Damn nice tables tho.
Why tournament blue?
- Thread starter livemusic
- Start date
Obviously the color scheme is more important than anything else! I deal with this all the time with homeowners listening to their interior decorators on their pool table's cloth color choice. It's particularly a problem in college towns where the tables on campus and the surrounding area request colors matching the college's team colors. Sometimes they'll even pay to have the really cheap quality (but expensive to order) polyester cloth that has the college's logo right in the middle of the table!
289 FIA Shelby Cobra replica ... built by ERA Replica Cars in New Britain, Ct. It is a dead nuts on replica of CSX 2345 .. one of the 5 original 289 FIA Race Cars that campaigned in Europe and was not wrecked. The original is in a Cobra museum in Colorado. Car has Jag IRS, the ERA racing rear end (they split the Jag hubs and have outboard brakes); 331 Stroker motor built by Keith Kraft Racing in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. On a chassis dyno put out 446 HP at 6000 rpm, and 326 to the rear wheels; Tremec 5 speed. Painted navy blue .. no stripes .. tan leather seats. Wanted a car that would be like the one I would have ordered in 1965 .. if I had the $$$ instead of having been a college freshman at the time. Had a poster from Mechanics Illustrated on my wall as a kid . . the summer that Carrol Shelby introduced the Cobra and ran photos of the same car (painted different colors) in 4 different car magazines in the month of July. A yellow car, green car, red car, black car. Gave the impression that he was in production and rolling .. when in fact he only had ONE prototype body from the Brits .. and a 260 V8 from Ford.
Attachments
Super nice! I bet that is a lot of fun when the weather is good! Thanks for sharing!
DangleShot
New member
I have a few videos taken of shots I played on my home pool table covered with 'standard green' granito taken a few days apart with the same lighting and the cloth looks anywhere from fairly blue to dark green across the videos. I should say I am partially color-blind... every time I play on a modern powdery 'tournament blue' color it looks electric and actually hurts my eyes a little. Most pool table cloth I've seen in my lifetime seems to be aqua/teal/blue-green, in between green and blue...my cloth is definitely closer to spruce green. I have less problem seeing the edges of balls than seeing the colors of the balls themselves...many older balls or ones that have faded or yellowed make it really tough to tell the difference between 2 and 4, 6 and 8, 3 and 7, 1 and 5, and the striped balls are even worse because usually glare can obscure most of the color on the ball. The brand new balls my dad bought in the early 80s from day one had most of the stripe colors very faded from the solid balls. I actually liked playing on the deep burgundy cloth in college even though I was covered in red dye and red chalk after.
Bill
So am I the only one who heard this story. I cannot remember where I got if from but there a couple of people I could mention but I will not do so because I am so unsure of where I got this. But I can assure you it is not something I dreamt up. and it came form some one in the pocket pool business.
So I was told that a standard color set of pool balls (Centennials or Aramith) was sent to a scientific color research company. ( I know that's a mouth full, but I can't recall who or where the balls was sent to). And it was asked of the research, "what color best shows the most contrast for these colored object balls?' And the color that came back was tournament blue. I believe there may be some validity to this story because I think it is not a coincidence that the U.S. Tennis Tournament playing surface happens to be very close to a Tournament Blue color. The Australian Tennis Open is also played on a bluish color but with a slightly grayish tint. It could be something about the light blue color on our eyes and it could also be something about the TB color and the contrast to the standard color of pool balls. And so I may then add, I cannot for the life of me why these new soft pastel ball colors have been introduced. They seem to disappear against the light blue color of TB cloth. You cannot say that these new soft colored pool balls recently introduced stand out or have more contrast against the tournament blue cloth.
Let the comments begin.
So I was told that a standard color set of pool balls (Centennials or Aramith) was sent to a scientific color research company. ( I know that's a mouth full, but I can't recall who or where the balls was sent to). And it was asked of the research, "what color best shows the most contrast for these colored object balls?' And the color that came back was tournament blue. I believe there may be some validity to this story because I think it is not a coincidence that the U.S. Tennis Tournament playing surface happens to be very close to a Tournament Blue color. The Australian Tennis Open is also played on a bluish color but with a slightly grayish tint. It could be something about the light blue color on our eyes and it could also be something about the TB color and the contrast to the standard color of pool balls. And so I may then add, I cannot for the life of me why these new soft pastel ball colors have been introduced. They seem to disappear against the light blue color of TB cloth. You cannot say that these new soft colored pool balls recently introduced stand out or have more contrast against the tournament blue cloth.
