Until fairly recently, when you thought of shuffleboards, you probably thought of seniors on vacation enjoying a game that didn’t involve too much activity or movement to wear them out. Today, though, shuffleboard has gotten incredibly popular with a younger crowd. You’ll see indoor shuffleboard tables at bars and game rooms all over the US, and people love playing, so they’re always a hit. Of course, if you’re going to get a shuffleboard table for your business or home, you’ll want to know how to set it up and maintain it.
Important Considerations for Setting Up Your Shuffleboard Table
When you set up your shuffleboard table, you’ll want to make sure that it’s adjusted properly. Once you’ve put it in place, you’ll want to take a level and lay it across the width of the table’s surface at the end of the table. If the table is level and you can easily slip a piece of paper under the middle of the level, then you’re in good shape. If the middle of the table isn’t slightly concave, then you’ll want to dial the nuts on the climate adjusters in until it is.
Check to make sure that the table is level and concave whenever there’s a change in temperature or humidity. This way, you can set up your shuffleboard table to work well no matter how much the wood is expanding or contracting due to climate shifts. You don’t want to make the table too concave, though, as this is really just a precaution to keep the pucks from flying off of the table. Toward the middle of the table, you want it to be slightly flatter to make sure that the game is fair and that the pucks can slide quickly across the table.
Maintaining Your Shuffleboard Table
So how do you know when it’s time to maintain your shuffleboard table? Over time, you’ll notice that the pucks don’t slide as swiftly when players launch them across the table. To fix this, spray an even coating of silicone-based lubricant over the entire surface of the table. Use long, sweeping motions as you spray to get an even coating. Then, once the silicone spray has dried a little bit, take a clean rag and gently buff it.
Then take a canister of shuffleboard wax (not to be confused with car wax or floor wax) and sprinkle it liberally over the entire surface of the table. Ideally, you’ll want to re-wax the table every few times you play for best results, but this isn’t always possible when you’ve set your table up in a bar or other establishment. The more you wax your shuffleboard table, the less often you’ll have to wax it, so you can probably get away with waxing it at the end of the night after closing if you’re using it in a professional setting for customers.
Other than that, you won’t need to maintain your shuffleboard table very often. Just make sure that it’s clean and that no one sets any drinks down on it, and it should work beautifully for years to come.
