Tag Archives: pool tables

How Are Billiards Tables Made?

Billiards has come a long way since King Louis XI of France introduced the first table in 1470 exclusively for use by the noble class.  Back then, the handles of maces were used to push balls made of wood, clay, or ivory into a single center hole. Fast forward, in the US alone, there are now more than 20 million players. Though in decline, the billiards tables market is a $200 million industry, with individual tables easily ranging from $500 to $15,000. And the revenue generated from the 340,000 coin-operated tables is close to $1.5 billion.[1]

Billiards tables can have varying dimensions and be considerably customized (e.g., choice of wood, color, cloth, etc); nonetheless, they follow a similar manufacturing process that, when done well, should last several decades. Not surprisingly, several educational reality television shows have attempted to address the question, “How are billiards tables made?”

The oldest of the three shows is How It’s Made, a documentary television series that premiered in early 2001 on the Discovery Channel in Canada and on Discovery’s Science Channel in the US. The low-budget, lo-res series relied on an off-screen narrator who described matter-of-factly in 5-7 minute segments how common items, ranging from guitars to bubble gum, are manufactured, while also injecting some tidbits of history.

The Season 6 episode “Ropes, billiard tables, sailboards, cymbals” from 2006 doesn’t help its cause by getting its history wrong in the first minute, incorrectly saying that “billiards [is] also known as pool” and that the game has “been around nearly 500 years.” The episode then proceeds to walk the viewer through the building process, from the initial table frame getting shaped to the rubber strips getting added to the rails to the workers pre-assembling the pieces and stamping them sequentially to ensure the table can be re-assembled later. Additional attention is given to the hot-gluing of the mother-of-pearl sights and the “real heavy lifting” of the three pieces of slate, each weighing up to 330 pounds, which comprise the table surface. The full episode is available to watch here, starting at 7:02.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsK1ncVsv44

Disappointingly, Discovery Communications repeated the How It’s Made formula 16 years later with the launch of their series Incredible Inventions, which first aired in March 2017 on their American Heroes Channel. Spread across 30-minute episodes, this documentary reality series aims to “explore the history and science behind different inventions.”

In the Season 2 episode “The Bow, Ferrofluid, The Billiard Table” from September 2017, the narrator, Matt Baker, delves into the table’s history, referencing its evolution from outdoor croquet and the role Neville Chamberlain played in popularizing the sport.

Then, focusing on Thurston, the oldest (1799) snooker table manufacturer in the world, Mr. Baker details how the company makes its tables: selecting the timber, cutting the wood, planing the wood to the appropriate thickness, drilling holes to enable assembly, creating the legs, leveling the table, spraying the wood, fitting the cushions with billiards cloth, adding the pocket leathers and nets, adding the table cloth, marking the cloth to regulation measurements and ironing it, and finally fitting the cushions.

Aside from highlighting the weight of the table slate, and the craftsmanship of the cloth fitters, the episode feels like a retread of its predecessor, maybe minimally better. The full episode is available to rent/buy and watch on Vudu, starting at 14:20.

In fact, one starts to wonder how this episode got made when Discovery Communications had already upped their game 18 months earlier with the “Pool Tables, Gas Fired Boilers and Shopping Carts” episode from Machines: How They Work, produced and aired by their subsidiary network The Science Channel. By far the most innovative of this how-to trio, this ten-part series combines photo-real CGI with real factory footage to show the hidden workings of appliances, objects, and machines.

Airing in March 2016, the “Pool Tables…” episode distinguishes itself by specifically tackling coin-operated tables, in which “500 parts work in unison” to enable a table to “rack up a half million games” in its 30-year lifetime.

