What's your opinion?

Bill the Cat

Bill the Cat

Proud maker of CAT cues
Silver Member
OK, here's one to chew on.

You have two pieces of wood of the same species.

One is rather "uninteresting", but has straight, even, tight grain.

The other is beautiful with intense figure and lots of swirls.

Which one will make a better "hitting" cue?

Oh, and did I mention, coring is not an option.

Let the games begin!
 
IF the weigh the same and are the same hardness/rigidity, the higher pitched one is my choice.
Then again if it's swirly and off-grain, it will be cored here with a choice dowel.
 
Bill the Cat said:
OK, here's one to chew on.

You have two pieces of wood of the same species.

One is rather "uninteresting", but has straight, even, tight grain.

The other is beautiful with intense figure and lots of swirls.

Which one will make a better "hitting" cue?

Oh, and did I mention, coring is not an option.

Let the games begin!
Click to expand...

Bill either piece could make a great hitting cue, whether a piece of wood has great figure of perfect straight grain it comes down to tone. Most cue makers have some type of technique to check the tone of wood they are using and this also includes shaft wood.

The major difference between highly figured and plain straight grain is stability. To understand this you must have a understanding of the properties of wood by species, some woods are more flexible and remain so even after years of use, and others are brittle. The hardness of wood doesn't necessarily mean that a wood will be flexible or brittle. Each wood has its own characteristics do to where it grows, and the environment it grows in.

In most cases however, most people associate Figure with weakness and I am one of those people, so highly figured non-cored in my opinion can be a crap shot that I will not risk.
 
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One of the best looking (top cue) 5A curly hard rock maple blanks from upper Michigan (and well aged) I have ever had became a fire poker overnight when the customer banged (slammed??) his cue tip down on the table out of frustration and snapped it in half. Unfortunately it was not cored (my bad). I took the cue back and gave him another one at no charge. It's still sitting on a work bench reminding me daily about coring unstable wood. That cue hit great until.... )<:

Yes, all white is ivory. This cue has one of the best looking cocobolo handles also, bummer!!!!


John



PC030004-1.jpg
 
You may not know which will play the best until you put it in a cue. You might be able to figure out which will sound the best, but every piece of wood has it's own playing charactoristics. So just saying figured or straight grain does not give all the information needed to know how it will play.
 
Well.........

Thanks to those who have given there opinions! After suffering through firestorm threads on international trade and intellectual property rights, I thought I'd try to get the discussion back to cuemaking:grin:

I do have comments for several respondents.

JoeyInCali & jkmarshall_cues - I knew that even though I said "coring is not an option", there would be those who used that as an answer:wink:

rob@BPQ - :kma:

cueman - I'm with you. When dealing with wood (as with life), just when you think you have it all figured out....it will surprise you:shrug:
 
Bill the Cat said:
Thanks to those who have given there opinions! After suffering through firestorm threads on international trade and intellectual property rights, I thought I'd try to get the discussion back to cuemaking:grin: . . .
Click to expand...

Thanks for the attempt to refocus. I'm tired of the drama as well.
Mr H
 
I'll tell you fifteen years after you build the cues and I can roll them on a table. Myself, I would rather play with a $50 dollar cue that rolled straight and had a good tip than a warped Balabushka.
 
Just make 2 cues and you have the answer to some questions.
Then later down the track , you may have more questions.
What people desire in cues today, is not what was desired from cues 20 years ago.
Who knows what will be desired in another 10 years from now.
I can remember seeing some really nice grained furnature that was made back in 1981.
The commnet to the cabinet maker at the time was , could you not find any nice straight grained knot free timber?
He did offer to take it back and make another , but they just kept it and unfortunately bad mouthed him for about 10 years.
Jump to 2009 and people are now marvelling at the grain and knots and saying how wounderfull it looks.The owners don't admit that at the time they did not like it.
I happen to know the cabinet maker and the owner , so I have both sides of the story.
Cues are no different.
What is beauty to one person, can be out right Ugly to someone else.
Neil
 
well said neil. i was thinking the same thing. personally i dont core. i also do use and high figured BEM or CURLY. play comes before looks in my book...
 
From my experience the denser more stable piece will play better ... A famous maker used only straight grained maple with no figure for his forearms as he believed in the concept I first described ... I go for seasoned wood where ever I can find it as it has been through the gambit of torture and survived , I try to give it new life in the form of a cue for a life of more torture ... :cool:
 
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