I agree it's not an attractive piece of wood and I don't intend to use it. Wondered if sawing differently would help defy mother nature and get the eyes all the way around. Apparently it does grow that way. Never been a fan of BEM anyway and since I'm building cues for my own eye I probably won't be acquiring any more of it. There's just a lot more interesting wood out there.
I don't ever plan to burden myself with trying to build what anyone else likes. There's plenty of folks filling that market. Just going to make what I make and if I like them someone else probably will too and they will have a new owner. Tons of respect to the guys who have the skills and patience to make another person's vision come to reality. My observation of this industry is that has been the death of many a promising cue maker and their reputation and the lifeblood of others. And it seems to be a fine line.
JC
There's absolutely no other way to saw the wood to get a "better" view - it's being turned, so you have a 360 degree view of said piece of wood. Is it
trash? That's debatable. It might make one hell of a player. You may find you play it more, simply because you're not caught up on its looks and not worried about a couple war marks; unlike many of the "closet queens" out there. The ones I played the most were the ones that happened to be the plainest, yet I wanted the "hit" that a certain builder was known for. Plus I didn't want to attract too much attention.
Pick your saying - the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, one man's trash is another man's treasure, beauty is in the eye of the beholder - if you find it is of no use to you, it may be a good idea to pay it forward, not chuck in a dumpster or fireplace.
JoeyInCali said:
If you are going to trash it, think cue extensions and jump cue handles .
Whenever you saw, figuring is second to grain direction imo.
I would tend to agree with this. Especially with acoustic guitars, when one is dealing with a back that can potentially be .085" thick or even less. I love figured woods more than anyone, but in acoustic guitars, special provisions must be made to ensure the guitar lasts - at least as long as the builder is still alive! The most stable configuration for woods is straight grained, of which the wood in question seems to be. In acoustic guitars, quartersawn woods are prized because for the same strength and stiffness as a flatsawn piece, it can be worked a lot thinner, and is more stable. But the woods we work with are flat and thin. With cues, or anything that has a long, thin shaft, having dead straight grain in both flatsawn and quartersawn sides is imperative. I've seen quite a few shafts that look perfectly quartered, but split cleanly at a diagonal on the flatsawn side because of undetected grain runoff. Having a tree that grows absolutely dead straight is the exception, not the rule, because a tree will tend to spiral at least slightly as it grows. Thus cuts parallel to the axis of a tree trunk may yield perfectly quartered pieces, but not necessarily straight in the flatsawn side. The only way to absolutely guarantee straight grain is to split the wood, and thus it will fracture along it's true grain line. The master guitar builders do this with their top woods or at least have it done. Time consuming and lower yield. But they have to deal with 160-plus pounds of string pull on a piece less than 1/8" thickness. Figuring in wood is basically grain runoff, even when well-quartered. In the acoustic guitar world, the boards are kept a bit thicker, which requires different bracing, and produces a different response. In the cue world, I'd expect such pieces to be cored (unless it were maybe full spliced) that it maintains integrity throughout its life.