preparing A.N. Other table

[Chris_Sav]

Brief reply;

1) I believe the final clocks were made on the Isle of Man, though I have never investigated this, would be an interesting project for my planned marshalling on Manxland next year.

2) Rings, I am STILL not in possession of the correct final version of the CAD file. I have chased this but cannot procede further until I get it. The table with the prototype rings will be going into the Five Bells in Eastry which will be our new home  after Chrimble if our league restarts.

[taffy]

Yes I've already booked the manx up as it is 100 years and they are going to make a special effort I'm sure!

Taffy

[Chris_Sav]

Nov 27, 2021 17:29:26 GMT taffy said:

Yes I've already booked the manx up as it is 100 years and they are going to make a special effort I'm sure!

Taffy

Where and when are you staying?

We'll be there for an extended fortnight, staying in Peel.

Mind you you're going a bit early for the centenary in 2023.

[taffy]

yes, you could be right. 1923. Motorhome and not sure where we'll pitch up.

Taffy

[taffy]

This past Month I have been doing up a pre-war Sams that I was delighted to find for sale over at Fleggburgh near Gt. Yarmouth. I agreed an off-screen price (£1,250) and gathered as much cash as possible.

It came without a timer which given that i need one was a hell of a risk and I am unlikely to find another. However....... I'd visited an auction site for the first time in yonks and what was for sale? The front legs of a Sams table with the timer AND the lock up at Skipton. I won this Auction the next day for £10 (£12 gross) and so I was "Back in the GAME!".

The undertray is very old and I ripped out the carpet-laden padded landing areas and turned them into ski-drops, extra blue felt was found to cover bare (and disgusting) areas. I then used 4mm self-adhesive furniture pads to keep the balls from banging away plus the usual carpet underlay but just along the sides of the wooden dividers.

As the balls don't fly back like the post-war Sams, there was no need to use underlay on the base in order to slow the balls down; blue is therefore the predominant colour still! A bar and a cross-beam were made from ply and suitable stained darker with a little hard wood for the timer to stroke and the timer to sit upon.

The first real experiment was with the front score discs which looked like old transfers so I bought some water transfer paper and followed the instructions. They said that I was to design the item, print it on the glossed paper and then lacquer it. This i did but foolishly only printed what i needed as I guess I'm tight. I lacquered over the print and then cut each one out. Then i dipped them in warm water and the transfer fell off the white background and was on my thumb ready to fit. It often stuck to my thumb and broke up readily but while wet i was able to splash and push the bits together. The black inked rim then seemed to dissolve slightly but that just gave it an aged look which I'm happy with. Later I lacquered them and sealed them in for good.

The lessons are;
print more than you need
lacquer twice
they break up too readily..
...but they work!!!

I designed them in 'photos' getting the shape right and testing with a sheet of A4. When happy, the numbers went in next. Well worth it and now I can use the decals for other things? A scoreboard perhaps? why not!

With the timer, i took that down the Village to Bob Upandown who cryogenically cleaned the clock part and vapour cleaned the rest. Looking back, i should have removed the front face from the base and had the face cryo'd as well as the vapour cleaning was a bit too intrusive! Three screws and it would have been apart.

As luck would have it, i bought a spare used Tally-Counter a few years back which will be added and also I salvaged the lock off the £12 table end making it truly the best value bar Billiards item I've ever bought, the key for the lock I'd had done before.

Parts back and many parts painted or greased, oiled or polished, buffed up or loctited it now looks brilliant and is away for the "£1" treatment....that isn't old Mick's price for the work; rather, the coin it'll take!

But the timer still wanted more....It wanted a cover, a coin shute and a money collector and who should come to the rescue but "Big Al" Alan Mee (Alan Turner here) who had a new cover, shute and money collector. So the job is truly done now.

The holes for the hinge screws were worn oversize and only 4" long screws tightened up but went through the undertray. So, I found some rare 6mm self-tappers on Ebay just 15mm long and they work a treat!

The next problem was the cloth.
The blue cloth is "shag-pile" (I like that word, swearing on pro-boards....surely this one will get through...LOL), I'll say it again, "shag-pile" blue Strachan cloth and what with the cushions, despite it being new cloth years ago and unplayed...it was dead. So i thought; 'well, I have nothing to lose here as it'll have to come off if i can't get it to speed up?'

So, I got a razor blade in a handle which is usually used for scraping windows and I scraped away for about 3 hours on this lightly pulled cloth. I was removing heaps of blue cloth and just twice i managed to 'nik' the cloth which might have been OK but i superglued the gap immediately and the slight 'niks' became 1000% visible now due to the glue.

Each time it happened it happened when i was; left-handed, racing away at it and on lifting clear dragged the corner of the razor up the cloth at an angle. There is no need for this and next time I will take the corners off the blades to lessen the chances.