Dissecting a table from Valley-Dynamo, the inventor of the 70-year-old coin-op table, the episode highlights the assembly of the dead rail, the mechanics of the coin recognition slot, and the interior “spider web of runways” that transport the balls.  The episode also tackles the classic question, “Why does the cue ball return but not the other balls?”  I anticipated the answer was attributable to the ball’s size, which is also accurate, but on this featured table it is because the cue’s white layer conceals a ball of iron that gets magnetized, pulling the cue out of the regular chute and channeling it back into play. The full episode is available to watch here, starting at 00:46.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFZHACzo98c

If you’re seeking to understand how billiards tables are manufactured, these three shows should be sufficient.  And, if you’re curiosity wanders more toward the creation of billiards cues or balls, don’t worry. There are plenty of films (The Cuemaker), TV episodes (How It’s Made – “Air filters, billiard cues, ice sculptures, suits”) and video vignettes (Impossible Engineering – “How are billiards balls made?”) to keep you sated.

[1]         Recent data is hard to find. Most of the cited data is 3-5 years old: “…20 million players” (NGSA Sports Participation – Single Sport, 2013); “…a $200 million industry” (Global Billiards Table Market Professional Survey Report, 2017); “…revenue from coin-operated tables” (Statista, 2010; NHBR, 2010)

The Cuemaker (billiards documentary)

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In 2012, Gary Chin, a 20-year-old film student at Ithaca College in upstate New York, directed and produced a 19-minute billiards documentary about Dana Paul, an impressive 64-year-old local artisan, who makes custom pool cues and espresso tampers.   Entitled The Cuemaker, the short film, which won Chin a Best Director award at the 2012 Honey and Buddy Documentary Film Festival, is largely not about the technical aspects of making cue sticks, but more about the passion and commitment Paul brings to his craft.

The Cuemaker - billiards documentaryChin, a rising pool player and the president of Ithaca College’s Billiards Club, starts his documentary with his personal quest to “take [his]game to the next level by building a custom cue,” specifically a 19.5-oz jump break cue.  That quest leads him to Paul, the resident cue repair and cue-building expert.  Along his quest, he also attends the 2012 Super Billiards Expo in Philadelphia, where he observes Shane Van Boening, currently ranked #1 in the US, win the Ten-Ball Players Championship.

But, Chin’s quest is intentionally subsumed under Paul’s larger “quest for [cue-making] perfection.”  It is powerful to hear a craftsman talk with such pride about his trade. Speaking to Chin, Paul says, “I am not attached to [a] particular piece of wood…I’m attached to the idea that it will become, it not treasured, at least respected by you or maybe even your children.  He then later adds, “I am not obsessed but I am determined….I want to love the cue because I want it to be an example of my most prodigious effort to do the best I can do with a cue.”

In the end, Chin, with Paul’s obvious assistance, does make himself the perfect jump break cue.  But, it’s also clear that Paul will forever chase that state of perfection.   If I were currently investing in a cue stick, I wouldn’t want it any other way.

The Cuemaker billiards documentary is available to order on DVD only through Gary Chin’s website.  A preview trailer for the documentary is below. You can also show your support for Chin by liking his Facebook page for The Cuemaker.  To see more of Dana Paul’s woodwork, visit his Tamperista website.

The Understudy: Graveyard Shift 2

Alas, not every film in the pool movie genre is like The Hustler.  On the other end of the spectrum — and I mean way far down the next block of the spectrum — is The Understudy: Graveyard Shift 2, a low-budget, straight-to-VHS vampire horror film from 1988.

Graveyard Shift 2 - billiards movieHard to follow and painful to watch, this sequel, by Canadian director Jerry Ciccoritti, is about a macho vampire named Baisez, who slowly seduces the cast and crew of Blood Lover, a movie about a vampire pool hustler named Apache Falco. This movie-within-a-movie is shot in a pool hall, and from the opening scene zeroing in on a spill of blood being wiped away, we know this won’t be any ordinary game of billiards.  As the movie insufferably trods along, we continually return to this pool hall setting, where the actors struggle to correctly hold cue sticks, and where the lead actress is seduced on a pool table.  As Baisez gains power and finds a corporeal form, he apparently becomes blessed with Mosconi-like pool prowess and the ability to make gunfire-loud pool shots.  The film concludes with a winner-takes-all billiards match, and perhaps the film’s sole silver lining, a decapitation by pool stick.  Now that’s something you don’t see every day in a billiards movie.

