It’s a bit of a mystery machine. If you know vintage foosball tables — which I don’t — you’d say it looks like a vintage Renee Pierre table — and you’d know it isn’t one. It’s a copy of one from the 1970’s, made by a North Carolina, USA company. I rescued it from an old arcade near Bay City, Michigan.
Before Restoration
This table was coin operated and saw a LOT of use. It was inoperable for a lot of reasons. The table top was long gone, replaced by a piece of OSB, painted green. Being a flat board, of course the ball would have gotten stuck in the corners and been no fun to play. Also, it was structurally unsound (wobbly), missing a couple of handles and a bunch of guys. It was also played for a time without the correct bearings — so, the holes the rods run in had to be sorted. Some things weren’t “technically” bad, but were made out of lesser materials. While everything up top was solid maple, underneath, most of the structure was particle board that had lost its integrity over the past 50 years of play.
But, there was something about this table that made me want to save him. While structurally it’s a copy, there is one thing I love that you won’t find on a Rene Pierre table — a great graphic of a footsball great you might recognize. Not a footsball or soccer follower, I don’t know who it is, but he’s cool.
The Restoration Process
It took a long time to get my head around this one. The two biggest challenges were: making it structurally sound and sorting the playfield.
While I considered a lot of fast fixes for the cabinet, in the end I carefully blew it apart so I could rebuild it to last another 50 years. Once apart, I cleaned every piece, inspected and repaired any problems. Now, it would have been easy to over do this — stripping the finish down to the wood and restaining every surface. Instead, I just carefully cleaned it, working hard not to delete any of the original graphics or colors. After, I gave the whole table a couple good coats of poly urethane and reassembled.
I reassembled it as a cabinetmaker would, but no matter how good of a job I did, I knew it wouldn’t withstand years of aggressive play unless I found replacement for the reinforcement rods that were missing. These four threaded rods run through the width of the machine and squeeze the panels tightly together. Two of these were missing and from the ricketiness of the table when I got it, I could tell it was played that way for some time. While I would have loved to buy genuine replacement parts, they don’t exist, so I replaced them with modern, antique brass fittings that look the part.
Because you can’t just go out and buy a replacement playfield, I decided to create my own. It’s pretty cool. I cut it from 3/4 inch furniture grade maple plywood. I laid out and painted the field, carefully choosing colors fitting to the patina of the rest of the table. While technically correct, I thought the base table layout was boring. So … as one does … I took it to Doctor Ru, my favorite sign painter to rock it up. be sure to check out the close-up pictures of his work.
Because the players, handles and rods were almost identical in size and design to a Renee Pierre table, I found the more easily, but not inexpensively. Like my approach to the rest of the game, I didn’t want the players to look new, but I didn’t want them to be beat up either. So, I decided I would carefully clean them and freshening them up with a little paint without removing their original hand-painted character.
The final step was to craft a ball return. The coin-op innards were there, but in sketchy condition. I kept them for the next owner and then worked to create a new return that would better serve me and most future owners. I complete that yesterday.
So, now what? I have a couple of good places at home to display it. It’s a good looking conversation piece — and a fully functioning foosball when competition calls. As with most things, I’ll keep it until someone wants it more than me and makes an offer I can’t refuse.
