Blue Chalk Looks Brown On Blue Cloth?

Patrick Johnson

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At the new Chicago pool room I've posted about, the tables are covered with Simonis Tournament Blue cloth and they use Masters blue chalk. Sounds like the right combo, right?

Strange thing - the chalk looks brown on the cloth, so the tables look dirtier than they should. Has anybody here seen this before?

The owner theorizes it's the bright white lights over the tables that make the blue chalk look brown - 100W daylight LED bulbs. Anybody ever heard of that happening? Know of a bright white bulb that would work better?

He wants to stay with Masters blue chalk if possible.

Thanks for any help or ideas,

pj
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sausage

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some minerals change color and or fluoresce under UV light. maybe the LED's have just the right wavelength to make the chalk look brown. i can guarantee it's not the cloth. turn the table lights off and then look at the chalk under an incandescent light.
 

Patrick Johnson

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some minerals change color and or fluoresce under UV light. maybe the LED's have just the right wavelength to make the chalk look brown. i can guarantee it's not the cloth. turn the table lights off and then look at the chalk under an incandescent light.
Funny thing is, the chalk only looks brown when it's a mark on the cloth. The chalk that's still on the cube or the tip (or my finger) looks blue like normal.

??

pj
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Jimmy B

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some minerals change color and or fluoresce under UV light. maybe the LED's have just the right wavelength to make the chalk look brown. i can guarantee it's not the cloth. turn the table lights off and then look at the chalk under an incandescent light.


Reminds me of an incident.. I was needing a new car badly. The commute to my casino was about 35 miles each way to the border and my old car was worn slap out... I was wearing some strange sunglasses.. I knew I wanted this nice brand new grey Dodge Avenger on sale for 16k. I was always in a hurry then. I wrote the check got it home, removed the sunglasses and looked back at the car to admire it a bit as I walked into the house and realized I had bought a purple car..The sunglasses I wore had changed the color to me.. I kept it, or course and it was by far the best car I ever owned. It was aces.....
 

Patrick Johnson

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Tweetens!

Tweetens!

I ended up emailing Tweetens (based here in Chicago) about this problem (their Masters Blue chalk makes brown marks on our Simonis Tournament Blue cloth). To my happy surprise Tweetens president, Skip Nemecek, responded himself. We exchanged a few emails (he had never run into this before), and Skip ended up coming to the new pool hall himself to deliver a new box of Sky Blue chalk that they designed specifically for Tournament Blue Simonis - which looks like it solved the problem. He also brought a box of LePro tips we needed.

Thanks a lot Skip and Tweetens! We were already customers and fans (who isn't in the pool world?) - you've reminded us why.

pj
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Renegade_56

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Interesting but I think something else is in play here. I have brand new Simonis 860HR tournament blue cloth on my Diamond Professional, with 6, 8 foot long, 75 watt LED bulbs, and only use Masters Blue chalk. The chalk is pre flag, just because I have had a lot of it for a long time, but still I have not seen any brown marks at all.
 

Patrick Johnson

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Interesting but I think something else is in play here. I have brand new Simonis 860HR tournament blue cloth on my Diamond Professional, with 6, 8 foot long, 75 watt LED bulbs, and only use Masters Blue chalk. The chalk is pre flag, just because I have had a lot of it for a long time, but still I have not seen any brown marks at all.
We think it might be the combination of chalk/cloth colors and "daylight" LED light. Different chalk is way less expensive than new lights - hope it's the solution.

pj
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beatle

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nope ,i have 860hr and use the same chalk and have led daylight bulbs. no brown anything.

you might be getting some reflection from the walls or tables or something like that.
 

Patrick Johnson

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nope ,i have 860hr and use the same chalk and have led daylight bulbs. no brown anything.

you might be getting some reflection from the walls or tables or something like that.
We've heard the same thing from others - it's a mystery. I'm thinking it might be the particular brand of LED bulbs.

Fortunately, it looks like the Sky Blue chalk (very close in color to regular blue) does the trick.

Thanks again to Skip Nemecek and Tweeten for taking a personal interest in finding a solution.

pj
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Patrick Johnson

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Masters Blue vs Sky Blue

Masters Blue vs Sky Blue

In case anybody's interested, here's how Masters Sky Blue (in the middle) looks compared with regular Masters Blue (both ends). The regular Blue pieces were bought recently, but not directly from Tweeten. The Sky Blue was delivered by Tweeten last week.

Still don't know for sure why/how the regular Blue looks brown on Simonis (860HR) Tournament Blue cloth, but the Sky Blue doesn't. Tweeten says the Sky Blue was made specially to be used with Tournament Blue cloth...

pj
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Renegade_56

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I really like the color of that sky blue chalk and agree it's a better match for the Tournament Blue, but I still don't see the brown streaks being made by blue masters chalk. I wonder, do the brown streaks show up immediately, or maybe after cleaning the cloth, say with a wet chemical of some sort?
 

Patrick Johnson

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I really like the color of that sky blue chalk and agree it's a better match for the Tournament Blue, but I still don't see the brown streaks being made by blue masters chalk. I wonder, do the brown streaks show up immediately, or maybe after cleaning the cloth, say with a wet chemical of some sort?
They show up immediately - you can mark the cloth with a cube of chalk and see the brown instantly. Weird.

Also, I asked Skip Nemecek (president of Tweeten) whether he thought our regular Blue chalk could be a knockoff brand - he said that since we bought it from Mueller's it's definitely bona fide.

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stevelomako

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It would most likely be the color of the led bulbs.

Just as there are different shades of light, soft white (2400k) , bright white (3000) thru daylight (5000k) there are different color rendering indexes (up to 100).

You probably have daylight led bulbs of 5000k with a low color index where you need around 96 to bring the colors out and make them bright and vibrant.

This is always overlooked with pool table lighting. People assume the brightest is the best but it's not always the easiest on the eyes.

If you have to, get 5000k with 96CRI bulbs even if they're fluorescent and put them on an adjoining table and see if you can tell a difference with the balls and chalk.
 

mhilton777

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I played at Surge last Wednesday night while I was in town with Marvin/Laura and the Semko's and I didn't notice the brown marks on the table.

Kudos to Tweeten for helping figure it out!!
 

Patrick Johnson

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It would most likely be the color of the led bulbs.

Just as there are different shades of light, soft white (2400k) , bright white (3000) thru daylight (5000k) there are different color rendering indexes (up to 100).

You probably have daylight led bulbs of 5000k with a low color index where you need around 96 to bring the colors out and make them bright and vibrant.

This is always overlooked with pool table lighting. People assume the brightest is the best but it's not always the easiest on the eyes.

If you have to, get 5000k with 96CRI bulbs even if they're fluorescent and put them on an adjoining table and see if you can tell a difference with the balls and chalk.
We've suspected the color of the LED lights. Thanks for the tips, Steve - we'll look into it.

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