Baking soda can help clean the pool balls which have layers of chalk. This layer of chalk adds additional friction onto the ball and gives an inconsistent performance. Over time the same the chalk builds up on the felt and this way the chalk begins to deposits on the rest of the balls as well.
So from the cue ball, the chalk build-up has begun to spread onto the felt and from the felt it spreads on to the rest of the ball. These balls offer more friction and often alter the trajectory of the collision among multiple balls.
Therefore it is necessary that you regularly clean the balls and remove the chalk buildup. Chalk although helps in playing the shot with lesser miscue chances but can overtime mess up the felt as well. I have already discussed how to clean cue shaft chalk build-up but it is necessary that you should clean the balls as well.
Cleaning the balls especially the cue ball will help reduce the maintenance or the cleaning job of the felt. As removing and then the cleaning process of a table felt is quite cumbersome and not an easy thing to do regularly.
STEPS TO CLEAN WITH BAKING SODA
How to clean pool balls with baking soda is quite straight forward. Here are the steps that you need to follow:
- Take a cloth and remove the dust from the cloth from all the balls.
- Wet all the balls and submerge them in a bucket full of water.
- Take a bowl and fill it with a baking soda. Let’s call this as bowl 1.
- Slowly add water into the bowl and keep mixing until the baking soda becomes a paste.
- Take a bowl and make a mixture of half water and half lemon juice. Let’s call this bowl 2.
- Take a smooth toothbrush, the fibers should not be very hard, they can mess up the outer layer of the balls.
- Take a ball out and clean it with the baking soda paste from bowl 1 via the toothbrush.
- After cleaning, immediately dry the ball with a cloth.
- Now with a good quality microfiber cloth apply the solution from bowl 2 and clean the ball. After cleaning immediately dry the ball.
- Repeat the process until all the balls are cleaned up.
How Maintenance Helps
Regular maintenance of the balls is absolutely necessary to keep the quality of the game up and make sure that you require little maintenance on the felt.
Clean and shiny balls will also not damage the fibers of the felt and collide with each other and pass on the momentum. Overall experience after cleaning the balls should become smooth.
If your pool balls are chipped then cleaning them will not offer you a smoother experience, rather a new pool ball set will be a better option.
