We are unsure of how to connect the pool noodles to the plywood to make our bumpers legal. We’ve seen some posts about just pulling the fabric really tight, in which case do we need extra cloth before the colored cloth? Also, there are rules against using tape or any other material that could compress the noodles. Are we allowed or not?
Take a look at above
You can tape the noodles to the wood, you just can’t tightly wrap the tape around the noodles to compress them. The bumper rules specifically allow soft fasteners to be used for this purpose.
We have used hot glue to hold them in place while we attach the fabric.
We’ve never used any fasteners or tape. If the bumpers are fitted around the corner (most years), we stuff the noodles inside then add the wood “bracket” or “box”, hand stretch, and staple.
The one time we did straight bumpers (no corners), we laid the fabric down on a table, put the noodles on top, put the wood on top of that, compressed SLIGHTLY (enough to secure the wood, not enough to deform the noodles more than 1/4" or so) with a large pair of C-clamps, then pulled up the fabric snug and stapled, long sides first, center out. When we released the c-clamps, the fabric tightened as the noodle opened back up.