Some Assembly Required (2007–…): Season 2, Episode 7 - Tennis Balls/Kayaks/Silly Putty - full transcript
UNGER: For all
the stuff in our world,
there's a story of
how it came to be.
Hello. I'm Brian Unger.
Coming up on "Some
Assembly Required,"
beating the clock
to make the news.
Here we go!
And creating the
ultimate game table.
These monster presses are
the birthplace of The Tennessean,
a 100-year-old newspaper
printed right here in
Nashville, Tennessee.
Nashville, home
of country music.
This city rocks, and its
newspaper covers the beat.
Every single day of the year,
The Tennessean
publishes two editions,
the first for outlying regions,
the second for local readers.
All combined, they print about
163,000 papers during the week
and 228,000 on Sundays.
Assembling newspapers
is an unending race
to beat the clock and stay one
step ahead of current events.
To print this newspaper,
The Tennessean will use
roughly 70 rolls of
newsprint every day.
To give you an idea of
how much newsprint that is,
this single roll, unfurled,
will stretch for 14 miles.
If they run out of paper,
there's no time to get more
because readers don't
care about yesterday's news.
So they store three to
four weeks' worth of paper
in this subterranean warehouse
located under seven
lanes of Nashville roadway.
"Large" is an understatement.
This place is huge.
The warehouse consists
of seven buildings
spanning more
than two city blocks.
And The Tennessean goes
the distance for the environment.
Most of their newsprint
is made from 100%
recycled paper products.
What goes on the printed page
starts in these people's brains.
Everyone here is
working very intently.
These reporters and editors
have been gathering news,
making calls, and
writing stories all day long.
But who's got the best stuff?
Every day here at The
Tennessean at 3:30,
there is a meeting to decide
what will end up on
the printed front page.
That is Jamie
Hall in the blazer.
He's got a very big job to do.
Jamie Hall designs page 1.
How'd it go in there, Jamie?
How was it? Another
marathon meeting?
Your stories are decided, what's
happening on the front page.
Yeah, we know everything
that's going on the front page.
There is a science to how
the front page is designed.
The most important story of
the day will go above the fold,
that crease that's
midway down the page,
and it will get the
biggest headline.
Now, the lead story is
typically on the right side,
since our eyes are
drawn there first.
Font size varies with
the story's news value,
and from there, like a puzzle,
the other stories and
all the photographs
fall right into place.
But if big news breaks late,
Jamie will have to
tear up the front page
and start over, fast.
That's when you kind of slam
your head against the desk,
and you start over.
Unless Dick Cheney shoots
somebody or something like that.
You know, that would
actually make my day better.
- That would be a story.
- Yeah.
Jamie and his fellow designers
have to hustle to craft
the paper's layout in time.
If each page hits its deadline,
the paper shuffles
together like a deck of cards.
The front page is usually
the last to be approved,
and it almost
certainly has color.
That's a special challenge
since you have to print
on that page four times,
unlike a black page, which
runs through the press just once.
From the newsroom,
it's just 1/10 of a mile
to the next stop on
the assembly line.
This is prepress.
Here, Greg Taylor and his staff
are making a master template
for each page of the paper.
Those templates
are called plates.
We're very close to
actually making the paper.
Correct.
UNGER: Now, there's
obviously a good reason
that it's yellow in here, right?
Yes. All the plates
are light-sensitive.
These photosensitive
aluminum plates
move beneath a laser that
will imprint our news of the day.
So, after that laser
has sort of burned in our
images of all the text and photos,
what's the finished
product look like?
This plate right here.
That's our finished product.
So, this, then, would
be ready to go to press.
Yes.
And this is how it
started out, right?
Correct.
So everything we
see printed on here
has been burned
in to this piece here.
Yes.
Ink will stick to
the colored areas
and be repelled from the
areas where it shouldn't.
Wherever you see color remaining
is where the ink will stick.
UNGER: Holy moly. It's page 1.
Right there.
Depending on the news of the day
and the size of the paper,
The Tennessean makes
about 850 plates a day
and 6,000 a week.
And now we need to get
these things downstairs
to the press area.
