Oops, I Ripped My Felt!

Sep 10, 2011

This is an Emergency refelt job we did for a client in Long Beach, CA. The client actually lives around the corner, but her daughter was housesitting while the owners of the pool table were on vacation. Our office received a frantic phone call from a woman who explained the details of the mishap. Apparently, the daughter and her boyfriend were playing a game of pool and she unknowingly grabbed a cuestick that had a very worn down tip on it. In her defense, she may not be totally to blame. I’ll assume that this seven-foot Olhausen pool table had been setup up in this spot for at least 10 years. The room that it’s in has windows all around, which meant that it gets drenched in sunlight on a daily basis. I know that the pool table was never covered because when I took off the rails the felt below was a totally different color. The felt had been so sun-bleached that when I first arrived at the house I thought the felt color was khaki when it actually was camel. So, getting back to the culprits. Yes, the daughter may have physically caused the damage to the felt. But it was the severe sun damaged felt and a worn-down cue stick tip that were the two key factors that are really to blame.

So, the moral of this story? Well, there are actually several, but the main one I think is to keep your pool cues in good condition. When the leather tip at the end of the cuestick gets worn down to the thickness of a dime, stop using it immediately. You can bring your cuesticks in to us to be repaired. Or we can sell you a cue stick repair kit which is a lot less money than refelting your pool table. The second moral is to keep your pool table covered if it is exposed to direct sunlight. We sell covers ranging in price from $25-$120.