anniversary pocket liners

J

joego

Registered
Does anybody know where to get rubber pocket liners similar to the original for a 1954 anniversary. The liners that Ken Hash of Classic Billiards offers are leather and have a large hump in the heal, they are not attractive and do not resemble the originals.

The return gulleys on my table are a canvas backed rubber and are quite pliable. The return tubes are half pipe hard cardboard about 1/4 inch thick and the pocket liners are maroon soft rubber. I would like to find a soft rubber replacement liner, the sound they make when you pocket a ball is a soft sweet sound not like the crispy sound you get from hard vinyl liners. Unfortunately after sixty years they are disintegrating.

I would not be opposed to cutting a drop pocket and making it work as a liner however I would have to know which pockets will work. The only table specific pockets I have found of soft rubber are for Gold Crowns and they have the screw boss.

Thanks,

Joe in kzoo
 
I bought a set of the rubber drop pockets from ozone billiards for my anniversary and cut the bottoms out of them and attached my original gully boots to them. It wasn't that hard and i'm not a table mechanic. I used heavy duty 3M velcro to put them together with. It turned out great and they don't move or leave marks on the balls. Whats great about the velcro is you can change the height and the profile angle for each pocket if you don't get it right the first time. It don't have that sweet thuncking sound the old ones had when you pocket a ball in the center but dont sound to bad. I was at the same crossroad your at...I didnt want to lose the original pockets but it was time. I'll post some pics that I took with my phone. Good Luck, Dean
 
Here's the pics of work in progress

Before and after I cut down the drop pocket liners
 
I measured and marked my boots before i cut them apart to try to get the same height and profile
 
I put the second matching half of the velcro over the other one then measured and lined everything up and this is what I ended up with. I planned on putting some pop rivets in later after I checked to make sure my profiles were correct for each pocket but found it wasn't needed. I'm glad for that because, I really didn't want to scratch my balls. (that didn't sound good lol). Anyway, Ive been playing a lot of pool on my table the last 3 months and everything is rock solid.
 
I've found a lot of useful information on this sight to help me with restoring my anniversary table and thought it was time to share some ideas. Hope this helps someone down the road. Here's a pic of the finished pocket in my table and I can still use my ball return:thumbup:
 
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anniversary pockets

Thanks for sharing your idea, the pictures and explanation make this an easy operation to use. I ordered the rubber pockets from Ozone today.

Your table looks nice, good job on the recover and pocket openings.

Thanks Again,

Joe
 
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