Waxing Pool Balls?

hi

i have to chime in.
first of all you can play with balls that have no polish on a tv table with hot lights,brand new cloth etc, and it will play ok.

trust me polishing the balls with super arimith is the way to go.

also colorback or maguires polishing wax works great and makes the balls slick which is much easier to play great pool.

in closing polishing the balls every few hours is the way to go in a perfect world.

for 14.1 i like them waxed for other games polish.
 
3kushn said:
Glen

Wish you would post this one in the room owners forum. Seems not many owners realize the damage done and the costs incurred by not cleaning the cloth and the balls. My cloth is years old and plays much better than the local pool halls cloth that just recovered a table 30 days ago. They either don't realize it, don't care or simply lazy.

Recently I was at a joint that just got a new Gabriel 3C table. The cloth "looked" pretty clean so I decided to use my personal balls which look nearly like new. By the time I was done playing 50 points they looked like the house balls. I can play 500 points on my table before I need to polish them but they will still look 100 times better than after 50 points on a public table.

The only problem with wax is yes it does come off. It doesn't do any damage but as it wears off the game starts to change due to less slide. The products that have no wax are fine but most have no abrasives. The balls get clean but the burn marks are still there. The very best way I've found to clean and polish balls is on a bench with a thick buffing wheel and stick compound for plastic (usually white). If that's not available I'll use polishing compound from wall mart and a terry cloth.

One last edit. As far as wax causing miss cues, doesn't happen. Good chalking technique puts a barrier between the tip and the wax. Also the great masse artists like waxed up balls. Think about it.
Click to expand...

I'm curious about how you are cleaning your table ? Vacumming, wet rag or other ? Could you tell us ?

tim
 
john schmidt said:
i have to chime in.
first of all you can play with balls that have no polish on a tv table with hot lights,brand new cloth etc, and it will play ok.

trust me polishing the balls with super arimith is the way to go.

also colorback or maguires polishing wax works great and makes the balls slick which is much easier to play great pool.

in closing polishing the balls every few hours is the way to go in a perfect world.

for 14.1 i like them waxed for other games polish.
Click to expand...

Thanks John. Johnnyt
 
I'm using Arimith Billiard Ball Cleaner on my Arimith Super Pro balls. The balls are about 7 years old now. Seems to work ok. I've recently been boxing the balls after using them and they seem to look better for doing it.
 
Pushout said:
I'm using Arimith Billiard Ball Cleaner on my Arimith Super Pro balls. The balls are about 7 years old now. Seems to work ok. I've recently been boxing the balls after using them and they seem to look better for doing it.
Click to expand...
I've got the same set and cleaner. How often do you clean (approximately how many racks)? I know I don't clean mine enough -- say 50 or more full racks :-/

Boxing the balls after using them seems tedius... I also don't use my table cover for the same reason... Boxing and covering is surely good for the equipment, but that's where laziness creeps in on me.
 
stikapos said:
I'm curious about how you are cleaning your table ? Vacumming, wet rag or other ? Could you tell us ?

tim
Click to expand...
I clean my table using a damp terry cloth. I clean it after 1 - 2 hours of play. Flip the towel every 1/2 slate. Don't wipe with a hard scrubbing action. You're not cleaning hardened crap off floor, you're lifting fine dust particles of and the water serves as kind a magnet. Simply move the towel over the cloth with not much more than the weight of the towel.

It probably wouldn't hurt to vacuum first then the towel. Vacuum will not get everything. I just don't bother.

Here's the kicker that I left out before. After the table starts to shorten up which will happen on a personal table in a month or so I start applying silicone. This is one way to maintain slide. After the table is clean I'll expose a clean section of the same damp towel and spray "light duty or General purpose" silicone on, then more or less drag the towel across the entire table. No downward pressure at all. Normally don't silicone the rubber the balls will transfer it to the rails.

Silicone is controversal and there are known drawbacks ie retaining dirt. But that being said my old Brunswick plays very close to tournament tables and the cloth is several years old. We are talking 3 Cushion here.
 
I brush my table every morning and vacuum it twice a week, using a shop vac with this brush. This is the best brush I've found for getting out lots of dust without pulling on the cloth too much. Every week or so, I clean the table with a damp cloth just as 3kushn described. The Simonis 860 is four or five years old now, and still plays great (ignore the white spots...nothing to see here...move on).

I use Aramith Billiard Ball Cleaner every month or two. Once or twice a week I wash the balls with bath soap, using a soft sponge for the pocket spots. They don't get real shiny, but they play perfectly well, and there's no residue to get on the table. Not suggesting that everyone is as lazy as I am, but that's the easiest way I've found to clean the balls.
 
