As you all know, this year the 4th lands on a Wednesday. Right smack in the middle of the week. It only happens once every seven years or so, but having the 4th on a Wednesday makes it pretty much impossible to do a proper long weekend. Ultimately, we decided to close the offices from the 4th to the 6th in order to give the team some much needed R&R. Unfortunately, this means that no one is going to be around to pick, pack and ship so any orders placed after 2PM MST are not going to ship until the 9th.
We’ll be back in the office bright and early Monday morning. From all of us here at PoolDawg, we wish you a fun, relaxing and safe Independence Day!
Google+
In our ongoing efforts to turn lemons into lemonade here at PoolDawg’s worldwide headquarters we present the third episode in our ongoing series “What’s In The Shaft?”. For those who missed out, the first installment looked at the innards of a Predator 314 shaft and the second checked out the guts of a McDermott G-Core shaft. This time, we’re looking at the OB-1 shaft made by the fine folks at OB Cues. It doesn’t happen too often, but every now and again a package gets damaged en route to a customer. This is the result:
What you’re seeing here is not the dreaded pink slime, but rather the silicon rubber core that lives inside every OB shaft. The goal of the rubber core (as I understand it anyway) is to dampen vibration while maintaining the feel of an uncored shaft. But, as they say, that’s not all. In addition to the rubber core, there’s also the mass reduction foam:
As we found out from the busted 314 shaft, the top 5 inches of that shaft is hollow in order to reduce the weight of the top of the shaft which in turn reduces deflection. Instead of going with the hollow, OB fills that five inch area with what they call a mass reduction foam. This, along with the wood ferrule definitely lightens the load in the front compared to a normal shaft.
Google+We’ve been asked many, many times why we don’t sell Frank. There are a few reasons for this, but the primary one is that making Frank is somewhat of a long and difficult process. That and we don’t really have the space to store 500 mass produced Franks (which would be the only way to produce him and keep costs down).
In order for Frank to come alive (so to speak, as he is, after all, a statue), he has to go through a few steps.
It all starts with the mold. Since we knew we’d eventually break all of our Franks, we had a mold made in order to create more.
What you can’t see here is that there are holes in the base where someone who’s much better at making castings and statues pours the goo that will eventually turn into Frank.
After the goo is poured, we wait. Once Frank dries, the mold gets opened and out hatches this:
That’s the easy part. The real painstaking portion of the Frank process is painting him. There’s no good way to get this done quickly, so we have to hand paint him (again done by people far more skilled than myself).
The statue is pretty detailed, so someone has to actually go in with a brush and make sure every fold and crevice is covered. Because the process is somewhat of a pain, we don’t do it very often. We’re hoping that the ones we have will last, but from the last batch we’re already down a couple. One was damaged in storage and the other is autographed by all the US and Euro players from the 2011 Mosconi Cup (which is going to be donated to the BEF to be used as a fundraiser later this year).
Just a little fun PoolDawg trivia for you on this sunny Thursday morning.
Google+For the first time in many, many years, PoolDawg will not have a booth at the annual BCA Pool League show in Las Vegas. The reason for our absence? Frank.
See, times are tough, so Frank wanted to audition to be the new Travelocity Roaming Gnome. Sort of a moonlighting gig. We didn’t have the heart to tell him that he wasn’t a garden gnome, so we let him take care of our travel arrangements this year. He talked with his gnome pals who wholeheartedly agreed that he should try out for the job (they are mischievous little guys).
We told him “BCA” and he seemed to know what we were talking about. We should’ve known better than to put Frank in charge of our travel because instead of booking us for BCAPL Nationals in Vegas, he booked us for these BCA Nationals. Really, it’s not his fault. He heard BCA and figured we were talking about the Bulldog Club of America.
So anyway, we’re not going to be in Vegas this week. Frank will no longer be allowed to make travel reservations for us and we will be at APA Team Nationals this August.
Good luck to all the players at BCAPL Nationals this year (the non-bulldog one) and we’ll try our hardest to make it out next year!
Google+
For the last five years, Alexis Brown has dazzled our customers with excellent customer service and her deep knowledge of the products that we sell. But, as they say, nothing lasts forever. Today marks the end of an era here at PoolDawg, as Alexis will be leaving us and moving on to bigger and better things.
For those of you who are used to having Alexis take care of all your pool and billiards needs, rest assured that Keven, Mariya and I will be here to make sure you get taken care of. In the coming weeks, we’ll be adding a new member to the team as well, so stay tuned on that front!
As for Alexis, even though she’s leaving us, she’ll always be a member of the PoolDawg family. All of us here at PoolDawg will miss Alexis, so please join us in wishing her the best of luck with her future plans.
Google+
