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Tuesday 11 January 2011

Pool Table D Marking and Snooker Marking Measurements

Once you have recovered you pool table in Simonis pool cloth you will more than likely want to mark the cloth out with a break line and black ball spot.
You may also wish to play snooker on your pool table and would like to mark the cloth out for a game of snooker as well.
But where do you place the measurements?
Below is a guide sheet that will allow you to place the correct marking onto you pool table.
If you require a larger version please just drop us an email at info@simoniscloth.co.uk and we will be happy to provide one.





Friday 7 January 2011

Pool Table Cloth Cutting Size Guide


What Size Cloth Does My Table Require

A common problem when purchasing pool table cloth is knowing which size cloth you need to buy.

There are usually a couple of reasons for the confusion which are outlined below:

1. UK pool tables are measured from cabinet end to end. So a 7ft x 4ft UK pool table actually measures 7x4ft from side to side and end to end of the cabinet. This means that the playing surface is less than 7x4ft which often leads people to thinking they have a 6ft table.

2. American pool tables are measured soley on the playing surface. A 7ft American style pool table has a 7ft x 4ft playing surface. Many people are actually unaware that they have an American style table and this can lead to the wrong cloth being bought.

Below is a cloth cutting guide which most pool table cloth manufacturers work to. We hope this helps when choosing your cloth.


CUTTING SIZES OF BED AND CUSHIONS

UK Cutting Sizes

6FT BED CLOTH UK SIZE - 68" x 37.5"
6FT CUSHION SET UK SIZE - 34" x 5" x 6 pieces


7FT BED CLOTH UK SIZE - 78" x 42.5"
7FT CUSHION SET UK SIZE - 39" x 5" x 6 pieces


8FT BED CLOTH UK SIZE - 89" x 47.5"
8FT CUSHION SET UK SIZE - 44.5" x 5" x 6 pieces


9FT BED CLOTH UK SIZE - 104" x 55.5"
9FT CUSHION SET UK SIZE - 52" x 5" x 6 pieces


USA Cutting Sizes

7FT BED CLOTH USA SIZE - 90" x 45"
7FT CUSHION SET USA SIZE - 45" x 6" x 6 pieces


8FT BED CLOTH USA SIZE - 104" x 52"
8FT CUSHION SET USA SIZE - 54" x 6" x 6 pieces


9FT BED CLOTH USA SIZE - 112" x 63"
9FT CUSHION SET USA SIZE - 56" x 6" x 6 pieces


* NEXT BLOG WILL PROVIDE BAULK LINE AND SPOT MEASUREMENT GUIDE FOR POOL TABLES

X1 Brush Going From Strength to Strength




The new Simonis X1 cleaning tool is going from strength to strength and is proving to be extremley popular with both players and pool table operators.


Simonis has continuously had the objective and the priority of improving the quality of its billiard-table cloths in order to offer an optimum material from the point of view of quality, precision, durability and consistency in all of the disciplines related to billiards.



In order to best preserve its qualities, a billiard cloth deserves efficient cleaning.

It is for this purpose that Simonis have devised and developed a totally innovative accessory: the Simonis X-1.

For regular maintenance of the playing surface i.e. the removal of chalk dust, you will no longer need a traditional brush that only moves this dust around on the pool cloth, nor daily use of a vacuum cleaner that may damage the cloth and the use of which is therefore impractical, nor a maintenance product that is likely to stretch or discolour the cloth or alter its properties.


The Simonis X-1 deeply extracts the chalk dust from the baize and retains it in its revolutionary high-tech structure!

To Buy an X1 Brush Please click picture below to go to website:




Lifestyle to show Simonis Cloth at Londons EAG Show



Lifestyle Leisure Products are delighted to be showing our full range of Simonis billiard cloth at this years EAG show in London.

We will be exhibiting our range of Garlando football tables, Simonis cloth, Aramith balls, and a host of other items.

The show is at the Excel Exhibition Centre, London from the 25th to the 27th January.




KARL Boyes has set his sights on becoming a Mosconi Cup legend.



Boyes, 28, made his debut in PartyCasino.com Mosconi Cup but is desperate to show he is not a one-year wonder.