I use Brillianize... a product designed to clean and polish acrylic surfaces. I use it after about 3 hours of play and it makes a big difference. Polished... NOT waxed. http://www.brillianize.com/

Great stuff.

My copier repair guy recommended it to help polish the copier glass so the document feeder would work more efficiently.
 
tonmo said:
I've got the same set and cleaner. How often do you clean (approximately how many racks)? I know I don't clean mine enough -- say 50 or more full racks :-/

Boxing the balls after using them seems tedius... I also don't use my table cover for the same reason... Boxing and covering is surely good for the equipment, but that's where laziness creeps in on me.
Click to expand...

I'm probably cleaning balls about once a month, I don't go by racks because I don't count them;) I only recently started boxing the balls and I've had the table and balls about seven years. I thought it would be tedious, too, but it doesn't seem to be. I cover my table with a denim cover that my wife made because we have cats!! Our male shredded the cheap plastic cover that came with the table.
 
I have used Mothers Cleaner Wax once a week(applied by hand) for the past year. No ill effects have shown up on the cloth or any other equipment. I have noticed that the chalk marks on the cue ball wipe off easier and don't appear as often. I also vacuum with a Dirt Devil hand vac and then wipe the cloth down with a damp cloth.

Would someone that doesn't clean thier pool balls often and has a set over 5 years old do me a favor? Use an outside micrometer on the balls and measure them. Measure the stripe and the solid white portion on each ball.

I have an old Aramith set, maybe 8 years old that I never cleaned. The white areas wore down faster than the colored portions making them out of round.
 
We have a diamond ball polisher and when it was ordered the rep said to use Meguiars polish in the first side then the quick wax on the second side and they play great I have seen no ill effects from this just shiny balls that dont skid very often (unless it has been a week or more with no cleaning)
Evan
 
chevybob20 said:
Would someone that doesn't clean thier pool balls often and has a set over 5 years old do me a favor? Use an outside micrometer on the balls and measure them. Measure the stripe and the solid white portion on each ball.

I have an old Aramith set, maybe 8 years old that I never cleaned. The white areas wore down faster than the colored portions making them out of round.
Click to expand...

How much out of round were the balls? (assuming you aren't putting us on) Are these standard Aramiths? I have an old set somewhere that I can put a mic on. They were not used much and were kept clean, but we can see if they mic out the same as your dirty balls (nothing personal).

The Aramith Super Pro and Brunswick Centennials are rounder than standard Aramiths from the factory.
 
I use a damp bathrag to clean them off and then a dry bathrag to polish them. Cheap and effective.
 
I have a Dayton ball cleaner & use an industrial cleaner/polish on my Aramith Super Pros and they look same as new...10yrs old at least. :smile:
 
Wax but not the

I have Aramith cleaner at home, but at the poolroom they've used plain old
KIT car wax for years with no ill effects that I've ever noticed.
But I was told and agree after trying both ways, NEVER put wax on the cue ball.

This would seem to be answer to your miscue problems,and still provides
a little fiction that I think you need between cue and object ball apon
contact.
Going to PEP BOYS tomorrow for the Meguires PlastX
JMHO
Doc
 
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junkbond said:
How much out of round were the balls? (assuming you aren't putting us on) Are these standard Aramiths? I have an old set somewhere that I can put a mic on. They were not used much and were kept clean, but we can see if they mic out the same as your dirty balls (nothing personal).

The Aramith Super Pro and Brunswick Centennials are rounder than standard Aramiths from the factory.
Click to expand...

I don't remember the exact amount of out of roundness. I weighed and measured them at All South Billiard Supply in Chattanooga with the owner, Mike. I did this after reading a similar thread here on AZ. I was skeptical until I performed the measurements.
 
junkbond said:
How much out of round were the balls? (assuming you aren't putting us on) Are these standard Aramiths? I have an old set somewhere that I can put a mic on. They were not used much and were kept clean, but we can see if they mic out the same as your dirty balls (nothing personal).

The Aramith Super Pro and Brunswick Centennials are rounder than standard Aramiths from the factory.
Click to expand...


I'm not putting you on. You probably can get a really good comparison by measuring the ones at the pool hall.
 
I put the mic on five Aramith standard balls. They had been lightly used and were polished before storage. The out-of-round was from two to ten thousandths. The surprsing thing was that the size of the balls varied by ten thousandths from smallest to largest ball. For comparison, I measured some Centennials which have at least a hundred times as much use as the Aramiths. The max out-of-round on them was fifteen ten-thousandths and the size difference between balls was two thousandths.

Don't know what any of it means, except that it's easy to understand why Centennials and Aramith Super Pro play so much better.

Sad to say, we don't have a pool hall.
 
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