InsertCleverNameHere
Well-known member
Certainly true
Valley Pro Cat
- Thread starter InsertCleverNameHere
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We don't have Diamonds in my area that don't work, because we have 3 table mechanics that maintain almost all the Diamonds, and they're all trained by me, so they either know how to fix them right, or they call me if they can't, then I tell them what to do to fix the table. And I'm talking about Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska.
I've never seen a ball stuck on a Diamond and very few on Valley's. When balls did hang up in a Valley it was usually chalk/dirt issues. sometimes a part in the mech. needed replacing but as a rule V's held up great. they were designed to be abused by ham-fisted drunks.
boogieman
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that ping.
I had 2 balls get stuck on my 7' Diamond. The first one is because I stupidly tried to store a pack of break cloth table savers in the clean out at the breaking end. The fix was to simply not store them there.
The second was because the guys that set my table up were hacks. They bunched the rubber ball return liner under the side pocket tray/rail and it caused a ball to get stuck. A few minutes of cussing them and reaching in the under table clean out while lifting the ball tray/rail so the rubber could sit flat and it was fixed. No issues after that. The installers were super incompetent but they did a great stretch on the cloth. The same cloth that I had to take off after a month because they didn't seam the 3 piece slate flush and used 1/8" of beeswax to make it flush causing bad ball roll off. Oh yeah, and they also didn't even bother to clean the ball return out with a towel or something after it looked like it had been driven a thousand miles on a gravel road. Also incorrect torque on the rail bolts. And no leveler was even close to touching the slate.
The table is great but it really does depend on who sets them up. @realkingcobra even generously gave me over an hour of his time on the phone to help me actually get the table level with the levelers. I'm just glad I've learned enough to maintain tables. I'm no mechanic but attention to detail and actually trying to learn from the wisdom of actual mechanics will get you a long way. It's nice to not have to deal with hacks anymore. After that ordeal on a brand new table I never even called them back to fix it, I even ate the cost of new cloth (re-used on my nephew's Valley since the slate is smaller). If they did that shit of a job the first time, they aren't touching my table ever again!
If stuff is getting stuck in a diamond, shine a flashlight in the rack holding location and look to see what's in there. Probably chalk cubes and who knows what. It's super easy to access, you can get stuck chalk out with a broom, handy to know if you drop a $20 cube down the hole!
The second was because the guys that set my table up were hacks. They bunched the rubber ball return liner under the side pocket tray/rail and it caused a ball to get stuck. A few minutes of cussing them and reaching in the under table clean out while lifting the ball tray/rail so the rubber could sit flat and it was fixed. No issues after that. The installers were super incompetent but they did a great stretch on the cloth. The same cloth that I had to take off after a month because they didn't seam the 3 piece slate flush and used 1/8" of beeswax to make it flush causing bad ball roll off. Oh yeah, and they also didn't even bother to clean the ball return out with a towel or something after it looked like it had been driven a thousand miles on a gravel road. Also incorrect torque on the rail bolts. And no leveler was even close to touching the slate.
The table is great but it really does depend on who sets them up. @realkingcobra even generously gave me over an hour of his time on the phone to help me actually get the table level with the levelers. I'm just glad I've learned enough to maintain tables. I'm no mechanic but attention to detail and actually trying to learn from the wisdom of actual mechanics will get you a long way. It's nice to not have to deal with hacks anymore. After that ordeal on a brand new table I never even called them back to fix it, I even ate the cost of new cloth (re-used on my nephew's Valley since the slate is smaller). If they did that shit of a job the first time, they aren't touching my table ever again!
If stuff is getting stuck in a diamond, shine a flashlight in the rack holding location and look to see what's in there. Probably chalk cubes and who knows what. It's super easy to access, you can get stuck chalk out with a broom, handy to know if you drop a $20 cube down the hole!
Probably someone dropping chalk in the pockets. I’d guess 8/10 times when a ball is getting hung up in a return system, it’s because someone lost a chalk cube down a pocket.
So has anyone seen one in the wild yet? We may be looking to replace the table at our American Legion in the next year or so, and I’m looking at the different options, including these and Diamonds