When I fixed my old Brunswick , the rubber on the rails was just basically a strip of rubber about 1/2" thick. Its also unavailable. what I did there was bought triangular rubber 3/4 thick made to fit a later table and cut the rails down by approximately 10 mm. the result I wanted to achieve and did, was to keep the rails in the same spot relative to each other and the pockets to retain the same shelf.
but have better bounce characteristics. narrowing the rails also meant not much room between the slot that captivates the cloth on the rail and the insert, normally basically a strip of wood , but it looked like metal strip on that table. so that my slot wouldnt simply break out near the edge, I filled the slot with wood glued it up solid, and then cut a new slot to allow a reasonable gap between the cloth on the top of the rail and the diamonds.
At the ends of the rubber, they arent cut just with a knife but cut a tad long then ground carefully to be flush with the pocket cutouts, the original pockets ( also no longer available) were then fitted but they covered up about 1/4" at the edge of the rail so I used either two layers of 1/8 rubber or some 1.4 "thick rubber as the cheeks.
the table itself was basically chipboard and quite rough so I added a sheet of modern MDF and its very flat and level , it stopped the typical ball rolling noises that a cheap Simpson Sears 4x8 like many of us grew up with in parents basements might have.
To fill the gap under the rail I cut the MDF about 3/4 short of the edges and inserted a wood molding with a profile to tidy that up.
Being a real Brunswick table with better construction than those typical cheap 4x8's it does have a box shaped subframe. it is a "portable" two strong guys can pick it up and walk with it , only need to disassemble the two legs which are designed to fold or come off. Tables made in the following years evidently had some sort of structure made with holes similar to a bee hive.
its fun and kind of "Eames Era" or "Mid Century Modern" , some collect furniture of that era...
it has a bit of a "jetsons" type of shape. from about 1962 or 64 in that era. It still has its original bright orange lacquer ( home depot color) paintjob and the Brunsick labels in script down the sides. I resprayed the top rails in a laquer and used toner with some clear overtop to finish it off nicely.
I ordered new cloth from amazon, figuring it should be a woven cloth but what I got was kind of like cheap junk so I opted to re-use an old decent quality snooker table cloth. that was basically what it had but maybe a bit shorter length of nap. it has ball returns , but the balls return to either side not the end of the table. I got the OEM cues, they are designed to be stored in the ball returns.
i vaguely remember a guy in my childhood that took me home and his mom had bought a similar table some years ago and was quite proud of it. he said what it cost and it was a much higher price than the sears cvarieties all my friends seemed to have. I think it was a predecessor to all those early 70's 4x 8 cheapos.
Its hardly anything very "professional" but it did provide many hours of fun and some positive learning experiences. it gave me and my lady friend somethign to pracice on and learn some basic skills. I learned enough to recover my own tables, not enough to try to do it for money.. If I do things like that for myself the hours are not counted, its just a labor of love.
the way the diamond tables and the gold crowns attach to the rails are unfamiliar to me.
The one I just got, a very old Brunswick Balke Collander, has bolts through the rails straight into the edges of the slate. the bolts require a pin wrench and have wide heads. the rails have covers to hide the special head bolts. the slate is about 1" but it has backer boards. some were available with a 1.5" slate. it has extremely solid construction, the base frame must be 400 lbs and does not come apart , or isn't made to.. I would never attempt to reposition the rails and I will respect it's vintage by not making crazy modifications to the design. with the smaller "hobby " Brunswick I have no regrets. I just made it into something usable and fun. when I got it, the rails were so dead it was pretty much unusable. so that was my fix.
the small i piece slate diamond tables seem popular for leagues so maybe someone will want it to practice on that doesn't; want to drop about 5 K for one of those. the sixe is comparable byt my balls are only 1 7/8 and the pockets are small and the rails are fitted to that ball size. its a bit of an unusual size.
Its advantage is it will fit a smaller room and may fit in well with someone that collects furniture of the same era. its not something a serious pool player would really want, but any practice is better than having no table.
What I did was transform the table from something unusable to a fun table, although nothing too professional and not perfect, it has been fun and I'm ready to move up to a better and a bit larger table now..
, and yes I'm only kidding ! ;-)