The clock is ticking.
Onto their own special
elevator they go.
Bye-bye.
The Tennessean is
printed on two giant presses,
each 42 feet
tall, 171 feet long,
and they can crank out
70,000 copies an hour.
Mark Geppling and
I at The Tennessean
are gonna do some
plating right now.
I have in my hand
the color plates.
This is 1-A.
- That's 1-A.
- This is 1-A.
And that's gonna
hook right into our roller.
All right, you go
ahead and do that.
We're gonna put on a cyan plate.
UNGER: Cyan plate.
GEPPLING: Center
it right over that pin.
- Put our safe in.
- Put our safe in.
And then I'm gonna fasten this.
Yeah, you want to push
it right down in there.
There you go.
Boom. It's as simple as that.
Yeah. If you ever need a
new profession, you're in.
Along with black, three inks...
Magenta, or red, cyan,
or blue, and yellow...
Can be combined to make
any color your eyes can see.
These three colors are blended
in the form of tiny
little dots called pixels.
Interestingly, you can also
see these dots on the plates,
but you have to have one
of these doodads to see it.
A little magnifying glass.
Each color has its own plate,
and when the plates
are layered together,
you get a full-color picture.
But we don't see dots
when we look at the page.
We actually see a nice,
beautifully composed,
rich image.
Time to get your ink on.
First, water is
sprayed on the plates.
The blank spots on
the aluminum plate
have microscopic pores,
and water will adhere to these.
For the areas where
we do want ink,
the lasing process
has left a chemical layer
that bonds well with oil.
Since oil and water don't mix,
the color only adheres
to the oily layer,
leaving ink just
where we want it.
It's nearly 1 1:00 p.m.
There's only one
last page to load.
The front page.
Here we go!
MAN: Here we go!
All right, the
deadline is upon us.
It's now 11:00.
We started at
3:30 this afternoon.
Our newsprint is rolling.
The Tennessean is on
its way to your front porch.
The paper is created
through offset printing,
a process that
dramatically improved
the quality of the image
compared to earlier methods.
The inked-up
roller with the plates
never touches the paper.
Instead, it presses up
against another roller.
This one is covered
by a rubber blanket.
The blanketed roller presses
the ink onto the newsprint,
creating a page that
will ultimately land
right on your doorstep.
The paper emerges from
the underground warehouse
and is fed into the press.
This particular press,
which was installed in 1990,
runs 50% faster
than the previous one.
This allows them to start later,
giving them more time to
cover late-breaking news.
When you're up
here on these presses
and standing underneath
the newspaper, it's incredible.
It's like being
underneath a flying carpet
going by at over
30 miles per hour.
Faster! Faster! Faster!
The web, or paper,
is inked, slit, angled,
folded in half, then cut.
They'll run for five minutes,
then do a quick quality check.
Each member of the Q.C. team
checks a paper
every few minutes.
Now, they're looking for
any type of printing error
visible to the eye,
making sure all four colors
are in register, or lined up,
and that the page's contents
are centered and not cut off.
Then they'll go make
any adjustments,
and off we go again.
The finished editions
fly to the mail room
and are bundled and shipped
in a process that will continue
for at least three more hours.
Well, Nashville, we've made
our deadline and our paper.
Have a nice night's sleep.
News is on the way.
Whether it's in a pub, a
pool hall, or a basement,
the pool table,
unlike your game,
must play perfectly every time.
Perfectly flat.
Perfectly responsive.
At Olhausen Billiards
in Portland, Tennessee,
they assemble a
perfect pool table.
So at the end of the day,
the only thing to blame
for a missed shot is you.
Sorry.
The three major
components of any table
are the frame, the table's body,
the slate, the main
playing surface,
and the rails, the part you
lean on during the game.
The challenge is to
bring these together
into a table that will
never warp or bend,
one that will remain perfectly
balanced game after game.
The tables are
produced in pieces
and don't get assembled until
they finally reach your home.
The first part of the table
we make is the frame,
and the key ingredient is wood.
And not just any wood.
Selecting the right wood
for our pool table is critical.
