known member
Silver Member
And the real truth to the matter is that ANY home style pool tables that has the rails made out of MDF or Particleboard, is a one way sale. Once the cloth is worn out, it's a disposable pool table.
 

Lawnboy77

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Screw up a rail bolt in that flat iron and you'll have a hell of a time trying to fix that rail bolt, there's a reason no rails are designed they way you pictured that rail, it's called a nightmare to repair.

It has served us well over the past 40 years or so. Granted, not a design for inexperienced types who chronically overtighten hardware because the slate or rails will probably snap before the steel plate and bolts fail.
 
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