What do you guys look for in good shaft wood? I know ring count - color . What would be your rule of thumb if I put 100 blanks in front of you or a couple 5/4 boards and told you to pick 5?
Choosing good shaft wood
- Thread starter Facundus Cues
- Start date
For me, it would be grain straightness before anything else. The last batch I bought was from Canada.
Edited to add that any wood in general has to have nice straight grain or I'm not buying. I love high figure as long as it has straight grain as well.
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Exactly... I've seen a lot of wood that's perfectly quartered, but has runoff....
Picking from squares/boards is a crapshoot .
Turn them round and let sit for a while.
Picking the best after that is much more accurate.
Turn them round and let sit for a while.
Picking the best after that is much more accurate.
I don't know if all your cues are the same, but a guy over here has one of your cues and I ALWAYS comment on how perfect the shaft is. It is top quality wood and super smooth.
Yes. Purely aesthetics. But customers prefer pretty wood so if I get to pick the best five out of a hundred that is what I would be going for also. On the shaft wood I sell I do not pull the best out of the shaft dowels I sell. I pull the lower end stuff out of the #1 mix and send all medium to high end pieces in that mix. But once I start making tapered shaft blanks I do pull the best two or three out of a hundred for myself once tapered to about 16mm and I use the parameters mentioned in my previous post for choosing them.
If it's straight grained, has the "tone" and probably most important doesn't move after it gets to 560 on the business end, the rest is purely aesthetics.
Certainly not going to put one into service that is peppered with mineral or sugar but I'm not going discount it on 1 or 2 minute marks.
Certainly not going to put one into service that is peppered with mineral or sugar but I'm not going discount it on 1 or 2 minute marks.
What he ^ said