The enemy of any pool table is
wood that warps and contracts,
changing the playing
characteristics of the table
and resulting in
an unlevel surface.
To combat that,
we use hardwoods.
Hardwoods, like
maple and poplar,
are the ones most commonly
found in pool-table frames.
They've got the
right combination
of toughness and affordability.
Even the highest-grade
wood will warp over time
if we use a large
single piece of it.
So, before we even begin
to make the 8'x4' frame,
we always cut long sheets
of wood into smaller pieces.
Smaller pieces make
better building blocks
because they're less
likely to warp or bend,
which would deaden
the table's playing action.
We create another problem,
wood that doesn't match.
Donald, this is
your responsibility
to kind of match this
wood up to each other.
What criteria are you
using to select these pieces?
Okay, yes, sir. I'm going by the
width, the color, and the grain.
Width, color, and grain.
DONALD: You look for damage
on the wood you have to lay aside.
UNGER: So it's kind
of an aesthetic reason.
We're trying to achieve a
table that's beautiful and pretty.
Our goal is to find
wood that looks good,
and we need to make sure
that the frame's strength
won't be compromised over time.
So, as a general rule of thumb,
it's hardwoods glued together.
No single piece
bigger than 4 inches.
Anything bigger than that
creates too much
tension in the wood
and makes the table
vulnerable to cracking.
The pieces of matched wood
are put together with
high-strength glue
and something
called a clamp carrier.
The 500 pounds of
pressure per square inch
makes the wood fit
together seamlessly.
Then the wood has to be cut
to the dimensions of our frame.
At Olhausen, they do this
with a computer-guided router
that was built to
produce aircraft parts.
Now, we've got a margin of error
of just 5/1,000 of an inch
for every 12 feet
of wood we cut.
We then attach the pieces
of the frame with screws,
adding two crossbars
for extra support.
Then it's onto the rails.
This is the part you
lean on when you play,
and it determines how
long your pool table will last.
Now, rails are made from two
pieces of wood glued together.
They are cross-laminated.
That means if there's any
natural warp in the wood,
we're creating opposing force
in that the warp
will press onto itself
rather than separating the wood.
Again, it's all about precision.
We have to make sure the
pool table is perfectly level,
so every piece of the rail
must be within
1/30,000 of an inch.
Now, since the rail is
the table's outer edge,
it's gonna be leaned
on, bumped against,
and, well, maybe worse,
so it has to be
able to take abuse
without moving or shifting.
These rails may be strong,
but they're not quite ready.
They still need an inner lining
for the balls to bounce
against, the cushion.
It's one of the most
important parts of the table.
It is this piece of
rubber right here
that is attached to
add an angle to the rail.
Back in the good old days,
this used to be a flat surface.
It resembled a riverbank.
So when a ball
bounced off the side of it,
it was called a bank shot.
That's where that
term comes from.
But these are
made of gum rubber,
and this gum rubber
lasts a lot longer
than any synthetic
material that might be used
in some lower-quality tables.
These natural gum-rubber strips
are shaped to be
consistent and resilient
so that balls will bounce the
same way again and again.
Then the pieces of the
rail are sanded, stained,
and covered with a
sealant for protection.
Finally, the rail
is put together,
and during installation,
it'll be added to the frame.
But our table
isn't going to play
exactly the same
every time just yet.
The playing surface
for our pool table is mica,
chlorite, and quartz,
also known as slate.
Slate is a perfect
playing surface for pool
because it can be
honed and polished
into a perfectly flat surface.
Slate naturally comes
as hundreds of layers
of compressed sediment
that have taken about,
oh, a million years to form.
Slate won't warp, and
it'll last a long, long time.
Slate arrives here precut
in sheets of 3/4 of
an inch to 1 inch thick.
For a standard 8-foot table,
that's 500 pounds of slate.
Because of its hardness,
slate won't develop
cracks or grooves over time.
The best slate comes from Italy,
says Olhausen's Brian Roselli.
If we were to use some
other material other than slate,
say a wood or synthetic,
what would be the result?
You're playing a
game of physics.
It's a game of
colliding spheres.
