realkingcobra said:
If you want to know the truth, I'm more interested in how to straighten out the mechanics industry than I am in designing another pool table for the mechanic industry to screw up. What good is it to design the "best" pool table as you see it, if the knowledge and credentials to work on it does not exist? Don't even think for one second that you can design a fool proof pool table that a mechanic can't screw up, because you'd be dead wrong!
Glen
Out of all the pages of topics and discussions in this forum, I have to say that that is probably the best one made. PERIOD!
That one deserves some good solid rep, because it is the most accurate statement that has been made out of thousands of posts.
For once, I have to come out in public and say "Kudos to Glen", for the shortest most truthful description ever made around the AZ pool table world.
Well, that and Bobby Hunter saying last year...."Shot don't go."
After watching someone try a shot for over an hour then ask why it wouldn't go in.
We need to clean up and fix our own industry, before the hacks completely destroy alot of years of hardwork and invention.
I may not be the best, but I'm a long damn way from the bottom of the barrel.
I figure in about another 20-30 years, I might get Glen to call and ask me something for once....lol
Yeah. Right.
Last year Glen asked me on the phone why I kept taking some of the ridiculous table repair jobs on some of the worst tables ever built.
If you recall that conversation, it was because nobody else would/could do it around here. I love the easier jobs as much as anyone, but without the off the wall stuff, you can't find ways to get better. I take pictures at almost every job that Craig and I do, and pictures of almost every table that I've worked on, before, during and after. Some of them, even I wonder how someone was stupid enough to want to pay to ahve it fixed.
But I did them becasue that's what I choose to do.
I doubt that Glen or anyone else in this forum got to the point they are now without alot of hours logged on problem tables. Problems from either manufacturer, hacks, acts of God, fire suppression systems, whatever.....
And I bet that alot of the information that has been learned and improved upon has come from these experiences.
I've worked on tables that I still have no idea who made them, but would love to beat the holy hell out of the genius that spawned such a nightmare. But at least when I left, it was done right.
All tables have their own special strengths and weaknesses, no matter where they are from, where they are built or how they are designed.
I don't care if it's a Gabriel's with their lovely rail leveling system, Connelly and their overkill with the Ultimate, and wrong rail height, wood vs. metal, k55 vs. k66.
Alot of different experiences went into the design of all the different tables, and it's going to be alot of years before everyone gets together, says, what do the Table Mechanics like the best from every table design out there, and build it.
In the meantime, I'm just going to keep working and hopefully learning something from every table that I encounter, no matter how small.
It's not the table manufacturers who live by their reputation in this forum. It's the table mechanics that solve the hidden problems, and fix it behind the scenes, and improve upon the previous ideas.
I can appreciate the topic of this thread, and have honestly thought about it alot, especially with customers asking about different table manufacturers and what seperates them in quality.
Why Olhausens can supposedly hold so much weight, and most import tables can barely hold themselves and their paint jobs; why a GC 5 cost more than a Peter Vitali or a Thomas Aaron; and why did Glen picked Diamond to build with.
The shortest answer I think I've found so far.........
Because it just makes sense.
Good thread OTLB, great post Glen.