"I'm the rookie in the team but if you have a look at the season I've had then I've had one of the best out of all the players," said Boyes, the current European number one who also won the World 8-Ball Championship in April.

"But I don't want to be in the Mosconi Cup once and then not play in it again for five years.


"I want to play in it year after year and establish myself in the side just like Shane Van Boening has done for the Americans.

"Hopefully it will not be a case where I've only been in it once and then never again.

"I'm looking forward to it, practising every day and even just thinking about it gets butterflies in my stomach.


"It's special as it's live on Sky Sports and it's the only event we play that's live in England. It's also a chance for my friends and family to watch it and they don't normally get to see me as I'm playing over the world.


"Darren Appleton played in it last year in Las Vegas and that spurred me on a lot to try to get in the European team this year - I was made up when I knew I was in the side.


"Darren got in at the last minute as he won the US Open and we have played for England before so for us both to represent Europe in the Mosconi Cup will be brilliant."
Boyes was a star of the English 8-ball scene before he started playing in the now-defunct IPT events in America.


However, he made his name in 9-ball in 2007 when he was a surprise semi-finalist at the World Pool Championship at the Araneta Coliseum in Manila, Philippines.


Since then he has only been denied a place in the Mosconi Cup due to the successes of his countrymen Daryl Peach, Mark Gray and Darren Appleton.


But his top spot in the European rankings has seen him earn his place in this year's side and he admits it will be a dream come true to play in the Mosconi Cup.

"Darren always dabbled in 9-ball pool and when I started playing at 19 or 20 I used to watch the Mosconi Cup and the World Pool Championship and wanted to give it a go," added Boyes.
"I remember watching Jimmy White and Steve Davis play and as a kid I always watched Earl Strickland as he was always a bit wild.


"Everyone that knows me thinks I will rise to the occasion and you never know how you will act but you hope you get a chance. If I hold myself together I will be alright.

It won't bother me, no matter what happens as I've seen it all before. I wear my heart on my sleeve myself and when I'm playing I'm not like Ralf Souquet who is always composed.

"I've been looking at clips on You Tube and keep watching Daryl call Earl Strickland 'scum of the earth' live on television (in the 2007 event) so it's very difficult to stay composed.

"I've heard the atmosphere at the York Hall is awesome and electric but Johan (Ruijsink) is the best coach we could have as he is a very calming influence and into the mental side of the game."He will be going to London prepared so we will not have to worry about anything.


"There will be pressure but we (Great Britain) played in the World Team Championship in Germany and won it. All the best teams were there and we played the Philippines in the final, with the best players in the world, and the emotions were unbelievable but we still won."

Boyes was part of the winning World Team Championship side and England were subsequently one of the favourites to win Matchroom Sport's World Cup of Pool in September.

The two-man English team featured current 8-ball World Champion Boyes and former 9-ball World Champion Peach and was hotly tipped to do well.

But they became one of the biggest underachievers of the competition as England only scraped past unfancied Qatar after a hill-hill clash then fell miserably out of the competition against an average French side.

Boyes is keen to use that disappointment to spur him on to glory at the York Hall in Bethnal Green, east London from December 9 to 12.

"The World Cup of Pool was a big event for me," admitted Boyes. "I'd just won a world title and had dominated on the Euro Tour.

"The best events are the Matchroom ones and the fact we didn't do very well was a big disappointment which affected me for the next two months, although I did get to the last 16 in the China Open.

"There are so many good English players in contention for the World Cup team with five or six in contention so there might be a two-year gap before you get picked again.

"I was very down about the World Cup as I had wanted and expected to go much further in the event."

"Last year Europe were billed as favourites in the Mosconi Cup but I don't think the team gelled.

"This year me and Darren are both Englishmen playing in England and we like to have a laugh so I think there will be a good atmosphere. I think we will win, but it will be close."