So when you bring in
an artificial component,
you're not getting the
same weight on the table,
and you're not gonna
keep that level surface
like you are with
something like slate.
For the slate to do its job,
it needs to be flexible
yet stay perfectly flat,
so we're gonna need
something to keep it in place.
What helps these tables
hold up all that slate
is a pretty cool innovation
here at Olhausen.
It's called a Uniliner, and
it is this ring of plywood
that goes around the
perimeter of the frame.
The Uniliner is a
3/4-inch-thick piece of wood
that fits on top of the frame.
It's like the roof of a house.
It ties together all
the beams below it
and makes them rigid.
That'll keep the slate
from sagging in the middle,
even after years of play.
These frames can hold
up to 28,000 pounds,
so, in the event
of an earthquake,
get underneath your pool table.
There's just one component
missing for our table.
The legs.
Now, they're made of thick
pieces of solid heavy wood
so that they're strong enough
to support the enormous
weight of the slate.
In this finishing area, we are
adding some protective coatings,
some staining,
and some painting,
and then our pool tables
will be ready to ship.
But it is not finished.
Now, no matter how level
we made that playing surface
in the factory, it
won't be in the home
unless it's calibrated and
adjusted to the environment
in which that pool table
will spend the rest of its life.
To make our table perfect,
an installment team
has to make a house call,
where they'll put the
table together, finally.
With the legs bolted on,
the table is adjusted
to be level with the floor.
Rubber pieces
called leveling shims
can increase the height by
as little as 1/32 of an inch.
They bring the table
to the right height.
Then the slate goes
on in three pieces,
and its seams
are filled with wax.
And finally, we lay down
the surface for the balls,
the felt.
Though it's actually
a hybrid material
of ultrafine wool
and very strong yarn.
Last step in our
assembly, the pockets.
And we're ready to play.
Karen Corr is one of the
best pool players in the world.
It was time to get serious
about the game of pool.
Karen, where do
you set your beer?
Oh, now, we won't be drinking.
That'll be affecting your
focus when you play,
so we have our water.
I'm tempted to blame the
table, but only now I know better.
[Laughs]
the stuff in our world,
there's a story of
how it came to be.
Hello. I'm Brian Unger.
Coming up on "Some
Assembly Required,"
beating the clock
to make the news.
Here we go!
And creating the
ultimate game table.
These monster presses are
the birthplace of The Tennessean,
a 100-year-old newspaper
printed right here in
Nashville, Tennessee.
Nashville, home
of country music.
This city rocks, and its
newspaper covers the beat.
Every single day of the year,
The Tennessean
publishes two editions,
the first for outlying regions,
the second for local readers.
All combined, they print about
163,000 papers during the week
and 228,000 on Sundays.
Assembling newspapers
is an unending race
to beat the clock and stay one
step ahead of current events.
To print this newspaper,
The Tennessean will use
roughly 70 rolls of
newsprint every day.
To give you an idea of
how much newsprint that is,
this single roll, unfurled,
will stretch for 14 miles.
If they run out of paper,
there's no time to get more
because readers don't
care about yesterday's news.
So they store three to
four weeks' worth of paper
in this subterranean warehouse
located under seven
lanes of Nashville roadway.
"Large" is an understatement.
This place is huge.
The warehouse consists
of seven buildings
spanning more
than two city blocks.
And The Tennessean goes
the distance for the environment.
Most of their newsprint
is made from 100%
recycled paper products.
What goes on the printed page
starts in these people's brains.
Everyone here is
working very intently.
These reporters and editors
have been gathering news,
making calls, and
writing stories all day long.
But who's got the best stuff?
Every day here at The
Tennessean at 3:30,
there is a meeting to decide
what will end up on
the printed front page.
That is Jamie
Hall in the blazer.
He's got a very big job to do.
Jamie Hall designs page 1.
How'd it go in there, Jamie?
How was it? Another
marathon meeting?
Your stories are decided, what's
happening on the front page.
Yeah, we know everything
that's going on the front page.
There is a science to how
the front page is designed.
