Something I found out about most Phenolic used for cues...

macguy said:
Have you found the supplier of the stuff you want? Do they sell in small quantities? Many of these companies don't really stock but run-to-order. You can't call and say send me 6 feet of something. I used to deal with Spaulding and if I remember right it was like $2500.00 minimum and a 3 month lead time on the order. The suppliers you are knocking as selling poor grade junk as you seem to imply, do a tremendous service. Most of what they sell would be completely not available to the average cue maker at all. In fact hearing a $10,000 minimum order is not unusably. Cue makers are nickle dime guys. You would have nothing to buy if not for the investment of the suppliers. I hope when you find these suppliers that will fill small orders you share them. Funny, I read on here all the time someone wanting to buy a foot of something and complaining about Atlas having a $50.00 minimum. Wait till they get into the real world of doing business with a manufacture. There is probably nothing made that can't be gotten in many grades. But in most cases who cares. I doubt we need materials for cues in military grade or would be willing to pay 20 times the price and feel it justified. What you just learned is although interesting, and common knowledge by the way, may not really be that relevant to cue making or at last only to a small degree. There is always a "Point of diminishing returns" with everything. No matter how much more you put in you can only get so much back. That is not to say you should not always be striving to learn more and make the best product you can.
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I read recently where a Atlas customer got some real bad phenolic then got sick, Atlas took it back after 6 or 8 months, its in the cue maker forum. point is Atlas got some shit dumped on them and their customers noticed the white streaks in the black(i think that was what the thread read). I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that Atlas(who I have liked for years and awalys recomend) is at the shit end of the hog troff when it comes to buying the good stuff, just because they arnt buying a Million $$$'s worth like the areo-space, Boeing, etc companies do. So they get the best they can but its a outlet for the manufactor and thats why we see inconsistancy in the product-read my post above.


our demand as a industry is just to small
 
Fatboy said:
I read recently where a Atlas customer got some real bad phenolic then got sick, Atlas took it back after 6 or 8 months, its in the cue maker forum. point is Atlas got some shit dumped on them and their customers noticed the white streaks in the black(i think that was what the thread read). I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that Atlas(who I have liked for years and awalys recomend) is at the shit end of the hog troff when it comes to buying the good stuff, just because they arnt buying a Million $$$'s worth like the areo-space, Boeing, etc companies do. So they get the best they can but its a outlet for the manufactor and thats why we see inconsistancy in the product-read my post above.


our demand as a industry is just to small
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Atlas Billiards is just a small division of Atlas Fibre.
http://www.atlasfibre.com/
THEY ARE HUGE.
Double-black linen tubes and rods were going downhill from the time Chad said they were not getting them anymore ( I talked to him at the 2001 BCA Show ) and would have to change manufacturer.
I don't think the cosmetics have anything to do with the ISO rating .
Do you think they care if that black phenolic is pretty or ugly as long as they are within NEMA specs ? I doubt it.
 
Piercyexclusive said:
I will buy from the companies who buy from the manufactures that have scrap laying around at the iso I want the pieces to be. they make bearing cages for nasa. the company is located here in Hattiesburg, Ms. I mean the scrap pieces they have are pretty big pieces and they sell they really cheap and as a matter of fact they just gave me a pallet about 2 feet tall with scraps for less than $50 just this morning. it had round stocks of .60 to 1.75 flat pieces that range from 3x4 inches to 2feet x 3feet ....

They even took the time to show me how they tested every piece prior to cutting them It was interesting.
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Marshal,

Is the round material rolled rod or sheet rod?

There is a huge difference.
 
Piercyexclusive said:
I will buy from the companies who buy from the manufactures that have scrap laying around at the iso I want the pieces to be. they make bearing cages for nasa. the company is located here in Hattiesburg, Ms. I mean the scrap pieces they have are pretty big pieces and they sell they really cheap and as a matter of fact they just gave me a pallet about 2 feet tall with scraps for less than $50 just this morning. it had round stocks of .60 to 1.75 flat pieces that range from 3x4 inches to 2feet x 3feet ....

