I 've seen many BE & Tiger shafts on cues , but don't like them myself . The figured wood is prone to have hard and soft spots that make finishing a pain . The wood doesn't cut or sand level so you have to seal and sand and seal and sand to get right . Pretty but a pain in the rear . My experience is that birdseye is a little darker and denser than most tiger , there are exceptions . All from the same tree ...
I have never noticed birdseye or curly maple sanding differently. I don't sand much, anyway, but never noticed it. I think I can safely say I have cut several thousand shafts over the last decade. The only woods that sand funny with hard & soft spots are soft woods. As for curly maple, the grain is rippled, but structurally exactly the same growth pattern as normal maple. Birdseye is the same as well except it has singular ring knots & they grow across the grain, getting slightly larger each year. There's no soft or hard places, and so long as there aren't too many eyes or too large of eyes, it makes no difference in the strength of the wood. The reason birdseye maple is denser is because it generally grows slower & almost always has tight grain, making it a denser wood in most situations. I don't know if the tree grows slow because of the birdseyes or if the birdseyes form because the tree grows slow. Most likely the slow growth & birdseyes are both symptoms of a genetic or disease disorder. But as KJ days, nobody knows for sure. But one thing is for sure, birdseye is generally tight grain & dense.
My personal beliefs on birdseye & curly shafts is that they are just fine. In fact, I prefer them on my own personal cues. There's nothing scientific I can put on it but in my experiences, those shafts just play better & feel better to me. I frequently use birdseye shafts in cues I build. None are heavy figure but eyes are certainly present. Curly doesn't come along that often, only one in 50 shafts for me. I cut them & use them just as I would any other shaft & they play just fine. I don't get shafts back because they break during play.
As for sanding that much on shafts, you may want to retune your shaft machine or sharpen the blades. If you have to sand with anything grittier than 400grit for anything over 20 seconds, then your shaft machine is likely more liable for the failure of even sanding than the figure in the wood. After my final cut to 13.10-13.15mm, I install the ferrule & cut it down to 13.05mm, then hit the ledge with 320 for about 5 seconds, and the rest with 400, 600, seal, 1000, 1500 & apply my final polishing/slicking agents. From the time I begin the sanding process to shiny smooth shaft is about 2 minutes. I have learned that sanding anything to the point it can become uneven, requires considerable time & paper that's far grittier than I wanna use on cues. Your cues should be cut clean & to within a couple thou of final size so that nearly no sanding is required. Anything less than this & you are sacrificing accuracy.