The most important story of
the day will go above the fold,
that crease that's
midway down the page,
and it will get the
biggest headline.
Now, the lead story is
typically on the right side,
since our eyes are
drawn there first.
Font size varies with
the story's news value,
and from there, like a puzzle,
the other stories and
all the photographs
fall right into place.
But if big news breaks late,
Jamie will have to
tear up the front page
and start over, fast.
That's when you kind of slam
your head against the desk,
and you start over.
Unless Dick Cheney shoots
somebody or something like that.
You know, that would
actually make my day better.
- That would be a story.
- Yeah.
Jamie and his fellow designers
have to hustle to craft
the paper's layout in time.
If each page hits its deadline,
the paper shuffles
together like a deck of cards.
The front page is usually
the last to be approved,
and it almost
certainly has color.
That's a special challenge
since you have to print
on that page four times,
unlike a black page, which
runs through the press just once.
From the newsroom,
it's just 1/10 of a mile
to the next stop on
the assembly line.
This is prepress.
Here, Greg Taylor and his staff
are making a master template
for each page of the paper.
Those templates
are called plates.
We're very close to
actually making the paper.
Correct.
UNGER: Now, there's
obviously a good reason
that it's yellow in here, right?
Yes. All the plates
are light-sensitive.
These photosensitive
aluminum plates
move beneath a laser that
will imprint our news of the day.
So, after that laser
has sort of burned in our
images of all the text and photos,
what's the finished
product look like?
This plate right here.
That's our finished product.
So, this, then, would
be ready to go to press.
Yes.
And this is how it
started out, right?
Correct.
So everything we
see printed on here
has been burned
in to this piece here.
Yes.
Ink will stick to
the colored areas
and be repelled from the
areas where it shouldn't.
Wherever you see color remaining
is where the ink will stick.
UNGER: Holy moly. It's page 1.
Right there.
Depending on the news of the day
and the size of the paper,
The Tennessean makes
about 850 plates a day
and 6,000 a week.
And now we need to get
these things downstairs
to the press area.
The clock is ticking.
Onto their own special
elevator they go.
Bye-bye.
The Tennessean is
printed on two giant presses,
each 42 feet
tall, 171 feet long,
and they can crank out
70,000 copies an hour.
Mark Geppling and
I at The Tennessean
are gonna do some
plating right now.
I have in my hand
the color plates.
This is 1-A.
- That's 1-A.
- This is 1-A.
And that's gonna
hook right into our roller.
All right, you go
ahead and do that.
We're gonna put on a cyan plate.
UNGER: Cyan plate.
GEPPLING: Center
it right over that pin.
- Put our safe in.
- Put our safe in.
And then I'm gonna fasten this.
Yeah, you want to push
it right down in there.
There you go.
Boom. It's as simple as that.
Yeah. If you ever need a
new profession, you're in.
Along with black, three inks...
Magenta, or red, cyan,
or blue, and yellow...
Can be combined to make
any color your eyes can see.
These three colors are blended
in the form of tiny
little dots called pixels.
Interestingly, you can also
see these dots on the plates,
but you have to have one
of these doodads to see it.
A little magnifying glass.
Each color has its own plate,
and when the plates
are layered together,
you get a full-color picture.
But we don't see dots
when we look at the page.
We actually see a nice,
beautifully composed,
rich image.
Time to get your ink on.
First, water is
sprayed on the plates.
The blank spots on
the aluminum plate
have microscopic pores,
and water will adhere to these.
For the areas where
we do want ink,
the lasing process
has left a chemical layer
that bonds well with oil.
Since oil and water don't mix,
the color only adheres
to the oily layer,
leaving ink just
where we want it.
It's nearly 1 1:00 p.m.
There's only one
last page to load.
The front page.
Here we go!
MAN: Here we go!
All right, the
deadline is upon us.
It's now 11:00.
We started at
3:30 this afternoon.
Our newsprint is rolling.
The Tennessean is on
its way to your front porch.
The paper is created
through offset printing,
a process that
dramatically improved
the quality of the image
compared to earlier methods.
The inked-up
roller with the plates
never touches the paper.
