I'm in the process of restoring a late GCI and made a poor choice in trying to chemically strip the feet. Long story short, the center hole is now significantly too large for the height adjustment bolt. For the sake of simplicity, I'd love to just get my hands on another one and pretend this never happened. These are the heavier, nickel-plated variety and should be embossed with D-212079 and 13400 on the bottom. And if anyone has ideas for repairing this one without a significant price tag, I'm all ears.
Just looking thru your pics, you are leaving no stone unturned with that restoration, that table looks like it was pretty rough to start with, really makes me appreciate what pristine candidate that mine was/is. Cant wait to see it when its done.
It takes me about 3 minutes to install a tip. I charge $20 if the customer provides the tip. I just had a guy say "wow, that's a lot of money for 3 minutes of work." I said I only charged you $1 for installing the tip.... the other $19 was for my 35 years of experience that allowed me to do it in 3 minutes without damaging your cue or making you come back in 3 days to pick it up.
I've done them myself manually - but it just ain't the same as having a pro do it with a lathe/tools/glue that he's been using for years. It only takes him a couple of minutes because he knows exactly what he is doing.
Just like you can change the oil in your car yourself. It's cheaper than paying someone else to do it. Most people will pay a garage to do it for them though.
A Heli-coil would typically work for these types of repairs, but in this case where you have a threaded rod in a hollow tube you are going to lose some strength in the process. The wall of that tube will be reduced fairly significantly by the time it’s drilled and tapped to accept the insert. 1100 lbs. divided by 4 is not too much, but I’d be concerned about the lateral forces applied when a 300 lb. plus player leans into the table.
You can see in the video clip that the OD of the foot is larger than the locknut so I would not be the least bit concerned about that. The downside is that a 3/4" x 16 Heli Coil or Timecert is probably going to be rather expensive.
There's been lots of them, but either something happens to them or they peter out and do something more meaningful with their lives. Chuckie Holyokie was one, and I can think of 2 or 3 others that have been lauded as the next thing coming up.
I plugged in the suggested address for Mike into PayPal and PayPal says it sent to AZBilliards.com --- if that is how it really works mechanically, probably let folks know, and if I did it wrong, let me know!