How did it turn out? well it is now premier cloth in everything but name! I'm really chuffed and the balls roll with great pace now.

I then pulled the slate clear and tightened the cloth down hard over the side, re-stapling. I felt that this was the right order...but next time I may try it the other way round.

Previously, i had removed the Strachan cloth from the rails and created new rails ready for new rubbers. What with 5/8th Northern Rubber no longer being available, i thought I'd be the first to try full-scale Snooker rubbers of 3/4" on a table.
My old mate Damon was unavailable for the Chippy work so i had to learn to router myself this time, router the wood I mean!

So with very thin wood, and routed sweetly by "moi", I glued in the 3/4" rubbers which i got from 'Ronnie' in Wales. The cushions bowed and bulged out like it was archery time and after clothing them the screws drew the cushions in nice and tight. I also got a pot of glue from Ronnie and it really is good stuff as the 3/4" comes with a webbed string strip backing and it never looked like coming apart.

The end result is a fast table with a beautiful bounce from the cushions, I'm well pleased with it. Are the rubbers even better and bouncier than the 5/8th? No; they add nothing. But, they are both excellent.

You'll note that the cues fit in the end of the table on a pre-war Sams and when the table needs attending around the tray, all this weight needs lifting. So I tried for hydraulic rams from the tailgate of my old scrapped Citroen. Alas, while the hard wood was strong enough, the softwood under the top wasn't so I need some metal plates making to spread the load. Another time perhaps.......

So on this table I have done yet again more new ideas and they have all worked out better than I could hope for. The scraping of the cloth and the water transfers are a knock-out, the cushions 'just-as-good', the cryogenic and vapour cleaning are excellent ideas.

I finished by cutting a '30' and a pair of '10' discs with my 1mm cutting disc and doing it by hand to match the amatuerish way a predecessor had done the two '20s'.

The layout of a pre-war Sams
I'm guessing that this table is circa 1937-1939 as there are even more grandiose scoreboards (1934-1936?) -but only a few!
The bottom half of the table is narrow while the 'top' is wide. Because it has 9-lanes in the undertray, some of the gaps are too narrow but it is great to see the balls in a Sams NOT smashing the bulkhead.... way better.
The feet are not a good shape and roll in circles not on the spot which torments the legs. They needed a greater degree of curve in them. On top, the 200, 100 and the 50s are much, much further down the table so the game plays like it is a narrow. The 200 is 200mm further down than my own Sams ands still 150mm further than a post-war.
Also, these early skittles are VERY substantial! Wide yes, but also heavy. I like the heavy but the wide bit makes balls behind the far middle hole (30) not-much-fun!
Other than the 4 holes location, the pre-war table is better in nearly every department.

cheers!

Taffy

Photos are of;
condition of the clock when I got it
a little super glue required
cloth drawn down and re-stapled


Attachment Deleted

[taffy]

three more photos.

1. front decals which look suitably 'aged'.
2. the scoreboard - a thing of beauty!
3. size matters! huge new cushion rubber is next to the old tiny rubber.

Taffy

Attachments:

[Chris_Sav]

Thanks to Jon I am now in possession of what should be the final version of the CAD file for the rings.

I'm trying a local firm and should have a prototype to check against the set in our league table on Monday. 

[taffy]

Latest table to join the Newmarket Stables of one David 'bach boyo' Lloyd is a narrow Sams I was fortunate to buy off 'Ozzy' here on the site at a more than fair price! So a thanks to Phil for thinking of me and after a trip to hailsham it was soon back in the workshop.

As with all my tables I always try a new idea or two and stick to other tried and tested ideas that i now consider to work!

So, it was off with the laquer using a belt sander and orbital sander for the little stuff. so, 3 coats of Danish oil and 2 coats of natural beeswax. a new premier cloth made for a Jelks only made it lengthwise by about 5mm...it was fully stretched and just made the wooden frame on the ends.

The table lacked the usual 4 items namely;
The timer cover (and funnel shoot) on top
the money box underneath.
the tally counter.
the bar (a wooden board)

I added the usual ski-drops and know the dimensions in the top of my head. I also narrowed the wood for this as the lanes in a narrow are well; "narrower"!.

The big difference this time was that i decided to lower the under tray by 40mm. This means the balls come down FAST and straight into the fingers of the player breaking them.....sorry, freudian slip there.... no, i counteracted the speed by using the carpet underlay.
The task was easy to do; 30-minutes work it was that easy, all i had to do was chop the threaded heads off the table's coach bolts for the tray to fit nicely.

I then used rubber foam strips in each lane of the ball tray (by your knees) and hoped the last downhill bit wasn't going to see balls take off and crack a knuckle. If it worked I knew that the balls wouldn't keep bouncing back out of sight.