Amazingly, The Understudy: Graveyard Shift 2 is not the only billiards movie to focus on vampires.  In a previous blog, I discussed the far-better vampire pool musical Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire. The late ’80s television show Monsters also featured pool in an episode entitled “Pool Sharks.” But, that’s a post for another day…

The Understudy: Graveyard Shift 2 is difficult to find, except for VHS.

The Baltimore Bullet

It could have been so much better.

That’s my seven-word summary of The Baltimore Bullet, a 1980 billiards movie, directed by Robert Ellis Miller, that blatantly cribs from The Hustler, without providing any of that film’s richness and depth.

First, let’s start with the major league cast. The billiards movie stars impeccably-coifed tough guy James Coburn as Nick Casey (aka “The Baltimore Bullet”), past Oscar nominee Omar Sharif as “The Deacon” (the Minnesota Fats equivalent), and past Oscar nominee Ronee Blakley as Carolina Red. So why couldn’t this talented trio breathe life into this tepid film?

Next, let’s turn to the pool.  The opening sequence (shown below) of multiple trick shots, made by pool legend Mike Sigel, according to his official website, is off the hook. And Sigel is but one of nearly a dozen pool greats who appear in the film.  Others include Willie Mosconi, Steve Mizerak, Jimmie Mataya, Lou Butera, Irving D. Crane, Allen Hopkins, Pete Margo, Ray Martin, James Rempe, and Richie Florence.

 

 

On top of that, the movie is located in New Orleans (my favorite city of all time and where I spent countless evenings shooting stick), and features an extended funeral procession second line from the legendary Olympia Brass Band.

It should have been so much better.

Unfortunately, great cast + great pool players + great location does NOT make a great billiards movie. After the first 30 minutes, the film sags under its own weight of contrived subplots, including random gangsters, a moronic hitman, and a senseless romance.

Finally, the true kiss of death for this movie is the final scene.  Even amateur students of pool movies know it ends with the final showdown.  Think Fast Eddie Felson and the Fat Man (in The Hustler).   Think Mars Callahan and Ricky Schroder’s characters (in Poolhall Junkies). But, in this movie, after a rather drawn-out buildup to the final match between the Baltimore Bullet and the Deacon, the director glosses over the game.  He shows a few initial shots…and then — bam! — game over.  Talk about an epic table scratch.

It took me a while to locate “The Baltimore Bullet,” since it was not available as a DVD in the US and I wasn’t ready to buy it on VHS.  However, thanks to Gary Frerking, who responded to my question in the forum of VegasBilliardsBuzz.com, I found the entire movie accessible online at YouTube.   Enjoy!

My Love of Billiards Movies Started with an Olhausen Pool Table

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It all started with an Olhausen pool table in a newly-renovated basement.  My new table was elegant, gorgeous…and completely uninviting in an otherwise barren room.  The recently painted walls screamed out for company.  But what would be appropriate? I certainly didn’t want cheesy posters or random artwork that didn’t fit elsewhere in the house.

Then it hit me.  Movie posters.  And not just any movie poster, but posters of billiards movies. Movies like The Hustler, The Color of Money, Poolhall Junkies, and…what else? Were there, in fact, other pool movies? I couldn’t readily decorate my billiards shrine with posters of just three movies.

The Hustler - Billiards MoviesSo, I officially began my investigative journey to research, and ultimately watch (as well as collect posters of) every movie in the “pool/billiards movie” genre.  As of this posting, I’ve discovered 45 billiards movies, 13 billiards “film shorts” (less than 30 minutes), 2 billiards movies in production, and 19 billiards TV shows or episodes about billiards.  To date, I’ve watched 23 of the movies or shorts, and continue in my quest to watch as many of the list as possible.

In subsequent posts, I will introduce you to each of these movies, both critiquing them and sharing random tidbits of info on them.  One final note: The fact that many of them are not particularly good in no way detracts from the joy of the quest to watch them all and become a self-proclaimed world expert (!!) on the pool/billiards movies genre.