My home-made ball polisher.

[nor_daens]

Mole Skin

"However, I do like the ball holders and may be able to incoporae this idea into my current polisher. I am not sure what to line the ball holes with. Anyone have any ideas? Currently it looks like enamal might do the trick if it was thoroughly dried."

Hello, has anyone thought about using moleskin to line the ball holes with. I use it on my table to prevent the balls from striking the metal holders the pockets in. It is great stuff to keep from scratching items. I found it at a food store in the toiletry section. Fairly cheap also.

 

[swest]

Bump for answers to my last few questions...

 

[atthecat]

OK, here's my version. It came out great and I've NEVER scene my balls this clean!!! My design is very similar to THELANZ's except I only used one 5 gallon bucket. I just layed the Ryobi 10 inch buffer upside down in the bucket and held it in place with 4 zip ties. I drilled two big holes in the lower part of the bucket for the cord and heat reduction. The zip ties took the longest time getting right than anything else. The carpet I laid in with some Liquid Nails. That was the only glue I had laying around. I bought a compound car cleaner for the balls. It's not very abrasive. It says it cleans and shines and it really does. I couldn't believe the results. I tried Windex and that didn't work for me.
All in all it took me 45 minutes to make and it cost under $40 bucks.
With the extra $660 I saved from not buying the Diamond Ball Cleaner I can now send RKC to charm school!

 

[realkingcobra]

OK, here's my version. It came out great and I've NEVER scene my balls this clean!!! My design is very similar to THELANZ's except I only used one 5 gallon bucket. I just layed the Ryobi 10 inch buffer upside down in the bucket and held it in place with 4 zip ties. I drilled two big holes in the lower part of the bucket for the cord and heat reduction. The zip ties took the longest time getting right than anything else. The carpet I laid in with some Liquid Nails. That was the only glue I had laying around. I bought a compound car cleaner for the balls. It's not very abrasive. It says it cleans and shines and it really does. I couldn't believe the results. I tried Windex and that didn't work for me.
All in all it took me 45 minutes to make and it cost under $40 bucks.
With the extra $660 I saved from not buying the Diamond Ball Cleaner I can now send RKC to charm school!

WHAT??????????...are you IMPLYING that I have no CHARM???? I'll have you know I've only been divorced THREE times..NO charm my ass:rotflmao1::rotflmao1:

Glen

 

[atthecat]

LOL, I knew that would wake you up!
Married 3xs. Oof.

 

[NaturalEnglish]

pad balance

I finally got around to making me one of the homemade in a bucket type ball polishers. I used velcro to attach a thin piece of closed loop carpet to the buffer pad. Buffer is a Ryobi. When running the vibration was so great the unit was almost detroying itself! After a lot of investigation I determined it was the carpet attached to the buffer face what was out of balance. After many attempts to adjust the location of the pad to better center it... I could not get it balanced and finally gave up and just used the buffer cloth that came with the buffer. Now the whole unit run quiet and smoother.

The buffer seems to be very sensitive to balance. As expected I guess for something thats rotating at 3000rpm. Did any of you come up with a method to balance the buffer after applying the carpet pad?

 

[JimS]

I gave up on having the polisher in the bucket. Instead I cut the bucket down to about 4" high, putting carpet on the bottom and felt with adhesive backing (JoAnns Fabrics) on the side. I then use my polisher by hand, with a lamps wool pad on it, and just holding it on the balls and letting the polisher spin the balls around the bucket. It works great! I allow about 3 minutes for 8 balls.

I've mentioned this before and nobody pays any attention but, I've tried all the car polishes/cleaners/waxes and/or ball polishing products on the market and, I kid you not.. the best thing I"ve found to clean the balls is the stuff made to clean plastic and/or plexiglass... "Brillianize". Not availble in stores but is available over the internet here: http://www.brillianize.com/cat/brillianize-1-gallon-jug---4-pack.htm

It's better than car cleaner or ball polishing or waxing stuff. Leaves no wax like film and cleans them clean and bright. It's better than anything else!

 

[NaturalEnglish]

Good tip JimS. No haze on the balls after running through the polisher? Even the arimath ball cleaner solution leaves a haze. Ill have to try your suggestion.

