got a question not sure if this is the correct forum, have a vintage Viking N300 and through research I figured the cue has implex joint style D which was supposed to be the softest hit made back then, but nowhere have I heard what the actual pin was, I will include a pic would appreciate someones help
joint pin on vintage viking cue N300
- Thread starter gambler67
- Start date
This is a Type D joint from Viking
It is a Implex Joint to Wood with a Big Pin 3/8x10--
Hope this helps
mike 'acedonkeyace' kennedy
It is a Implex Joint to Wood with a Big Pin 3/8x10--
Hope this helps
mike 'acedonkeyace' kennedy
Color me curious but why would a stainless steel pin need to be chrome plated ?
You state that they did that at the time so I'm hoping you can elaborate for educational purposes.
I find everything about screws in general very interesting. On most screws, thru feed thread rolling is used. Over time the tolerances change. Whether it's a set up change or the dies wearing. I'm told the dies are pretty expensive. But anyways. There are some video's on google that I found pretty cool. Check them out. The normal 5/16x14, 5/16x18 and 3/8x10 screws are roll threaded. The screws from uni loc for example, I believe are single pointed.
Last edited:
Ok.....so excuse me but I have to chime in here. In order to chrome (chromium) plate a 304 stainless steel pin you'd have to polish it, then plate it which is an entire time consuming process in and of it's own right. Rhetorically speaking, why in God's name would anyone do that 1. on a part that probably cost Viking 28 cents per hundred, and 2. You'd ostensibly be chrome plating something that already has chromium in it. 3. Except for some specialized engineering purposes like a bearing surface the only reasons to chrome plate something is for cosmetics and why would you do that for a pin that's buried inside a shaft? I suggest chrome plating a material that has chromium and nickle in it was NEVER done and if someone told you that it's marketing nonsense at it's best........voodoo marketing. Back in the day there was a term tossed around loosely "German silver" or "nickle silver" in order to make good ol' 304 stainless steel seem more exotic (even though there really is such a thing as German Silver and it's not "stainless steel" per se)
304: The basic alloy. Type 304 (18-8) is an austenitic steel possessing a minimum of 18% chromium and 8% nickel, combined with a maximum of 0.08% carbon.
To expound on that alloy: Austenitic stainless steels: Contain high amounts of chromium and nickel and are the most corrosion resistant, ductile, and weldable type...........yada yada yada.
Anyhow......just had to get my two cents worth in.
304: The basic alloy. Type 304 (18-8) is an austenitic steel possessing a minimum of 18% chromium and 8% nickel, combined with a maximum of 0.08% carbon.
To expound on that alloy: Austenitic stainless steels: Contain high amounts of chromium and nickel and are the most corrosion resistant, ductile, and weldable type...........yada yada yada.
Anyhow......just had to get my two cents worth in.
That is if the base metal is stainless.. if a company wanted to save a few bucks and they were making pins by the 1000's they may use a less expensive mild steel and then plate them. This is just a thought and a possibility because you are certainly right that it would be pointless to plate stainless.
I think what you have to resolve for yourself is the fact that we know some pins have been plated.
Why? That's a good question. Probably cosmetic.
I have seen cue makers here refer to them as "cheap" pins.
In my own collection I have seen some old pins flake their plating and corrode. I don't believe it was plated stainless, it was a plated mild steel.
It seems this was and/or is more common in the 3/8x10 pins, but of course it could be any of them I guess.
In the old days pins were brass or mild steel. Stainless came later. I think plating might have done to make it look like polished stainless.
These days cue makers seem to be much fussier about such things and technology, materials, and tolerances are much more important.
But I believe you can still find plated pins as I have seen them for sale. I have also seen people post "wanted" posts for pins saying "please no plated pins".
I have also seen it spoken of here that the plating increases the dimension of the pin, just as was found in this thread.
So, I understand what you have said. But at the same time it seems to be fairly common knowledge among the cue makers that such plating has been done. As far as I have seen such pins are not regarded well.
You can imagine that they are probably not done well. In other words minimal prep and poor plating processes. Not likely aerospace quality here or anything approaching a quality product. More like cheap Chinese chrome for your Harley that begins to flake the first time the bike gets wet.
This is what I have gathered from reading what the cue makers have said here in the past. The cue makers may correct any part of it of course.
.
.
Some additional thoughts
So here's my thinking on the subject....Yes. Older cues sometimes used brass pins or mild steel pins because they were readily available as "all-thread." As such that all-thread would have been 5/16-18 because 5/16-14 is not a typical thread pitch in any machine application. The only industry I've ever seen use 5/16-14 is the pool cue world. It's a complete abomination. That being said any cue maker who took it upon himself to actually make 5/16-14 pins (I'm assuming here) would most likely have done so using stainless because the cost difference between stainless and mild steel is so damn nominal it would make no sense to use an inferior material....mild steel. For instance: go to MSC's catalog and type in 5/16-18 and look at the sheer number of bolts, nuts, taps, pins etc., that are available. Now...try that with 5/16-14. For the most part it doesn't exist in the machine tools world. How and why it ever came about is anyone's guess but it's surmised it was so you could screw the cue together just a tad faster (or get out of Dodge faster). Either that or that pitch of pin would make it so you had to return the cue to the maker in order to get additional shafts or have work done on the cue. So...since we know that 5/16-18 exists in the machine tools world it's absolutely available in stainless steel so buying mild steel and then plating it is....well.....it's just silly. The cost of plating a 5/16-18 pin would easily exceed the cost of just buying a that pin in stainless.
