How to protect your pool table from damage when moving

Thanks to their slate tops and sturdy construction, pool tables are extremely heavy, and moving one takes a lot of brawn and patience to prevent damage to the slate, felt and frame. That’s why when it’s time to move a pool table, many people choose to hire a professional pool table mover to handle the job.

But if you’re one of those do-it-yourselfers who never sees a job you can’t handle, you may decide to tackle the chore yourself. If that’s the case, here’s what you need to know about moving your table and how to protect it from damage:

Preparation

• Have a special container for all the nuts, bolts and other connectors, and label connectors so you know where they go when you reassemble the table.
• Consider using a video camera, tablet or smartphone to make a visual record of the disassembly process, clearly showing where connectors are removed and other steps to make reassembling easier.
• Have plenty of blankets on hand to wrap pieces as they are disassembled to protect them from scratches and dings and to provide some padding to the frame itself.
• Decide if you want to keep or replace the cloth. If you want to keep it, spend some time figuring out how it’s attached. In most cases, the felt will have been secured with staples, so you’ll have to remove them in order to detach the felt. Be careful not to tear the felt along the edges as you remove the fasteners. If you decide that you do want to replace the felt, either because it’s damaged or because you want to change the color, this is a good time to do it since the table will already be disassembled.

Disassembling the frame and slates

• For most tables, you’ll need to remove the legs from the bottom and the rails will need to be unscrewed from the slate before the slate is removed. The slate will need to be detached from the frame itself.
• Now determine how many pieces of slate your table uses. Most standard eight- or nine-foot tables have three pieces joined together by putty, and longer tables may have up to five pieces. Each piece may weight from 200 to 350 pounds (90-160 kg). On a table that uses a single sheet of slate, that sheet may weigh about 800 pounds (360 Kg). Slates are matched, which means if one chips or breaks, the entire set of slates needs to be replaced. Remove each piece of slate one at a time. Never try to move a table with the slate still in place.

Reassembly

• Once your table is moved to its new location, it’s time to reassemble it, a process which requires resealing the seams between the slates as well as leveling the table itself. Many people who move their tables successfully decide to have a professional company come in to reassemble the table to make sure it’s ready for play and the surface is perfectly smooth and level.

Time to call the professionals?

As you can see from the steps above, moving a pool table is not an easy process. That’s why many people decide to hire professional movers. If you think that’s the route you’d prefer to take, it’s better to hire a company that specializes in moving pool tables rather than a general moving company, since a specialty company will know how to properly dismantle the table and put it back together for you.

Or perhaps you want to use this time to upgrade to a new pool table. Visit our Billiard & Pool Tables page to see what we have to offer.