7 Foot Pool Table Restauration

Hello everybody!

In this instructable I will show one of my summer projects.

So I have an old barn at home which was mostly used as a depository for old useless stuff. So while I was thinking about how to run away from all that COVID circus that has been going on lately, an idea of making a billiard room (man cave) fell on my mind. In the end, it turned out that this was probably the best decision of the year, while this is surely the most used room in the whole village.

For this project, I used the wood (fir) that was drying for some 5 years, it's very light and easy to work with and I had it a lot laying around.

Since there was no need to "reinvent the wheel", I got my hands on one old billiard table from a bar and scavenge the all usable parts which I will show you later.

Used tools: chainsaw, jigsaw, sander, sabre saw, planer tool

Cloth: Iwan Simonis 860, royal blue.

Total cost (without wood): around 400-500usd

Total time spent: 1 month, everyday piece by piece

Total weight: around 320kg

Final value: Priceless

The reason why I went through all this mess of taking the old parts is the playing board made out of stone. It is 2.5cm thick and around 180kg heavy board, perfectly flat. It is widely known that stone boards are the best. They don't flex over time and they don't care about the moisture in the air, unlike the wooden boards which can not hold perfectly flat surface over a long period of time. I assume that we all want that our balls are following the laws of physics, not randomly curving on the table like they're drunk, right?

So parts that were scavenged are threaded leg pads used for leveling the bed, playing table, ball rails within the table, and bump rails. Everything else had to be redesigned.

I don't have many sketches that I can show, since there were only readable to me. Logically, it is always a good thing to have at least a rough plan on what and how will you be doing the project.

I was using standard dimensions found on the site below and everything else was adjusted accordingly:

https://www.dimensions.com/element/7-foot-billiard...

I've forgotten to take a picture of the all planks I've used in this project, but you'll get the point soon enough. Another thing to mention, I don't have the exact measures of every part because most of it was done "on the go", even if I want it to, I could not remember it.

For the main frame I've used 6m long piece of wood which was around 20x25cm wide and had it cut to desired dimensions. Legs were cut out of thicker 30x30cm pillar. This is starting to be heavy..
I must add that later I've figured that those pillars could be connected with a much stronger connection, so please don't copy the way I connected them, moreover, I recommend you to look under the roof of your house for joint tips.

It's time to prepare a place where the table will sit. Because I've planned on putting ball rails under the table, so that every ball which goes in the hole also is collected to one place, it was important to leave a space in the edges and middle part. Here I had to be careful that the ball won't be stuck when it wants to go below the table, that's why spacers were needed.

We must not forget aesthetics. This is me, trying not to forget about it. A lot of thinking went into the side panels solution, in the end, the solution in the pictures seemed like the best compromise between looks-precision forgiving - difficulty of making.

Before making all the internal rails, the place for balls had to be mounted.

Because "simple is boring", I've decided to make all the balls go to one place so they can be easily collected afterward.

The planks I needed had to be 4.5cm thick and 14cm wide, but I had 5cm thick and 30cm wide. That was probably the trickiest part because I only had some curvy planks, so a lot of sanding and flattening had to be done. Final flattening was done by screwing the top frame to the main frame.

I used the old frame as a template for the holes on the new frame. It was still good enough for that.

This is the part where I used tutorials on youtube on how to put a new cloth on the pool table. The most important thing here is to find proper glue. Neostik glue in spay is the best, they say.

This guy for example explains well for this type of board, but there are many others:

Also for this part I've used a generous amount of Youtube tutorials on "how to", it took some time but it also turned out pretty well. A staple gun is a must!

Time has finally come. After almost a month of carving and sanding, it is possible to play a game on the table. I couldn't find free time for a whole week to varnish, because we were constantly playing.

Well, it's also practical to have a bar so people don't spill the drinks over a billiard. There were some planks left, just enough to make a bar, not too big, not too small.

I think that the pictures are good enough for description. This seemed like a much cheaper, nicer, and simpler cue holder than the ones I've seen on the market.

Thank you very much for going through the whole instructable. I really hope that you liked it! I'm not usually working with wood, so this was all kinda new to me but there but I have learned a lot! My first intention was not to make a tutorial about how to make a pool table, so that's why maybe some pictures and steps are missing. If you are curious about something or it's maybe unclear, feel free to comment below.

Hopefully, I have also given you some new ideas, I believe that many people want to have a billiard table at home. Have a nice day!