Ivory is porous. And you probably have a fibre pad on the ferrules. Any natural material will accept standard adhesives. Plastics are a different beast.
Help with changing a tip on a cue
- Thread starter The8reader
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Ivory is porous. And you probably have a fibre pad on the ferrules. Any natural material will accept standard adhesives. Plastics are a different beast.
I’ve used Tweeten’s on ivory ferrules with and without a pad. I’ve also used it on whatever plastic Meucci uses for their ferrules and whatever material McDermott uses. As I said, YMMV.
Tweeten’s is the nuts.
Lou Figueroa
For the three cues you mentioned, it will work. For a capped plastic ferrule like what is on most of today’s low deflection shafts, the tip will fly off in about 3-5 minutes. Or less.
As I mentioned earlier, any porous material will accept most traditional long setting glues. I would also take this opportunity to tell you that Tweetens is just rubber contact cement. But it comes in a cute tube. You can buy it by the can for about the same price, and get 50 times more per volume.
Don’t speak low deflection. But the Meucci is about as non-porous as you can get.
Lou Figueroa
Mind if I ask which model of Meucci? If it’s older, the reason the Tweetens works is because of the massive diameter of the exposed wood tenon. When the tip comes off, you end up finding a blue ring around the outside of the ferrule where the bond broke down between the cement and the plastic ferrule. But the leather remains stuck to the wood tenon.
Lou, we can argue this all day long. I have done cue repairs for nearly 20 years. Go ask any quality repair guy as to how good Tweetens tip cement is for tips. I don’t even have it anymore. Loctite Prism or Gorilla Super Glue is all I use now for tips. Been that way for a long time now.
It would be an older Meucci that still has a tip I installed over 25 years ago firmly attached.
I recognized that you have done cue repairs for almost 20 years. I've been using Tweeten's for over 40.
In any case, this thread is not about what glue a cue mechanic should use -- it's about what a do-it-yourselfer should use. Presumably the guy has no lathe and is going to make a mess his first few times out and for that I still believe he's best off using Tweeten's, which he can effectively clean up afterwards.
BTW, this morning I recalled that I had some Elmer's rubber cement in the house and I looked at a dab of rubber cement next to a dab of Tweeten's. They are totally different in viscosity, color, and smell and I seriously doubt you could use the rubber cement for a tip install.
Also this morning, I sent an email to Tweeten up in Chicago and mentioned your claims about their product's similarity to a rubber cement formulation, its adhesion properties, and viable applications vis a vis various ferrule materials. I'll let you know when/if they respond.
Lou Figueroa
I've used super glue original and the gel, 2 part epoxy and Elmers, they all work good.
Posting this question on the main forum will get many OPINIONS. According to a 1 or maybe 2 members, unless you've used all the glues and installed hundreds of tips, on hundreds of brands, other OPINIONS are pretty much worthless. If you don't get the answer here try reposting in "Ask the Cuemaker" sub forum. Of course I'm not qualified to opine about replacing a tip, but best of luck to you anyway!
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Nearly any glue "works" if the surfaces are properly prepared, and the application process is sound. Super glue (cyanoacrylate) of some kind is used by like 99% of cue mechanics, and normally a gel type, which would be easier to use when working horizontally in a lathe. Even with less than ideal application, a proper super glue bond should last for years.
Freddie
This is absolutely true.
Personally, I'm a career assembly engineering lead for 25 years and have done more glue assembly process development than most every cuemaker COMBINED (barring any cuemaker that happened to also be a global lead assembly process developer for a major assembly contract manufacturer).
My opinion? Ask the cuemakers in the Ask the Cuemaker Forum
Cool. Let me know. It will probably be the exact same response I got from them back in 1999 when their glue wouldn't work on a Predator ferrule. Sorry - don't have the email. We used the phone back then. They told me that the glue wouldn't bond to thermoset plastics. Maybe YOUR email will get a different response....
Oh, I don’t know.
The guy doesn’t even know what glue to use. Maybe, just maybe, he’d be more interested in the opinion of the guy who isn’t a cue mechanic or engineer, doesn’t own a lathe, but has installed most of his own tips for 40 plus years on a variety of cues.
Yeah sure, tell the first timer to use the super glue and let him have some fun getting that off his ferrule without a lathe.
Lou Figueroa
yee ha
goferit
Lou, have you heard anything back from the folks at Tweeten?
ah yes, sorry about that Shawn, been traveling and forgot.
Yes, I heard back from Tweeten and basically what they said was that they'd never heard the thing about rubber cement before and that their formulation was nowhere near close to that. They also said that when they first came out with it, their glue was designed for the natural materials available then and that it was not the best for the newer synthetic material ferrules often used today.
Lou Figueroa
I just installed a tip on my custom cue the other day and since I hadn't done one in a few years, I have to admit I did a sloppy job. I used the Ace super glue and some of it leaked on my (assuming) plastic (phenolic) ferrule. I didn't look pretty and kind of bluish too. So I took my magic eraser and worked on the spilled glue and after many minutes and lots of elbow grease, it finally came off.
Part of the problem was that the tip flew off on my table after a miscue. I am assuming that since I had the shaft tapered dow from 13mm to a 11.75mm that it may have weakened the bond. So trying to get the tip centered was a major hassle using super glue. Also I couldn't get the tip on without seeing a gap in the mating surface between tip and ferrule even after sanding both surfaces.
Now with a little more practice, I think I will be re-tipping all my cues from now on. So the lesson learned here is that you can clean your ferrule if you leak glue on it, but from now on, I will be taping the ferrule to save me a lot of work.
Also if anyone needs help in DIY tip replacement there are some great u-tube videos on the subject.
Now if anyone can tell me where I can get the one sided razor knife to trim off the excess tip around the ferrule, it would be a big help to me.
Thanks and play hard and be a good sport. It's just a game.
Part of the problem was that the tip flew off on my table after a miscue. I am assuming that since I had the shaft tapered dow from 13mm to a 11.75mm that it may have weakened the bond. So trying to get the tip centered was a major hassle using super glue. Also I couldn't get the tip on without seeing a gap in the mating surface between tip and ferrule even after sanding both surfaces.
Now with a little more practice, I think I will be re-tipping all my cues from now on. So the lesson learned here is that you can clean your ferrule if you leak glue on it, but from now on, I will be taping the ferrule to save me a lot of work.
Also if anyone needs help in DIY tip replacement there are some great u-tube videos on the subject.
Now if anyone can tell me where I can get the one sided razor knife to trim off the excess tip around the ferrule, it would be a big help to me.
Thanks and play hard and be a good sport. It's just a game.
Like Lou, I've installed my own tips for about a million years. In my day, we didn't have a lot of guys who could do it for us, so we had to learn to do it ourselves. I used to use Tweetens (for many years) but now I also swear by Loctite. I won't go into all the gory details of how I prep my tip and ferrule, other than to say I end up putting glue on both (a nice thin layer) and letting it set up (and get tacky) for a minute or so before mating the two. I've never had a tip come off! I used to wear them down to the nub (Rafael Martinez style) and they still played good. A new Elkmaster might last me two years playing with it every day. Champions even longer!