.comHandmade Racks for Pool and Billiards
Custom-made 8- and 9-ball racks are the perfect gift for the pool or billiards player. Beautiful new types of wood just arrived!
Email Jim Shaw or call 214-208-1493 to order the perfect gift for the pool or billiards player in your life. Call now because there are only a small number of sets hand-crafted by Jim Shaw available due to limited production capacity. Sets begin at $200.
If you're like me, you have a nice cue, a decent table, maybe a set of Brunswick Centennials ...and a crappy plastic rack.
And when I started looking for quality pool ball racks on the Internet I couldn't find anything on the level of a custom-built cue or table. There are some really good cue artists out there. And the sky's the limit when it comes to tables. But if you want a 9-ball or 8-ball rack with the same workmanship that went into your cue or table, good luck.
So I thought, "I'm a pretty good woodworker, I'll make a set." That was in 2005. Only five years later in 2010, did I really begin to assemble pool ball racks at a quality level worth presenting on this site.
The process has been a challenge. I've had to build a lot of my own tools. Eight- and Nine-Ball racks are a challenge to assemble, so I've built and tweaked fixtures just for this purpose. In order for everything to go together correctly, exact dimensional tolerances must be attained, so I've developed half a dozen or more setup gauges that let me repeat critical steps exactly. And when the proper tooling wasn't available, I had it custom made.
Now I know why nobody else seems to have done this before. But anyway, I've managed to put together a few sets - three of which are shown at the right - and very soon will be adding an online-store to this site with a selection of these and other styles of interesting pool ball racks. Click on my Contact Us page and I'll let you know when my store opens...
Jim Shaw, Dallas, Texas.
Pool Ball Racks Classic Set #1 in Birdseye Maple with Black Walnut with sprayed polyurethane finish.
Pool Ball Racks Classic Set #2 in Black Walnut with Birdseye Maple with sprayed lacquer finish.
Pool Ball Racks Classic Set #3 in Cherry with Birdseye Maple and Black Walnut with sprayed lacquer finish.