3/18-10 pins do exist in the machine tool world but let's resign ourselves to the 14/18 TPI argument for the time being. Here's a quick guide to understanding thread tolerances that you may find interesting: https://sizes.com/tools/bolts_inch_threadFit.htm My argument is that pretty much the higher classes of pin minor/major diameters is rather irrelevant since the insert itself is much more adaptable to changes in thread tolerances. Hell....it's brass....soft, yellow brass. It's much MUCH easier to purchase a tap that will accommodate any thread pitch deviations than it is to try plating a pin in order to make it fit snugly into an insert. Back then, in my opinion, super hiigh tolerances of the pin vs. insert were for the most part rather unnecessary. The pin acts as a drawing device for the shaft and that's about it. In a high tolerance environment the tiniest spec of dirt, even one that's .0005 will cause the pin to seize OR it'll recut or deform the brass insert threads (dissimilar materials) even if that pin was made from mild steel.
So, let's assume you're now a cuemaker and you order a bunch of 5/16-14 pins custom made because they don't exist anywhere in the machine world as an off the shelf product and an equal number brass inserts. Typical chrome plating will deposit material that's roughly .001 to .025 of an inch in thickness. Would YOU the cuemaker....prefer to take a pin, fit it to a brass insert only to determine it's too sloppy, plate it an additional .004 fit it again, still too sloppy then plate it again with another .004 only to discover it's too tight THEN polish it back to .006 total ORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR would you run in an incremental tap into the soft brass insert a few times and call it a day???? Now.....with that perfectly mated pin and brass insert combination.....please make sure you hermetically seal them at the end of a session because if you get the slightest bit of dirt, grime, chalk, etc., on either piece they simply will NOT fit the next time you play.
Vince.
p.s. Brevity has never been my strong point. Sorry.
So here's my thinking on the subject....Yes. Older cues sometimes used brass pins or mild steel pins because they were readily available as "all-thread." As such that all-thread would have been 5/16-18 because 5/16-14 is not a typical thread pitch in any machine application. The only industry I've ever seen use 5/16-14 is the pool cue world. It's a complete abomination. That being said any cue maker who took it upon himself to actually make 5/16-14 pins (I'm assuming here) would most likely have done so using stainless because the cost difference between stainless and mild steel is so damn nominal it would make no sense to use an inferior material....mild steel. For instance: go to MSC's catalog and type in 5/16-18 and look at the sheer number of bolts, nuts, taps, pins etc., that are available. Now...try that with 5/16-14. For the most part it doesn't exist in the machine tools world. How and why it ever came about is anyone's guess but it's surmised it was so you could screw the cue together just a tad faster (or get out of Dodge faster). Either that or that pitch of pin would make it so you had to return the cue to the maker in order to get additional shafts or have work done on the cue. So...since we know that 5/16-18 exists in the machine tools world it's absolutely available in stainless steel so buying mild steel and then plating it is....well.....it's just silly. The cost of plating a 5/16-18 pin would easily exceed the cost of just buying a that pin in stainless.
3/18-10 pins do exist in the machine tool world but let's resign ourselves to the 14/18 TPI argument for the time being. Here's a quick guide to understanding thread tolerances that you may find interesting: https://sizes.com/tools/bolts_inch_threadFit.htm My argument is that pretty much the higher classes of pin minor/major diameters is rather irrelevant since the insert itself is much more adaptable to changes in thread tolerances. Hell....it's brass....soft, yellow brass. It's much MUCH easier to purchase a tap that will accommodate any thread pitch deviations than it is to try plating a pin in order to make it fit snugly into an insert. Back then, in my opinion, super hiigh tolerances of the pin vs. insert were for the most part rather unnecessary. The pin acts as a drawing device for the shaft and that's about it. In a high tolerance environment the tiniest spec of dirt, even one that's .0005 will cause the pin to seize OR it'll recut or deform the brass insert threads (dissimilar materials) even if that pin was made from mild steel.
So, let's assume you're now a cuemaker and you order a bunch of 5/16-14 pins custom made because they don't exist anywhere in the machine world as an off the shelf product and an equal number brass inserts. Typical chrome plating will deposit material that's roughly .001 to .025 of an inch in thickness. Would YOU the cuemaker....prefer to take a pin, fit it to a brass insert only to determine it's too sloppy, plate it an additional .004 fit it again, still too sloppy then plate it again with another .004 only to discover it's too tight THEN polish it back to .006 total ORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR would you run in an incremental tap into the soft brass insert a few times and call it a day???? Now.....with that perfectly mated pin and brass insert combination.....please make sure you hermetically seal them at the end of a session because if you get the slightest bit of dirt, grime, chalk, etc., on either piece they simply will NOT fit the next time you play.
Vince.
p.s. Brevity has never been my strong point. Sorry.
The pins were made from ready rod which was roll formed. They were then cut to length and plated. And it is safe to assume that they simply ordered a tap to fit for making the inserts. You are also forgetting a few things, the cost of manufacturing is not the same as it was then. Everything is outsourced now and a lot of stuff that is made has come down in price so your cost argument I don't think applies. And as a last point the 5/16 by 14 is or was used by other industries, the billiard industry didn't invent it.