Article from MATCHROOMPOOL.COM

Official Suppliers




Iwan Simonis Billiard Cloth is the official supplier

To all annual pool World Championships 9-Ball since 1992.
To the Mosconi Cup and all Matchroom events since 1996.
To the
European Pocket Billiards Federation (EPBF) for all its European Championships and all the Eurotours.
To the major Men
Professional Pool events in USA and Canada : US Open, ESPN Challenge of Champions and all ESPN events, BCA 9-ball Classic.
To the WPBA for the Women Professional Tour (USA).
To the Asian Games since 1998.
To the South East Asian Games since 1997.
To the Asian 9-ball Tour in since 2003.
To the UMB Worldcup 3-cushion.
To the European Carom Billiards Confederation (CEB) for all its official championships and tournaments.
To the Panamerican Confederation of Billiard (CPB).
To the Russian Pyramid World Championship since 2000.
Acknowledged by various national federations.
No billiard cloth has ever been so unanimously acknowledged !

The History of Simonis Billiard Cloth










History of Iwan Simonis Billiard Cloth

Is it any wonder with over 330 years of trading that Iwan Simonis has such an illustrious history?

Here is a brief outline of how Simonis cloth has grown from humble beginnings to become known worldwide as the true cloth of Champions.
Establishment of the Simonis Factory

The town of Verviers arose in the flat basin formed by the valley of the river Vesdre. The water here was of such high quality, thanks to its low lime content, that it was particularly suitable for washing wool.

It was in this valley, with its low fertility due to the stony, irregular ground that the Simonis factory was set up in 1680 by Guillaume Henri Simon Simonis, a middle-class Verviers merchant born in the town in 1640 and known as “le Mercier” (“the haberdasher”).

The company itself was established on a more permanent footing by Jacques Joseph Simonis and was named after his son Iwan, who was born in Verviers in 1769. The name Iwan Simonis is now synonymous with the highest quality pool cloth.

William Cockerill

At the end of the eighteenth century, a spinner in Verviers would work with a single spindle, whereas in England, the Industrial Revolution had already resulted in machines being used for spinning wool. The British government threatened anyone who exported this technique with permanent exile, in order to protect the country’s monopoly.

Nevertheless, William Cockerill, a young British engineer, departed for Sweden in 1797 with the blueprints for his famous wool-spinning mill. However, no one seemed to be interested in his ideas, and he eventually ended up in Hamburg. There, he met a wool buyer from Simonis who realised the value of this technique, which had until then been unknown in continental Europe.

This pioneer in the field then came to Verviers with his family and signed a contract in which he agreed to produce spinning machines exclusively for his new employer. The first machine was constructed in 1797 in the building known as “Au Chat”.

Success was not long in coming to Simonis, which, in addition to being able to compete with the English on level terms, had gained a major technological advantage over its continental competitors.


The Golden Age

This spinning machine was only the first of many technological innovations that were to see the light of day in Verviers at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
These inventions included machines for carding and spinning wool, lo
ngitudinal shearing machines and the Leviathan, which was used to clean the wool.
More generally, electricity, the steam engine and the coming of the railways increased capacity in terms of both production and transport to levels never seen before.
In this same period, the bill of exchange became widespread in commercial exchanges, seeing as it had the advantage of eliminating the risks associated with transporting and using cash, in the form of gold or silver coins, for business transactions.
In 1857, demand from the wool industry in Verviers led to a plan to build a dam in the area, in order to supply all the local textile companies with pure water of equal quality. This dam, at La Gileppe, with a capacity of 12 million cubic metres, was inaugurated in 1878.
All these innovations, plus an abundant supply of skilled labour, made Verviers a prosperous town and a centre of the wool industry, like its competitors Bradford (England), Mönchengladbach (Germany), and Roubaix (France).