Instead, it presses up
against another roller.
This one is covered
by a rubber blanket.
The blanketed roller presses
the ink onto the newsprint,
creating a page that
will ultimately land
right on your doorstep.
The paper emerges from
the underground warehouse
and is fed into the press.
This particular press,
which was installed in 1990,
runs 50% faster
than the previous one.
This allows them to start later,
giving them more time to
cover late-breaking news.
When you're up
here on these presses
and standing underneath
the newspaper, it's incredible.
It's like being
underneath a flying carpet
going by at over
30 miles per hour.
Faster! Faster! Faster!
The web, or paper,
is inked, slit, angled,
folded in half, then cut.
They'll run for five minutes,
then do a quick quality check.
Each member of the Q.C. team
checks a paper
every few minutes.
Now, they're looking for
any type of printing error
visible to the eye,
making sure all four colors
are in register, or lined up,
and that the page's contents
are centered and not cut off.
Then they'll go make
any adjustments,
and off we go again.
The finished editions
fly to the mail room
and are bundled and shipped
in a process that will continue
for at least three more hours.
Well, Nashville, we've made
our deadline and our paper.
Have a nice night's sleep.
News is on the way.
Whether it's in a pub, a
pool hall, or a basement,
the pool table,
unlike your game,
must play perfectly every time.
Perfectly flat.
Perfectly responsive.
At Olhausen Billiards
in Portland, Tennessee,
they assemble a
perfect pool table.
So at the end of the day,
the only thing to blame
for a missed shot is you.
Sorry.
The three major
components of any table
are the frame, the table's body,
the slate, the main
playing surface,
and the rails, the part you
lean on during the game.
The challenge is to
bring these together
into a table that will
never warp or bend,
one that will remain perfectly
balanced game after game.
The tables are
produced in pieces
and don't get assembled until
they finally reach your home.
The first part of the table
we make is the frame,
and the key ingredient is wood.
And not just any wood.
Selecting the right wood
for our pool table is critical.
The enemy of any pool table is
wood that warps and contracts,
changing the playing
characteristics of the table
and resulting in
an unlevel surface.
To combat that,
we use hardwoods.
Hardwoods, like
maple and poplar,
are the ones most commonly
found in pool-table frames.
They've got the
right combination
of toughness and affordability.
Even the highest-grade
wood will warp over time
if we use a large
single piece of it.
So, before we even begin
to make the 8'x4' frame,
we always cut long sheets
of wood into smaller pieces.
Smaller pieces make
better building blocks
because they're less
likely to warp or bend,
which would deaden
the table's playing action.
We create another problem,
wood that doesn't match.
Donald, this is
your responsibility
to kind of match this
wood up to each other.
What criteria are you
using to select these pieces?
Okay, yes, sir. I'm going by the
width, the color, and the grain.
Width, color, and grain.
DONALD: You look for damage
on the wood you have to lay aside.
UNGER: So it's kind
of an aesthetic reason.
We're trying to achieve a
table that's beautiful and pretty.
Our goal is to find
wood that looks good,
and we need to make sure
that the frame's strength
won't be compromised over time.
So, as a general rule of thumb,
it's hardwoods glued together.
No single piece
bigger than 4 inches.
Anything bigger than that
creates too much
tension in the wood
and makes the table
vulnerable to cracking.
The pieces of matched wood
are put together with
high-strength glue
and something
called a clamp carrier.
The 500 pounds of
pressure per square inch
makes the wood fit
together seamlessly.
Then the wood has to be cut
to the dimensions of our frame.
At Olhausen, they do this
with a computer-guided router
that was built to
produce aircraft parts.
Now, we've got a margin of error
of just 5/1,000 of an inch
for every 12 feet
of wood we cut.
We then attach the pieces
of the frame with screws,
adding two crossbars
for extra support.
Then it's onto the rails.
This is the part you
lean on when you play,
and it determines how
long your pool table will last.
Now, rails are made from two
pieces of wood glued together.
They are cross-laminated.
That means if there's any
natural warp in the wood,
we're creating opposing force
in that the warp
will press onto itself
rather than separating the wood.
