I bought an inexpensive 8 foot one piece slate (7/8" thick) pool table 35 years ago and now it is looking pretty sad. A few years ago my wife got me a book on building a new one from scratch. From PoolTablePlans.com: "Arts and Crafts Mission Pool Table" by Southall and Swift. A great 94 page book, very detailed with templates, cut lists and a whole lot of info on building a pool table. At first I was going to reuse my slate and totally use their plans, but it was just too overwhelming and my slate was undersized and would require major changes to the plans.
So looking for a new shop project I decided to refresh the table I have in phases. First phase (and the biggest) is to replace the rails and attached fanel or skirt and of course put down new cloth on the table and rails. Second phase is reinforcing the structure and building new legs. At first I planned on just replicating the existing rails in oak and keeping the rubber pockets. I purchased 8/4 x 6" oak for the rails milled it to 1 1/2" to match the existing and purchased oak ply for the fanels. Then as I started referring to the book for tips, I decided to go whole hog and get new leather pockets which of course required a bunch of careful measurements and research.
First off I realized I should have milled the rails another 3/16" thick. That was solved by laminating 3/16" oak ply left ovr from a previous project to the underside where it will never be seen unless you are laying under the table. Actually turned out good as it will be easier to staple the felt to the ply than to oak. My TS is getting a good work out ripping the material to width, cutting the two bevels and three dadoes. The new pockets have 5/8" iron pins that must be drilled precisely in the end of the rails, that required some ingenuity with the drill press. I have a lot to do yet, but here are a few pics of what is going on so far (sorry the phone pics aren't that great, I'm waiting for my wife to upgrade and give me her iPhone 6.):