RealKingCobra aka Glen Hancock

HarleyKR07

HarleyKR07

New member
Glen needs no special recognition of the work he does making a table play like a dream. I'm not sure if he appreciates me or not since I was the one that got his name out here and the 3 tables he was supposed to do turned into 19 :grin:. Story behind this is I had a 9ft Diamond Professional put together by a local Brunswick Distributor Robbie's Billiards out of Williamsport,MD a few years back. In my mind it played decent enough for my taste and knew it was getting close to a recover job. Since Glen was in the area I knew it would be a privilege for him to do his magic on it. The first time he walked down into my basement I thought he was going to pass out. He wasn't even close to the table and he couldn't believe his eyes. My table wasn't even put together correctly and who knows what was waiting for him underneath. His quote was "Guess I saved the worst for last!" In the meantime he managed to call Robbie's up and give them an ear full of what exactly they did wrong, which was everything. During his few days of work he showed me everything that was wrong and I could have had the brain power to figure out how to assemble my table with zero experience. Slate screws broke off in the slate followed by drill bits broke off where they tried to drill it out. In the end the final outcome is incredible. Its like a brand new table literally and the finished product looks like a dream. Glen even showed me some pointers he knew that I wouldn't have ever thought of and some test challenges to do myself. I'm not the first to commend his work but I might be the last after my table experience :grin-square:. Glen it was an honor and privilege for you to turn my table from a nightmare to a dream in a matter of a few days. For this I thank you for the experience!
 
HarleyKR07 said:
Glen needs no special recognition of the work he does making a table play like a dream. I'm not sure if he appreciates me or not since I was the one that got his name out here and the 3 tables he was supposed to do turned into 19 :grin:. Story behind this is I had a 9ft Diamond Professional put together by a local Brunswick Distributor Robbie's Billiards out of Williamsport,MD a few years back. In my mind it played decent enough for my taste and knew it was getting close to a recover job. Since Glen was in the area I knew it would be a privilege for him to do his magic on it. The first time he walked down into my basement I thought he was going to pass out. He wasn't even close to the table and he couldn't believe his eyes. My table wasn't even put together correctly and who knows what was waiting for him underneath. His quote was "Guess I saved the worst for last!" In the meantime he managed to call Robbie's up and give them an ear full of what exactly they did wrong, which was everything. During his few days of work he showed me everything that was wrong and I could have had the brain power to figure out how to assemble my table with zero experience. Slate screws broke off in the slate followed by drill bits broke off where they tried to drill it out. In the end the final outcome is incredible. Its like a brand new table literally and the finished product looks like a dream. Glen even showed me some pointers he knew that I wouldn't have ever thought of and some test challenges to do myself. I'm not the first to commend his work but I might be the last after my table experience :grin-square:. Glen it was an honor and privilege for you to turn my table from a nightmare to a dream in a matter of a few days. For this I thank you for the experience!
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What, no pictures? LOL congrats on your table, I bet it plays great!
 
This thread is useless without PICS!

:wink:

Glen does great work, did he do new cushions and subrail extensions too?
 
Thank you Kane, and yes, the worst was last:grin: I don't really take any finished pictures any more of my work, but this is what I saw when I first set my eyes on Kane's Diamond:rolleyes:

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Tony_in_MD said:
This thread is useless without PICS!

:wink:

Glen does great work, did he do new cushions and subrail extensions too?
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Yepper, re-calibrated the sub-rails, tightened the pockets a little, turned the center slate around so it matched the finish on the end slates, ''it was installed backwards'':confused: leveled them up, and finished his table:grin:
 
HarleyKR07 said:
Glen needs no special recognition of the work he does making a table play like a dream. I'm not sure if he appreciates me or not since I was the one that got his name out here and the 3 tables he was supposed to do turned into 19 :grin:. Story behind this is I had a 9ft Diamond Professional put together by a local Brunswick Distributor Robbie's Billiards out of Williamsport,MD a few years back. In my mind it played decent enough for my taste and knew it was getting close to a recover job. Since Glen was in the area I knew it would be a privilege for him to do his magic on it. The first time he walked down into my basement I thought he was going to pass out. He wasn't even close to the table and he couldn't believe his eyes. My table wasn't even put together correctly and who knows what was waiting for him underneath. His quote was "Guess I saved the worst for last!" In the meantime he managed to call Robbie's up and give them an ear full of what exactly they did wrong, which was everything. During his few days of work he showed me everything that was wrong and I could have had the brain power to figure out how to assemble my table with zero experience. Slate screws broke off in the slate followed by drill bits broke off where they tried to drill it out. In the end the final outcome is incredible. Its like a brand new table literally and the finished product looks like a dream. Glen even showed me some pointers he knew that I wouldn't have ever thought of and some test challenges to do myself. I'm not the first to commend his work but I might be the last after my table experience :grin-square:. Glen it was an honor and privilege for you to turn my table from a nightmare to a dream in a matter of a few days. For this I thank you for the experience!
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Kane, you have the best table I've ever worked on, it's backed up by the 1000's of others before yours:grin:
 
I agree. Glen does great work. There is a thread somewhere about my table and the job he did to make it play good. Two years later it plays just as good. Now I just need to catch him when he's coming through next time to "Cobraize" it.
 
