Newbie quick felt question

R

Rackin78

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Hi, I'm new to forum & have a quick question. My brother bought an older return style ATI Leisure Time Products (circa 1972) 4x8' table cheap off his boss who wanted to get it out of the way. The table is in really good shape and has fairly nice felt (cloth) that has a white backing to it. A local shop told us it's commercial cloth and is used in billiard halls so it can be patched.

We set the table up, leveled it, and it plays great except... the corners where the pockets are are slightly pulled up. It is hardly even noticeable until you hit a soft shot and it stops the ball or the ball has even skated around the pocket and not gone in. It's actually kind of funny (if you're not the guy missing the shot). But anyway, should the felt be glued down around the corners, does it need to be pulled tight & stapled by the corner, or some other trick we don't know?
 
Rubber backed cloth can be tricky to re-install. It doesn't really get stretched, so you can actually cause puckers by stretching it, especially if you stretch more one direction than the other.

What part of Cincy are you in? I'm down there a lot, and Jim Vondrell (Accu-Level) is located in Cincy. Maybe one of us could check it out for you, or put new cloth on when the time comes.
 
Backed cloth has a bad habit of separating if folded. IOW the cloth separates from the backing resulting in a wrinkle.
What little stretching you can do won't remove it and this may be the cause of your problem.

Sight unseen you can try redoing the problem pockets in case the cloth wasn't installed correctly. If that doesn't work
and there is still a wrinkle in the cloth you can remove (peel off) part of the backing up to the point of the wrinkle. This
will let the cloth lay flat and should fix the problem.

Just to note that the white backing is actually a vinyl material and when handling backed cloth it should always
be rolled and never folded. Next time you recover get a regular cloth without backing. This allows stretching and
you'll notice better speed on the cloth.
 
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Dartman, thanks for the info & suggestions.

Club Billiards- thank you & we live about 20 minutes east of the city.
 
If the cloth is in good shape(not alot of holes and such) and your really on a budget i would take the backing off completely and re-install it without the backing. If you want any help feel free to call.
513 257 9234
 
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