Turns out Tap Plastics sell the stuff.

Thanks

 

[JimS]

NO haze! Brillianize is a plexiglass cleaner and I came across it when my copier technician at the office solved a problem with the automatic paper feeder by cleaning the glass on the copier bed with Brillianize... thereby makeing the glass slicker and causing the paper to slide across easier and then out the other side.. lilke it's supposed to do.

Seeing that, I got on the net and found the product, ordered it for the office and when it came in I was reading the propoganda about it and it referred the product for any/all plastic cleaning. I brought some home and Viola!... a great new product for cleaning pool balls. I haven't identified any negatives yet.. just good stuff to report.

No haze to wipe off. No wax surface to alter the collision characterists/dynamics of the balls. And.. my Centennials clean up beautifully with Brillianize.

 

[mreightball]

If you just want to buy a ball cleaner instead of making one try ours out. We have two models a 8 Ball Model and a 16 Ball model. Click on www.abctables.com to see them.
Thanks
Ron

 

[Sweet Marissa]

Thanks for sharing your idea, but I know of a couple people who have ruined their balls cleaning them this way. The ball cleaners you see in pool halls have partitions to separate the balls to keep them from getting damaged.

 

[tuanpsd]

Joe,

This is a great book on pool psychology. I enjoy pool a lot more after reading and applying what I learn from it; my game also improves tremendously as the result. I though you might be interested on this subject as you're trying to write the same type of book.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1585745391/ref=ox_ya_oh_product

 

[John Biddle]

JimS,

I followed your suggestion and bought a bottle of Brillianize. Thank-you! This stuff is the best product I've seen, better than the Aramith stuff since it has no wax to build up.

 

[JimS]

JimS,

I followed your suggestion and bought a bottle of Brillianize. Thank-you! This stuff is the best product I've seen, better than the Aramith stuff since it has no wax to build up.

I've very glad to hear it worked well for you!! :thumbup: Dennis Walsh just tried his first bottle and he too likes it.

I really think it's the best I've used.. especially for light duty cleaning. The heavy duty cleaning may take a product with 'grit' added and then use the Brillianize for the final polish.

The Brillianize did remove a 1/2" long black spot on my 10 ball that came from the pocket. My experience has been that those black spots take quite a bit of rubbing using straight water but the Brillianize took it right off. I polish 8 balls for 2 minutes in my bucket polisher.

As a side note; I tried two products from the people that sell the Micro Mesh cloth. I used the Micro 5 and then Micro Finish.

The Micro 5 was pretty gritty and needed a final polish. The Micro Finish did a great job but was not as easy to use as Brillianize and was more expensive to use. I like just giveing a little spray of the Brillianize liquid on the balls and on the polisher.

 

[SCCues]

you might have got the idea from me...............

one bucket, 20$ orbital buffer (harbor freight), 3m spray glue,carpet, piece of wood, some long wood screws, tie straps.............

Your post helped me build mine. Thank you Skins........

James

 

[Manoman2444]

The ball cleaner in action.

This thing was pretty easy to put together at a very reasonable price. Again, thanks for everyone's help with their designs.

Enjoy!!

Stephen

Great step by step instruction and great pictures! Thanks

 

[fasteddief]

cleaning balls

The best stuff for ceaning balls and 3cusion balls is Gel Gloss buy it at Home Depot

 

[tuanpsd]

I just also tried Brillianize as Jim suggested. It works much better than Aramith and the balls seem to stay shiny a lot longer.

 

[JimS]

I just also tried Brillianize as Jim suggested. It works much better than Aramith and the balls seem to stay shiny a lot longer.

The stuff really works... but it should. It's make to polish plastics.

 

[cuemaker03]

Here are some pics of my home-made ball poslisher. The Ryobi buffer/polisher cost $25 from Home Depot. I had the two buckets and carpet. I polish 8 balls at a time, but it will hold about 12 or so at one time. I got the idea from somebody here on this site....I think it was Strokerz....something like that. I used two buckets instead of one though. The top one is a little smaller. I did this so that the motore could breath. This first time I used it, it worked very well. The balls looked like that were new and fresh out of the box.

Pic one is the complete set-up.

I'll be making one of these next LOL.