Making your own table?

Cue Guru

Cue Guru

Close, but no roll...
Silver Member
Hello everyone. I was going to post this in the table mechanic section, but thought it might be seen by more people here.

I am considering making my own table, rather than buy one. One I would want to buy would be quite old, quite beautiful and quite expensive.

I can get the wood of my choice easily; however getting things like the slate and doing a proper job with designing/installing the rails and the major details of what all the table mechanics just know from years of experience.

I have seen plenty of tables in various states of disassembly, but putting rails back onto a table that was made for them is very different than designing rails from scratch for a piece of slate.

Anyway, I am looking for plans, suggestions and pointers from anyone who cares to share them. Once I run the numbers, I may be getting that old, expensive table anyway...:frown:

Thanks in advance to everyone for the help!:thumbup:
 
I built my own table 6 years ago and it plays great. It's a 9' table with 4 1/2" pockets. I bought a junk Gandy that was trashed, but the slate was in good condition for $400. New slate is very expensive by the time you buy it and pay freight. If you can find a good used set that's the way to go. My table plays pretty much like a Diamond.

The sub-rails are the most important part in my opinion. They have multiple angle cuts that HAVE to be right. Angles determine the size of the pocket, height of cushion nose off the playing surface, cushion glue surface, etc.. If you build your own sub-rails just be sure your cuts are exact and as perfect as possible. If the sub-rails aren't right, the table will never play right. I built my own sub-rails but you can also buy them all ready to go.

I had all the specs on my old computer that got fried by lightning and of course no backup. If you search the web you can find everything you need to build the table. Here's a good place to start.

http://www.bestbilliard.com/resources/buildtable.cfm

I was inspired by Brunswick's mission style so that's what I designed. Mine looks similar but is internal structure rather that external.

Can't remember exactly, but I'm thinking the whole thing cost around $1.000 total.

It's a lot of fun and worth the time and effort.

Good luck and let us know how it's going! :thumbup:
pooltable.jpg
 
Thanks Guys!

This is some great stuff.

I'm going to be doing some reading!:thumbup:
 
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