I am a do-it-yourselfer and just moved/installed a pool table. I called the Billiard Factory here in town as they used to sell a white powder that, when mixed with water, would form a suitable bonding agent and crack-filler for the slates. They've stopped carrying it now, and referred me to Lowe's to purchase Durham's Rock Hard Putty. It seemed to work alright, though the table has been setup for only a few days now, so we shall see how well it works in due time.
Plaster in the seams flakes apart sooner or later, and if the cloth gets vacuumed it spreads around the plaster like sand under the cloth. If you ever get something spilled on the cloth and clean it up, let the cloth dry, and the spill was on a seam, your plaster is really going to flake apart.
Bees wax, though easy to work with has it's problems as well. Lets say your cloth is loose and you want to tighten it up. You get an iron, set it to the wool setting, mist some water on the cloth from a spray bottle, iron the cloth, it tightens right up...but you just melted the wax in the seam right into the cloth. Most all tables I come across with the seams apart, are filled with wax, and that's about 99% of them.
To keep the seams from coming apart you have to anchor the seams in place, part of that anchoring is also making sure the slate screws are tight, that the slate isn't sitting on top of 3/4" of shims either. I've run across a lot of tables set up by mechanics that simple install the frame of the table without even trying to level the frame what so ever, then float level the slates on top of the frame! I mean I've seen tables that the slates were NOT touching the frame of the table ANY where, that's bullshit work if you want my opinion!
Bondo, in conjunction with using super glue is the best. I strap the slates together tight on both sides first. Once I've mounted the slates using the slate screws/machine screws or what ever, then I remove the straps. Once I've leveled the slates to the point that I'm ready to finish the seams, I first check and see if there's any kind of gap in the seams as to where I'm going to place my super glue. I glue about 4" in from the outside edges of the seams on both sides, and about another 4" in the center of the seams. Now, if there's a slight gap in the seam where you're going to place the glue, the super glue is going to seep down into the crack and not hold anything, so take a piece of paper like a business card, writing paper, newspaper...anything that will slide into the seam, slip it in place, then run a bead of super glue down both sides of the paper wick, that'll fill up the gap in the seam so that the glue will hold the slates in place. BUT...if you can slide a piece of cardboard between the slates...call on someone that KNOWS what they're doing:grin:
Now, bondo don't care if it's hot, cold, humid or anything else, so it's the perfect seam filler, because even if you have to fill in some chips in the seam from missing/chipped slate, it won't sink in from balls bouncing on it. The trick to using bondo, is that when you mix it...don't use to much hardener for one, second...spread it evenly over the seam and use your putty knife to spread it flat, do a good job of that, BUT....before it drys hard take that putty knife and scrape up all the extra bondo which is anything more than 1/4" from the actual seam so you don't have to spend until next week trying to sand off all the extra bondo you DIDN"T need in order to get the seam flat and smooth to the touch:grin:
Glen
We're not about trying to put someone down trying to be a mechanic working on tables, we like to help anyone we can, if we can help at all. 