The speed of CA finish is no myth, nor is it messy. If anything at all, CA finish is misunderstood and bastardized by the ignorant. It takes 30 minutes from bare wood to polished for a butt, and 5-10 minutes for the few inches of a shaft joint. It makes no mess and is no danger to myself or anybody around me. No fumes, no atomized liquids, no mixing, no spraying, no solvents, none of that. Many people, including other makers, have seen it & can attest to everything I say. And the proof is in the pudding, my completed cues. The following pics are all CA finish, none taking more than an hour from bare wood to polished cue.
The below cues belong to the same owner, Joe Rogan. One is a daily player & the other mostly sits in a collection. The daily player has a CA finish. It's better than a decade old, gets played hours almost daily, and travels with him as he works around the globe. It may be in Brazil today & Las Vegas tomorrow, enduring every climatic swing imaginable. The cue doesn't get abused, but does suffer a lot more than most cues. The pic is pretty recent, and shows the cue still shines & holds up just fine. Without being obvious which cue is mine, who could look at those cues & know which finish was used? Point being, not only is it not a myth that CA finish is fast, it's also pretty darn durable & lasting.