The Two World Wars

During the First World War, there was a sharp reduction in the trade in woollen cloth because of the shortage of raw materials.
Then came the economic crisis between 1929 and 1935, which caused a further decline in industrial activity, especially in the Verviers area. Production was cut and workers were laid off.
The Second World War followed and, like the first, led to a shortage of wool. However, there was worse to come. At the end of the War, the Allies mistakenly bombed Simonis’s spinning mill, and this prevented the company from playing a full part in the recovery in business life that followed.
From then on, the textile industry in Belgium, along with that in the rest of Western Europe, continued to decline, and Simonis’s operations were no exception.
Simonis therefore had to close or sell some divisions, such as spinning, haberdashery, the production of woven garments, and the combing, scouring and carbonising of wool.
Peltzer & Fils
Peltzer & Fils, a celebrated company in its own right, was established in 1785 by Jean Henri Peltzer, from Stolberg, in Germany.
The company was set up at Hodimont, which is now part of the district of Verviers, but which at the time was part of the Duchy of Limburg, a Dutch territory belonging to the Hapsburgs.The company continued to expand, and a subsidiary was established in Buenos Aires in 1849 and another in Poland in 1885.
In 1961, the activities of S.A. Simonis and Peltzer were combined and the Société Anonyme des Draps et Filés Iwan Simonis (or the Belgian public limited company Iwan Simonis Cloth) was created, with an emphasis on commercial continuity.

The capital of this company was fully subscribed by the PELTZER group.The growth in demand for Iwan Simonis cloth in North America led to the creation in 2000 of the subsidiary Iwan Simonis Inc., at Gurnee, near Chicago, Illinois (USA).
Iwan Simonis billiard cloth is now exported from the production site in Belgium to more than 50 countries, on every continent.
In 2005, the Iwan Simonis companies celebrated their 325th anniversary. Unfortunately, a fire destroyed the company archives in 1982, and so the exact date on which the manufacture of billiard cloth began is not known. Nevertheless, for over two centuries, generations of technicians and skilled workers have been producing our world-famous, high-quality billiard cloth, which others have tried to imitate, but always in vain.
Our large factories contain the very latest specialist equipment, and our technicians are constantly monitoring and improving the quality of Iwan Simonis cloth. This is why, throughout the world, this marque means the very best in billiard cloth.
To the owners of billiard tables or billiard clubs, and to players, Iwan Simonis cloth means the highest efficiency, a perfect roll and absolute precision.
Simonis manufacture a complete range of cloths, to suit the characteristics of every type of game played on a pool tables throughout the world.

Wednesday 5 January 2011

Lifestyle & Simonis Sponsor World No.1 Karl Boyes


Lifestyle Sponsor Mosconi Cup Star Karl Boyes

Lifestyle are delighted to become an official sponsor of Mosconi cup pool player Karl Boyes

Karl is the current World 8 Ball Champion of American Pool and has thrown his weight behind Lifestyle and Simonis 860 pool cloth.

Boyes says “Simonis cloth is the choice of professionals and provides the perfect playing surface. I use it on my own table as well as in competitions"

The Simonis pool 860 cloth in the Tournament Blue colour is used on most competition tables and is the current favourite on the GB9 tour and the forthcoming Mosconi Cup events.

Simonis & Lifestyle Support BWPPA Wheelchair Pool

SIMONIS SUPPORTS BWPPA- WHEELCHAIR POOL PLAYERS

SIMONIS, THE BELGIAN BILLIARD CLOTH MANUFACTURER, IN CONJUNCTION WITH THEIR MAIN UK IMPORTER LIFESTYLE LEISURE OF MANCHESTER ARE ONCE AGAIN SPONSORING THE BRITISH WHEELCHAIR POOL PLAYERS ASSOCIATION ( BWPPA ) WITH THE SUPPLY OF THE FAMOUS SIMONIS 860 TOURNAMENT BLUE CLOTH FOR ALL THE 2011 SEASON EVENTS.


MATT GLEAVES, THE CHAIRMAN OF THE BWPPA, AND A PLAYER HIMSELF IS DELIGHTED TO CONTINUE THE RELATIONSHIP WITH SIMONIS WHICH HE CONSIDERS THE BEST SPEED CLOTH FOR THE AMERICAN GAME. THE TOUR HAS NOW BEEN INCREASED TO 5 EVENTS GIVEN THE INCREASED POPULARITY.


THE MOST RECENT POOL EVENT WAS IN WAVERTREE LIVERPOOL ON THE 28TH AUGUST AND WAS WON BY ROY KIMBERLEY WHO DEFEATED MATHEW DUFFY 7 -2 IN THE FINAL OF THE WHEELCHAIR 9-BALL EVENT.