Again, it's all about precision.
We have to make sure the
pool table is perfectly level,
so every piece of the rail
must be within
1/30,000 of an inch.
Now, since the rail is
the table's outer edge,
it's gonna be leaned
on, bumped against,
and, well, maybe worse,
so it has to be
able to take abuse
without moving or shifting.
These rails may be strong,
but they're not quite ready.
They still need an inner lining
for the balls to bounce
against, the cushion.
It's one of the most
important parts of the table.
It is this piece of
rubber right here
that is attached to
add an angle to the rail.
Back in the good old days,
this used to be a flat surface.
It resembled a riverbank.
So when a ball
bounced off the side of it,
it was called a bank shot.
That's where that
term comes from.
But these are
made of gum rubber,
and this gum rubber
lasts a lot longer
than any synthetic
material that might be used
in some lower-quality tables.
These natural gum-rubber strips
are shaped to be
consistent and resilient
so that balls will bounce the
same way again and again.
Then the pieces of the
rail are sanded, stained,
and covered with a
sealant for protection.
Finally, the rail
is put together,
and during installation,
it'll be added to the frame.
But our table
isn't going to play
exactly the same
every time just yet.
The playing surface
for our pool table is mica,
chlorite, and quartz,
also known as slate.
Slate is a perfect
playing surface for pool
because it can be
honed and polished
into a perfectly flat surface.
Slate naturally comes
as hundreds of layers
of compressed sediment
that have taken about,
oh, a million years to form.
Slate won't warp, and
it'll last a long, long time.
Slate arrives here precut
in sheets of 3/4 of
an inch to 1 inch thick.
For a standard 8-foot table,
that's 500 pounds of slate.
Because of its hardness,
slate won't develop
cracks or grooves over time.
The best slate comes from Italy,
says Olhausen's Brian Roselli.
If we were to use some
other material other than slate,
say a wood or synthetic,
what would be the result?
You're playing a
game of physics.
It's a game of
colliding spheres.
So when you bring in
an artificial component,
you're not getting the
same weight on the table,
and you're not gonna
keep that level surface
like you are with
something like slate.
For the slate to do its job,
it needs to be flexible
yet stay perfectly flat,
so we're gonna need
something to keep it in place.
What helps these tables
hold up all that slate
is a pretty cool innovation
here at Olhausen.
It's called a Uniliner, and
it is this ring of plywood
that goes around the
perimeter of the frame.
The Uniliner is a
3/4-inch-thick piece of wood
that fits on top of the frame.
It's like the roof of a house.
It ties together all
the beams below it
and makes them rigid.
That'll keep the slate
from sagging in the middle,
even after years of play.
These frames can hold
up to 28,000 pounds,
so, in the event
of an earthquake,
get underneath your pool table.
There's just one component
missing for our table.
The legs.
Now, they're made of thick
pieces of solid heavy wood
so that they're strong enough
to support the enormous
weight of the slate.
In this finishing area, we are
adding some protective coatings,
some staining,
and some painting,
and then our pool tables
will be ready to ship.
But it is not finished.
Now, no matter how level
we made that playing surface
in the factory, it
won't be in the home
unless it's calibrated and
adjusted to the environment
in which that pool table
will spend the rest of its life.
To make our table perfect,
an installment team
has to make a house call,
where they'll put the
table together, finally.
With the legs bolted on,
the table is adjusted
to be level with the floor.
Rubber pieces
called leveling shims
can increase the height by
as little as 1/32 of an inch.
They bring the table
to the right height.
Then the slate goes
on in three pieces,
and its seams
are filled with wax.
And finally, we lay down
the surface for the balls,
the felt.
Though it's actually
a hybrid material
of ultrafine wool
and very strong yarn.
Last step in our
assembly, the pockets.
And we're ready to play.
Karen Corr is one of the
best pool players in the world.
It was time to get serious
about the game of pool.
Karen, where do
you set your beer?
Oh, now, we won't be drinking.
That'll be affecting your
focus when you play,
so we have our water.
I'm tempted to blame the
table, but only now I know better.
[Laughs]