Al is a respected cue builder. Schmelke is a cue maker. My shop wasn't set up and I was curious how Schmelke could build such cheap cues so I bought one, cost around $200 best I remember. Neither their cheapest or most expensive cue.
One piece butt, not much to go wrong. The shaft warped almost instantly. No big deal since I could turn a shaft I liked better.
Then I barely bumped the side of the tip/ferrule. The cue fell half in two. The hole for the insert had been drilled oversized to the point the insert threads would barely score the wood, no effort made to thread the shaft for the insert, the hole was so big you could screw in the ferrule with very little pressure.
That might have worked with a generous amount of glue but they only put a tiny dab of glue.
The pin didn't appear to be a pin, some very soft threaded stock. I made a shaft for it when I had my lathe up but eventually the butt warped a little too.
All I got out of the $200 stick was the rubber bumper and a sorta straight one piece bubinga butt. The cheap cue ended up being pretty expensive since I paid fifty to a hundred times the price of the rubber bumper.
Schmelke makes some spliced butt blanks that a lot of people are happy with. Even telling people that the butt was built from a blank I couldn't put my name over Schmelke's work after seeing the cue I got from them.
Hu
