a post and beam pool table

11/19/2012 ...  will is coming along now on the next pool table, our third this year.  so far, except for a little input from me on sorting and selecting the wood, he's pretty much done the whole thing himself.  this afternoon, after finishing the blinds, he started taking it apart to begin the finishing process.  click the photos to enlarge them.

this new table is roughly based on this one from about 2005  ... website link here

and this one from 2009 ... blog post link to that table here

we started the process with a pile of kiln dried, reclaimed hemlock timbers from  our friend jef harris at vintage log and lumber in alderson, west virginia.  we've been buying timbers and planks from jef for, i don't know, 6 or 7 years now?  he usually has what we need at a fair price, kiln dried and hardware free.  we've bought mostly chestnut, but also some reclaimed oak and miscellaneous other stuff, like this hemlock.

reclaimed lumber always has its particular challenges, but this batch gave us what we needed without much of a fight.

we emailed jef our cad drawing and cut list, and he got the wood together and sent it on a truck, right to our door.

after two sets of broken slate for the previous table, we went with a new suppler, kurt schmidt, of a. e. schmidt company in st. louis, a long time manufacturer and supplier of quality pool room products.

here will secures the steel that holds the legs and rails together and assures that any seasonal shrinkage in the lumber takes place below the leveled surface of the slate support.

when the rough frame is assembled, the slate support frame is screwed to the base and the slate added to mark out the pocket cuts on the slate support.

about this time, we finalized the finish treatment with the client, and confirmed that the sights (decorative and functional inlays in the rails that divide the playing surface into 4 and 8 parts) would be green abalone diamonds.  in this case, the table is a standard 8 footer and the playing surface is 44 x 88, making the sights 11" on center from the centers of the long and short sides.  the client's house is a new post and beam structure, so he chose the lighter of the finishes on the left.

will cut the diamond shaped green abalone inlays on the cnc.  they are available commercially, but usually only in laminated abalone, so we prefer to cut our own from hand selected, solid green abalone blanks from stewart-macdonald, a luthier supply house.

 the rubber cushions are glued to the poplar subrails, and the rails themselves, in this case, natural cherry, are then ready to cut to length and drilled for the pocket ears.

we covered drilling for the pockets in several of our other pool table posts, including the most recent one here.   will is coming down the home stretch now.  the first coat of finish is on the bottoms of the cherry rails, and tomorrow he will take the table completely apart and sand and finish the rough beams ... felt the rails and rack 'em up ... more later ...

other pool table posts are here ...
august, 2012
november, 2012
december, 2008
pool tables and card tables on our website

12/6/2012 ... ready to go ... we'll be installing this one in stowe, vt next week ... onsite pictures then ...

 natural cherry rails with green abalone sights (diamonds)

' camel' simonis felt ...