Glenn, we have never met, but your contributions have been helpful to me here. For all of us here, it's important to realize that we will ALL be leaving one day. We never know when, and we will never be back. As such, it is wise to be thoughtful about what we post and how it affects others now, and after we are gone... All the best to you.
Very few things in life bother me, I'm actually pretty laid back and comfortable. Some of the things that do bother however are people who think they're experts in my line of work when they actually don't know shit, and because of that, they'd rather bash the industry instead of admitting they're not as knowledgeable as they would lead others to believe they are. Take the "pictures of hack work" thread for example, pointing out the work done by others as a way of saying, "look how horrible this is" is nothing more than pointing fingers,because when I've asked the same posters, "so what did YOU do to correct it" there's no more replying, why is that? When I tell mechanics to post pictures of the work they do, they post pictures of the finished tables, what does that show, no different than ANY ONE else posting pictures, including hacks. Everyone seems to feel the need to hide how they level slates, how they staple the cloth on the rails, how they install the bed cloths, why is that? Truth is, because they're not as good as they'd like you to believe they are, that's why!
Let me tell all of you something about slates and the mechanics setting them up! If you can only work with perfectly ground slates in order to get a table level, you're NOT as good as you think you are! In the last 23 years working with Diamond, I've only exchanged 1 set of 8ft slates, and that's because the 3 slates were completely miss-matched, BUT, that didn't stop me from setting the 8ft ProAm level, and perfectly playable for the customers house warming party in NJ! After the weekend I drove back to the Diamond factory and picket up a one piece 8ft slate, drove back to NJ and swapped it out for the 3 piece slate at the customers home, all on MY DIME!
The other 2 sets of slates i absolutely couldn't do anything with were on a 9ft Brunswick GC4 and a 9ft Brunswick home table, they were ground like a grated driveway, I couldn't even believe the dealership sold the tables with slates like those.
But to bash a manufacturing business because they don't produce slates to someone's expectations is a joke, if you're a REAL TABLE MECHANIC you deal with it, and turn the job out perfect everytime! I've even gone so far as to put 2 30mm and 1 25mm 3 piece slates together and turned out perfection when the job was done. I can't help what the customer buys, but I CAN WORK ON THE TABLE! And I EXPECT any other real pool table mechanic to be able to do the same level of work, if they want to call themselves a PROFESSIONAL!!!
It pisses me off to even have to talk about this subject! Lift this industry up, don't bash it down! But if you're a hack, don't act like you're NOT ONE!