WORRA TREAT! the balls are now silent, fast and there's not even a 'boom' from the very thick rubber pads. a 100% succes and something I'll do again. Now the undertray IS visible for the last 10" of downward travel when viewed from the side, but, I used some 5mm ply and some mastik/silicon and sealed the view off (as well as helping with the noise containment).

I'm presuming that old Alfred Sams decided to make the tables tamper proof when he introduced the 'bulkhead bang' that is all too familiar to everyone.

The second new idea was the use of waterslide decal paper. I downloaded what to me is the correct script/font and best that "I" could see; "Old Stanndard TT" its called which is one that won't be lost on Sav! Now not being great with computers i knew this was going to go wrong so I found the script, asked to download it, clicked, looked in my MS Word screen and there it sat! Old Standard TT.

I'm not over happy with my efforts and will have another go. I also used that bloody awful, cheap rubber I found for sale on ebay on the front edge of the bar and I can now say 'yes, it has a deserved place on a BB table...just not on it but under it!'. New peradon balls complete the job.

I decided to save the score discs and tacs, converted the timer to the £1 coin, and left the cushion rubbers as they felt nice and supple. I even left the leatherette - but not the D and it has an old/new quality to it now.

From now on I think, any new Sams I get will have the undertray lowered the 40mm and i may put a security bar across to make it anti-tamper.

Taffy

[taffy]

The table was donated by Dunstable Fire Service to someone in April 1990.

The ski drop across the top 5 now consists of a vertical piece of wood screwed to the end frame, then a piece of damp MDF (4mm) that has been sawn to miss the runners and then soaked into its curved shape is added.


The waterslide decals after 2 coats of laquer to strengthen them and seal the numbers in. they are still incredibly delicate....3 coats next time!

I should have put them on like this but used black. or white on 'clear' and be able to view the wooden background.

Taffy

[taffy]

Can anybody sell me one of these old pre-war Sams skittles?

cheers

Taffy

Attachments:

[tommo III]

Your best bet is Alan Mee:  ask him nicely and I'm sure he'll make you one.

[Chris_Sav]

I've got several old pegs but don't remember having one with rings on the stem.

New one won't have the patina of age.

[taffy]

Apr 14, 2022 18:01:52 GMT Chris_Sav said:

I've got several old pegs but don't remember having one with rings on the stem.

New one won't have the patina of age.

agreed!

[tommo III]

Get Al to make two identical then.   Then bury them in the garden for a week.   Then dig 'em up .... et voila !

[taffy]

My most recently repaired table is a Jelks known hereon as the Jelks4. It is the first of the Dover tables and was once in the Alma, Deal.

Work carried out has been just good old school maintenance, the addition of noise suppresing carpet underlay, a swop of scoring discs, the recloth of the ball tray which had the moths attack it and also more green baize in each runner for quietness as much as anything.

It has a hydraulic arm which is really quite handy! I also took the cushions off and plained 4mm off them to get them down to the level of the surrounding wood. It now looks a lot cleaner! Initially I pulled in the cloth hard and stapled but the ball bounce wasn't good so i picked the staples on one face and re-stapled pulling more gently and the result was a far more satisfactory bounce.

I polished up the timer with a brass-wire haired rotary wheel - very pleased! A new D was glued down and all the appropriate spots marked (not my usual way, i like felt-tipped pens!) and the slates relevance to the centre line was impressively correct, correct and 1mm out when measured in three places!

rubber stoppers for the tray, on the bar drop edge itself and polished brass coin drop slot and scoreboard with Brasso complete the picture. All in all a very nice table and updated.

It now resides in the Dykes End, Reach a village NW of Burwell, Cambs.

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[taffy]

A new table is ready to rumble from Taffy's stable - Jelks5. This is the second Jelks that came from Dover BBA and is coded 2916.
It has new cloth, skittles, polished balls, new cues, with score discs changed (or painted).
The undertray has been re-clothed in the baize that 'was' the cloth.

It plays well, no troubles with the slate or mechanism.
The table came with no front scoredisc strip yet I had one somewhere and fitted it! The trouble was that with the thick sponges in the ball tray, you would only ever see one ball! so out came the sponges and in went 4mm furniture pads. There was no lock on it - quite an effort, the cushions didn't squeeze up at the corners either so I slipped a little 4mm wooden disc in. Money box got a coat too and clothed inside. The wooden trim around the top has been battered in its time but it is what it is; lots of "patina"!

Just need a pub or club now!

Taffy

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[taffy]

In the last fortnight since our season finished I have prepared another Dover Jelks which i call my Jelks 7, the 41B but have also, it seems, forgotten to mention the table I prepared at Christmas also from Dover code 2916 and now called Jelks 5.

