Why Iron Pool Table Felt?
People iron pool table felt for one real reason: to improve the speed and performance of certain types of cloth. There’s a widespread misconception about what the process actually accomplishes. Many people think it’s a way to get rid of wrinkles or creases in their pool table felt, but this is not the case.
Debunking the Wrinkle Myth
The myth is that ironing is how you get wrinkles out of a cloth. Wrinkles are a tension problem, and an iron adds no tension. Flatten one with heat and the slack that created it is still sitting there in the cloth, waiting to bunch up again on the next humid week. So before we get to what ironing is genuinely good for, it helps to understand what causes wrinkles in the first place.
What Causes Wrinkles
Pool table felt can become wrinkled for two main reasons: humidity and improper installation. Both of these can cause the felt to become loose, which allows the fabric to bunch up or become pinched by any pressure exerted by the players’ hands or the balls themselves.
The Real Solution: Re-Stretching
The only reliable way to get wrinkles out of pool table felt is to have the felt re-stretched. Wrinkles only form when the felt is loose, so re-tightening it is the only long-term solution. Other remedies may work in the short term but only treat the symptom and leave the underlying looseness in place. A mechanic can often re-stretch an existing cloth without replacing it, and our guide to what refelting costs covers what you’d pay if the cloth is too far gone for that.
If the wrinkles are the result of looseness due to humidity, using a dehumidifier may help the felt tighten up again, but not in every case. Ironing the felt will only remove wrinkles temporarily and won’t make the felt any tighter.
Between sessions, a fitted cover keeps dust and spills off the cloth and softens the humidity swings that loosen it in the first place. If you don’t run one yet, our best pool table covers guide has picks for every table size.
Dealing with Creases Before Installation
When you buy pool table felt, it’s typically folded up into a neat square. If it’s been in storage for a while or has been compressed under weight, it will likely have sharp creases running through it, making it look like a checkerboard when it’s laid out. Many people are tempted to iron out these creases before the felt is installed. This is a mistake. Ironing the wrong cloth can damage it, and on a fresh cloth it’s unnecessary anyway, because the creases flatten on their own once the felt is stretched over the playing surface.
If the felt is stretched and installed properly, there should be no wrinkles whatsoever in the playing surface. If there are, ironing them may work temporarily but it won’t address the root cause, and the wrinkles will only come back in a short time.
Types of Pool Table Cloth
Pool table cloth is typically made from wool or a blend of wool and either nylon or polyester, which means pool table felt isn’t actually felt, at least not the kind you’ll find in your average craft store.
Which weave you have decides whether an iron belongs anywhere near your table.
Worsted vs. Woolen Cloth
There are two main types of pool table cloth: worsted and woolen. One of them takes an iron as routine maintenance and the other should never see one.
Worsted Cloth
Worsted cloth, sometimes referred to as American cloth, is spun and woven to give it a smooth texture with no fuzzy threads or nap sticking up. Since it is smooth and non-directional, worsted cloth allows balls to roll faster and longer over the playing surface (which is why it’s also often called speed cloth). For this reason, worsted cloth is considered the best surface for serious pool, and it’s effectively the only cloth used in professional pool tournaments. It is usually found on tables 8 feet or larger or on high-end tables, though some smaller coin-op tables do have it. If you’re shopping at that size, our best 8-foot pool tables guide covers what you get at each price.
Worsted cloth is also the cloth you should leave alone. There’s no nap to lay down, so heat gains you nothing, and the nylon in most worsted blends can glaze or melt under an iron. Brush it and vacuum it, and keep the iron away from it.
Woolen Cloth
Woolen cloth has a raised nap, the soft fuzzy layer that makes it slower and more directional than worsted. It covers most home and pub tables, and it’s what you’ll find on the majority of tables under 8 feet, so if you’re buying a table for the house you’re almost certainly getting woolen unless you pay to change it. Because the fibers stand up, the cloth plays differently depending on which direction you shoot along it, and it pills with age in a way worsted doesn’t.
That nap is the entire reason ironing exists.
What Ironing Actually Does
Ironing lays the nap down flat and pointing one way, which makes woolen cloth play faster and more consistently. That speed and consistency is the improvement people are actually chasing, and it’s why snooker clubs iron their tables as routine maintenance while most American pool halls never own an iron at all.
Doing it properly takes a purpose-built table iron. A table iron is sized to the bed of the table and runs dry with no steam, and it spreads low heat across a wide plate. A household clothes iron concentrates that heat into a small footprint, which is how cloth gets scorched.
The sequence matters as much as the tool. Brush and vacuum the cloth first, because ironing chalk dust into the nap grinds it down into the fibers. Then keep the iron moving in straight passes running with the nap. An iron left sitting in one spot can scorch or glaze the cloth fast, and a glazed patch doesn’t come back. Cloth makers publish their own heat guidance and it varies by cloth, so use theirs and don’t guess at a dial setting.
Two honest warnings before you try it. This is table-mechanic work, and a cheap household iron on a slate bed is how people ruin cloth they just paid to have installed. And even done perfectly, it still won’t fix your wrinkles.
Related Articles
For more on this topic, check out pool table felt guide, best felt color, how long felt lasts, refelting costs, and how felt is attached.
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