Let the comments begin.
According to posts 20 and 34 above, Greg Sullivan of Diamond asked the Pantone company (https://www.pantone.com/) and they said tournament blue for cloth and that's what he asked Simonis to make.
SurfTopics
Member
I agree red is the worst. I have a friend with red cloth table. Fun to play with him but horrible conditions even though the cloth is still relatively new. Too hard to see and too messy. I even think red chalk skids more. Balls skid all the time on that table, more than anywhere else I've seen.
Hmmm. When I learned to play in the early 70s it was on GC 1 tables with blue cloth that appeared to be Simonis or something similar (low nap), so blue was around before TV. I had to adjust to green when I got old enough to play on 7 footers in bars.
Be careful about judging color of cloth by viewing it on a computer monitor. Most consumer grade monitors are not true color. Ones that are tend to cost more than your computer. Simonis mentions this on their website http://www.simoniscloth.com/simonis-styles and they offer to send individual swatches or a swatch folder.
When the president of the start up I worked sold the company he started buying cars and bought a Shelby Cobra 427. It sounded beastly even at idle. He made the mistake of letting his wife, who was kind of a wild child, drive it and she swapped ends on dry pavement before his eyes after punching the throttle. Luckily nothing was harmed and she didn't get to drive it again.
I'd like to have it installed on my GC IV, but I also need some new rubber and the quality of work around where I live in central IL is scary! When it was installed I found what was supposed to be competent people in my area, and they installed the dome washers upside down and the pocket castings aren't exactly flush.
Very nice Cobra!! I thought the race version Cobras had the jacking attachments instead of the bumperettes?? I built Cobra kit car for a customer that I keep suggesting the jack attachments to replace his bumperettes. Its a 427 replica with a Kaase 514, Ford top loader, and a 9".
Green has always been the color for pool/billiards/snooker. That is because our games were originally played outdoors on a lawn. At some point our games were moved indoors and the color of the cloth stayed that green color. Now days, we have more selections and recently tournament blue has become the color of choice. I read a study years ago that (I wish I could find it) MAN developed better eyesight looking at landscape coloration (via evolution) which is green and could distinguish better with those shades of green. There is little glare with the color green and IMO this study pointed out that the color blue, like the sky, makes it harder to distinguish objects and distance etc.
The racing version did ... I had this built to replicate as closely as possible the car I would have purchased in 1965 if I had the money back then in high school! The body was splashed on CSX2345 .. one of the original 5 FIA race cars.
So the FIA race version came with racing jack plates and the street version came with bumperettes?? Does yours have the extra wheel opening detail that the first showroom models did?? I learned an alarming amount of info building that replica for my customer, his I think is the more popular replica version 427 car with the fatter rear fenders. There are so many Cobra "experts" out there who dont even realize that there were several different versions of the Cobra bodies even beyond the fact that none were probably identical because they were all hand rolled. There was a guy up here in Manitowoc building exact Cobra copies with the big tube frames and aluminum bodies until Shelby shut him down.
KIrkham Motorsports builds aluminum cobras ... 427's, 289FIA and I believe they added the slab side .. the car that was actually sold to the public. They sell aluminum bodies to Shelby American if Shelby gets an order for an aluminum bodied "continuation" car .. as they still sell the cobra but with a fiberglass body on the standard model. Mine was built by ERA Replica Cars in New Britain, Ct. They have been building superb quality fiberglass cobra replicas (289 FIA, 427SC, and even the Ford GT40). They stopped making the GT40 a few years ago .. it was an exact replica .. and even 12-15 years ago it was a $150,000 car. Kirkham has their aluminum bodies made at a former MIG fighter factory in Poland .. all cad cam equipment. They started flying raw bodies in 747 jets .. then developed jigs to carry them in ocean containers.
ERA is the best replicar as far as I am concerned. I would have liked to have gotten a hold of one of their GT40 bodies. Did they quit the GT40 line or just the complete cars?? I think I saw that place in Poland on the interweb you speak of. Were they not building complete cars in Poland??