Well whatever, this, 41B/Jelks 7 was the easiest so far, I started work mid-March 2023 and for once the cloth and the way it sat on the cushions was fine but I had to move the D over 3mm and move the slate in the bed. I pulled out old carpet and fitted carpet underlay on the ski-drops and I bought a big roll of ordinary green felt at £14 for doing the ball runs underneath. Because every table needs cloth in the ball runs to quieten them but only some need a new top cloth, i now have no old playing cloth left.

It was a competition only table and didn't have a hole in the top at all for a coin drop slot. The timer had no tongue, screws or springs but I found these from stock. I found a timer cover in stock but changed the funnel after filing a bigger hole in the cover and relocating a screw hole, this brought the funnel over the coin slot. I carefully sawed a coin drop in the wooden underframe and made a hole in the leatherette for a coin drop it had never had.
and
I reckon I’ll get 2-3 tables out of this felt though, the only trouble is that as you cut it, it changes shape causing gaps up and down the ball runs. After 2 strips of felt that were not my best work i cut everything 5mm wider and tucked it all in as it went. that worked.

I re-clothed the ball tray initially in old playing cloth and therefore kept the same 'green'. Then I screwed in modern score discs on both the head and foot boards giving me a collection again of score discs to get through a few more where I keep the originals. When converting from 3 to 4-pin; I keep needing 10s and run out of 30s!

The slate needed a little wedging sweetly, usually they are all way off but this one had little room for movement and a new pile of builders door lifters meant i wedged it sweetly to be parallel inbetween the top wooden rails. All this made the 'D' 3mm out; 351 to 357mm when measuring from the sides. So a new D was glued on and I make my D's like railway tunnels and add 10-15mm of Rexene which i tuck on the downward face and is kept there by the leatherette board.

I painted a large money box black and glued cloth inside too, all in the usual attempt to quieten the game down. Then my favourite job; I polished my balls. Would you believe the worst thing about a perfectly good table was the absolute din from the balls hitting the ball tray wall. BOOM! BOOM!! BOOM!!! I played it like that for a fortnight but it felt like a year. So simple 4mm furniture buffers stopped the noise DEAD. No noise at all now. I just need to put the same stoppers sliced into strips on the leading edge of the bar now because when the bar drops the din is awful. In Cambs we have the rule that the red skittle is only a 'total loss' skittle when the bar drops and so you need to hear the bar drop but you don't need to hear the balls hit it. Luckily, all the pivot hinges are so cheap (read; crap) that the rattle from the hinges is enough (I can feel a Benny Hill song coming on here!).

Essentially on all my tables, you hear the bang of the bar and then as the balls hit it, you hear the hinges rattle, not the balls hitting the bar.

It has its own '41B' Scoreboard but the one from The Dyke’s End, Reach sits there, polished and unused so no need for work on it for now, the Dyke's End has a 16" wide pillar so I gave them a Sams scoreboard which is so much narrower. I found 4 coat hangers that want painting black incase the pub wants them. Once ironed it plays really well and it has my last set of the 6 lightweight mushtittles. 6 new heavy sets have arrived with Mr Mee last week and I'd supplied him with heavier tungsten for these 6. The timer lid has cardboard to seal it at the open edges and make it quieter.

I was lucky the timer was already good for the old £1 yet the new ones fit too. There are two ways of letting a coin drop; the first is that the pull shaft is over another shaft and is rather crude in that the tongue simply stops the coin or lets it through, the other version is a spring loaded pin with an hour-glass waist.

I Spilt some T-cut while holding my long magnetic screwdriver which flicked out as i polished and whipped the bottle over. So now I have a patch on the table....bugger!

So now I have three tables pretty much ready for pubs. Jelks 5 and 7 and my Sams 1 sits here too. they block the garage and I can't work on anything else, what other motivatuion do i need to get them in pubs than to have some freedom to move!

cheers

Taffy

[Chris_Sav]

Mar 30, 2023 10:56:01 GMT taffy said:

I was lucky the timer was already good for the old £1 yet the new ones fit too. There are two ways of letting a coin drop; the first is that the pull shaft is over another shaft and is rather crude in that the tongue simply stops the coin or lets it through, the other version is a spring loaded pin with an hour-glass waist.

The under-slot method was the brilliant innovation, carefully engineered, we came up with to accept both old and new pound coins during the transition period but not actuate on anything else.

The option to revert was maintained once old pounds were out of circulation. An excellent modelling engineering friend was engaged to convert most of the clocks to that method and it took a lot of time. I'll let him know the new owner finds it rather crude.

Incidentally the underslot method works fine providing the slot on top of the table is the correct size and is the only method that has been used historically when clocks have needed to accept more than one coin.