I have a Valley 7 foot home table and I noticed that the felt rails do not come up as high as the laminate rails. Should I put a couple pieces of felt under the slate at the supports or can I get enough play out of the rail bolts to adjust this? I have the slate off now because I am trying to quite down the ball return.
Valley Home Table
- Thread starter ndakotan
- Start date
If you want to set the rails flush with the laminate, take a rail, place it on top of the slate while it's out of the table. Measure from the top of the rail to the bottom of the slate, this will give you a slate depth in the table. Next, measure the depth of the sub-rail from the top of the laminate to the bottom of the slate support. If the depth is greater than the thickness of the rail/slate combined, subtract the difference and that's how much you need to shim the slate up to match the cushions with the laminate. Make sure you place shims everywhere the slate sits, as to insure the slate is raised every where to match the bottom of the cushions. Then, if the cushion nose is low, (below 1 7/16") raise the nose of the cushions by shimming them behind the rails and below the level of the rail boltsndakotan said:
Glen
Are the rails original? If they're the correct set of rails they should flush-up with the laminate and hit the ball dead nuts at 1 13/32. Valley's quality control was pretty tight. Maybe somebody fiddled with the table or the rails are not original and were drilled wrong? If you absolutely have to you can hog out the holes in the table to 3/8" and use a flatwasher under the head of the rail bolt but it sounds like someone made the rails and figured close was good enough. It's ok to have a little space under the rail by the way, wont hurt a thing. But the critical item is that it the balls hit the nose of the cushion (the pointy part) at 5/8 of the ball's diameter.
One more thing....was the table made in Bay City, MI or is it a newer table made in Mexico? The plot thickens!
Fred, cloth has a lot to do with the slate and rails. When a table comes from the Valley factory, lets say it's backed cloth for example. First of all, it's wrapped around under the slate, that's one thickness of the cloth, then you have the cloth on top of the slate, that's two thickness's of cloth, then it's wrapped around the cushion block, that's three and four thickness's of cloth. Now, someone comes along and recovers the table with say Mercury Ultra which is quit a bit thinner than Mali-backed cloth, and lets say they don't wrap the cloth under the slate, so now there's only three thickness's of Ultra cloth on the table. There is going to either be a huge gap between the bottom of the rails above the slate if the rails are lined up with the laminate, OR there's going to be about 1/8" inch of laminate sticking up above the rails if they're pushed down flat to the slate. But under no conditions are you going to get a 1 7/16" nose height by just bolting the rails flush with the laminate, you're going to HAVE to do something with the slate to raise it up to the rails if you want the correct nose height, and the only way that's going to happen...is if you shim UP the slate, I know, I've been doing that with Valley and all the rest of the coin-op tables for half my lifetimeMr Penguin said:
Glen
Thank you professor. Read the question again. ndakotan said his rails dont come up to the top of the laminate. If the rails are made correctly THEY WILL. After you get them flush with the top of the table you start to address the issue of cushion height.
Thanks For The Help
The table was assembled in Mexico. It was purchased new from Scheels and delivered in one piece (and it was still packaged when they delivered it so I am sure it is original). I did have it recovered because the table played way too slow. The cloth is wrapped underneath.
I took the slate off so I could "quite down" the ball return. It was extremely loud compared to ball action on the table. These home tables are noisy. Once I padded the ball return I set the slate back on. When bolting the rails on, I was able to hold them up to the correct height relative to the wood, and the rail height measured correctly (thanks for that piece of info). I finished putting the rails on and it plays perfectly.
Thanks.
The table was assembled in Mexico. It was purchased new from Scheels and delivered in one piece (and it was still packaged when they delivered it so I am sure it is original). I did have it recovered because the table played way too slow. The cloth is wrapped underneath.
I took the slate off so I could "quite down" the ball return. It was extremely loud compared to ball action on the table. These home tables are noisy. Once I padded the ball return I set the slate back on. When bolting the rails on, I was able to hold them up to the correct height relative to the wood, and the rail height measured correctly (thanks for that piece of info). I finished putting the rails on and it plays perfectly.
Thanks.