What runs would you expect under these conditions?

Dan White

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Low500, on my way home tonight I stopped at WalMart to get the Real Magic. I'll give it a try. You have to wonder why they didn't spell it Reel Magic, since it's for fishing reels. I assume they were threatened with a law suit from another company.

Use that stuff at your own risk. It isn't always wise to listen to every troll on AZ. If you have a ball cleaning machine and you use that stuff it will most likely impregnate the wool padding and will never come out. That means whatever you use to clean the balls in the future will be tainted with that chemical (at least for a good amount of time before it finally wears off).

Aramith gives you a good consistent amount of throw while these miscellaneous waxes change the throw characteristics very quickly during the course of play. This is one advantage of using a cleaner meant for pool balls and not fishing gear or your car or tires. In other words, listen to Bob.

Here's a little study I did awhile back you might be interested in (I bought replacement wool pads for my ball machine after finding these results. Be sure to scroll down to the "Aramith balls cleaned by hand" for interesting test results.):

http://forums.azbilliards.com/showthread.php?p=5056666
 

CueAndMe

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Use that stuff at your own risk. It isn't always wise to listen to every troll on AZ. If you have a ball cleaning machine and you use that stuff it will most likely impregnate the wool padding and will never come out. That means whatever you use to clean the balls in the future will be tainted with that chemical (at least for a good amount of time before it finally wears off).

Aramith gives you a good consistent amount of throw while these miscellaneous waxes change the throw characteristics very quickly during the course of play. This is one advantage of using a cleaner meant for pool balls and not fishing gear or your car or tires. In other words, listen to Bob.

Here's a little study I did awhile back you might be interested in (I bought replacement wool pads for my ball machine after finding these results. Be sure to scroll down to the "Aramith balls cleaned by hand" for interesting test results.):

http://forums.azbilliards.com/showthread.php?p=5056666

Thanks, Dan. I did try the Real Magic today, and it does make everything more slippery and open up better, but I also noticed that my cue ball controlled suffered. Maybe I shouldn't have used the product on the cue ball. Anyway, I'm willing to try it for a bit. Thanks for the link and for doing that experiment. Very interesting.
 

CueAndMe

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
BTW, with my homemade ball cleaner I always have to finish up by hand polishing anyway, so I wonder if I should just always polish by hand, and the cue ball doesn't get clean enough without putting the Aramith cleaner directly on it and polishing by hand.
 

Dan White

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Thanks, Dan. I did try the Real Magic today, and it does make everything more slippery and open up better, but I also noticed that my cue ball controlled suffered. Maybe I shouldn't have used the product on the cue ball. Anyway, I'm willing to try it for a bit. Thanks for the link and for doing that experiment. Very interesting.

If I had to pick one variable that mattered more than any other for getting the balls to open up, I'd say "new cloth." I don't care if you are playing with potatoes. If you have a brand new cloth, like they have in all these tournaments, they are going to open up like crazy. When I got my new table some of my highest runs came within a couple of weeks of putting the table in.

Another thing: You have a table with what I consider crazy tight pockets for straight pool. OK, so it gives you a good work out and requires more precision. Think of half open racks the same way. Anybody can run a lot of balls if they open up like a rack of 8 ball. The real players are the ones who can just as easily get through an opening rack with 9 or 10 balls stuck together in the rack. It's just another way of training, like with tight pockets.
 

CueAndMe

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Yeah, the cloth is still in pretty good shape. One thing that happened that might be contributing to the balls sticking at the rack is that a couple of shims fell out from where they were propping up a sag in the slate just below the rack, so the balls might be trying to travel a little bit uphill. I should recheck the level of the table soon and maybe hammer in a couple shims where necessary.
 
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