It's great know a person like RKC exists. Someone that knows what they are doing. Someone that can write the book. Thanks for being a quality person.
 
Wow! Another Robbie's hack job story fixed by the best! :wink:
I have my own Robbie's story about cushions that about fell off along with a long list that RKC made right! :smile:
 
Tony_in_MD said:
Wow, did they actually get paid for that hack job?
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I have to chirp in with the fact that many, many of the retail places that pool tables are purchased from do not have table mechanics that give a crap about how well a table is put together. I worked as a manager for a retailer that sold Brunswick, Olhausen and AMF. At times, I had to go out to clients homes to inspect the installation and was appalled at the workmanship. The reason for such crappy work is that the retail business owner, most of the time, hires any old Joe Schmo, cause he doesn't want to pay good money and the that same owner will wants to rush his installers to cut corners on cost of installation.
On one instance of my experience as a manager, I had a client, who was an executive, who had moved into the area and owned a 9' Brunswick Montibello ($9000+ table). He hired our store to reassemble the table with new Simonis cloth. Job was done, bill was paid and everything was cool. I thought. Ten monthes later, the client calls me, tells me he has not used the table one time since the reassemble and is going to have a party very soon. When he went to hit some balls on the table, he discovers that there is a staple underneath the cloth. I apologize for the inconvenience and tell him I'll schedule a mechanic to come out to fix it. I do so at no charge to the customer. Shortly thereafter, the owner calls me and asks me why I am doing this at no charge. I explain the situation, where the table owner had not used the table since the reassemble and only discovered our error now and it is our mistake. The owner tells me to send him a bill for $75, that the time limitations on that job expired and we were not libel for a free repair. I did not agree, but sent a bill anyway. The customer called me and was very perturbed about this billing. I couldn't have agree more. I explained to him that I valued his business and that in hopes that since he was new to the area and had such a nice rec room, that he would want to consider coming into the store to see what other things we had to offer and that I did not want to jeopardize that. He agreed and complimented my honesty and told me he would reciprocate. I told him I would make the bill go away.
This became an issue with my boss' and was one of the reasons he came up with to fire me.
The only reason I share this is because it is my experience with table mechanics, that it is the individual contractors, like Real King, that will, most likely, give the best quality of workmanship.
 
Just a few days ago, my helper (Qaddiction) and I set up a brand new Gold Crown V Tournament Edition table. The owner of the table works at and bought the table from Watson's, but instead of having Watson's regular installers install the table, he called me to do the install.

As I was installing the table, he noticed many techniques that I used, such as glueing the slates, glueing the bed cloth, ratcheting the slates together, pocket liners, etc. that he had never seen before. I mentioned that I had learned these techniques from RKC and he said his guys don't do any of those things when setting up a pool table. :eek:

Hard to believe the Watson's guys would cut corners on new pool table installs, eh??? :rolleyes:

I owe a lot of thanks to guys like Glen, Jay Spielberg, John Burns and Mark Gregory.... definitely not your typical hack installers :wink:

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JZMechanix said:
Just a few days ago, my helper (Qaddiction) and I set up a brand new Gold Crown V Tournament Edition table. The owner of the table works at and bought the table from Watson's, but instead of having Watson's regular installers install the table, he called me to do the install.

As I was installing the table, he noticed many techniques that I used, such as glueing the slates, glueing the bed cloth, ratcheting the slates together, pocket liners, etc. that he had never seen before. I mentioned that I had learned these techniques from RKC and he said his guys don't do any of those things when setting up a pool table. :eek:

Hard to believe the Watson's guys would cut corners on new pool table installs, eh??? :rolleyes:

I owe a lot of thanks to guys like Glen, Jay Spielberg, John Burns and Mark Gregory.... definitely not your typical hack installers :wink:

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Jack, I swear buddy, I couldn't have installed that rail cloth any better than YOU did, it looks like I did it:grin: you learned to damn fast, you're scaring me:eek:
 
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