They even took the time to show me how they tested every piece prior to cutting them It was interesting.
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I do the same thing. I have a high end wood working place near me and I get ebony, Cocobolo, and all kinds of exotics out of their scrap bin for nothing. What they throw away is plenty to re-cut for cue work. I have my own drying room. I built a kitchen recently from coriun (sp?) scrap I recut into 8 inch tiles I got from a counter place. I built a kitchen that would have cost a few thousand pretty much for nothing, just a little labor.
 
Piercyexclusive said:
I just found out that Some companies buy seconds from a phenolic making companies because the iso grading for cues aren't so high but yet they sell it to us as HIGH GRADE? which company you ask? they wont tell me. I can understand. but still just because we are not as informative on materials such as these they are suckering us. sucks.
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I would think most know the answer to that already.
 
Piercyexclusive said:
I use my phenolics for many different applications...
I do not just make cues.
i make hand forged knives, hand forged samurai swords, guns (I use phenolic for this also), rifles, gun and rifle stocks, fishing rods, fixtures, and I make custom jigs for people also that requires phenolic also (which grading has no meaning for the most part) I make washers with them, mill them out for for gaskets for engines(large scale and small), i make and do so much more than you could ever imagine....I try to incorporate any knowledge I have of one subject with others, if they can help with the improvement of any other applications I may be working on, then I use it....

So I use mine.....

But from now on when it applies to my cues I will make sure to test it and use only high graded materials (this is what I want) to have a more consistent hit and be a little more assured that I am doing what I can to do the best I can for my customers.

you can do whatever you want.

I just wanted to inform people of what I learned not bashing anyone or whatever you do. cause I do not know if cue makers know this.
And I do not think that by informing people of what I learned is a bad thing.

If what I am doing is bad because of what I say then maybe.... I should just keep everything I learn to my self.

I guess there really isn't reason to try and inform anyone of things I found out, discovered, created, invented, even the processes of certain things, and the applications of certain materials to anything.

Keeping all those things to myself will only certainly help me.

Disclaimer: I mean this in no ways to offend anyone. I do not understand sarcasm or what it means to be a smart ass. I am someone who has a hard time speaking the English language and I speak 6 other languages so it's very hard for me to express or convey what I feel to paper or computer by the writing in English. so please I do not want to start a flame war.
I just felt that sharing my knowledge of something I recently found would be a good thing for everyone. I am not an EXPERT in Phenolics I just started learning and from what I learned from trials and experiments i tried to paraphrase and translate everything to this post.
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First of all I have not flamed you, disrespected you, attacked you or anything else. Believe this or not I do appreciate you taking the time to share your knowledge, and I do not understand why you feel like your being some how transgressed against.

This site is about learning and all information is useful to me at least, I just had some unanswered questions regarding some of the things in your thread so I asked some questions.

I am sorry if that offended you in any way that was never my intention.

Take Care
 
Any cuemaker that has been around the block knows who has phenolic worth getting & who's isn't so hot. A little time & research is all that's needed to educate one's self in the choosing of phenolics and suppliers. But regardless, if you are depending on the grade of phenolic to provide the hit you desire then you have more to worry about than just how many air bubbles it has in it.

Phenolics we use in joint collars & buttcaps & rings is nothing more than a reinforcing agent to protect the ends of the jointed areas from cracking & such. The cue's construction and wood quality is what gives the hit & feel. The exceptions I can think of are piloted steel joints and solid ivory joints. But any time the joint is merely a reinforcing collar, then it should not be affecting the hit so long as the cue's faces are cut true square and the woods are of at least medium density such as maple.

I form this opinion based on years of trying to find that special material or construction technique that would make my cues hit & play better. After all the experimentation & cues built, I calculate all my findings & arrive at one conclusion. The cue has to be built solid with good wood, and every cue has to be built with repeated specifications to give each cue the hit that you like and to be consistent from one cue to the next. I use phenolic, bone, ivory, polymers, wood, etc. for my joint collars & none feel or hit noticeably different. Way back when my cues were a crap shoot to knowing how they'd feel & play, I thought things like that mattered significantly. Now I see things differently. Nothing's mystical anymore. Phenolics are chosen for how clean they cut & how they look, not what grade they are or how they were manufactured. If I build my cue correctly, that phenolic will not affect the hit negatively nor positively. It'll just be there to reinforce the end of the wood and add an aesthetic accent. If I were constructing my cues in such a manner that structural integrity was reliant on my accent pieces, then perhaps i'd feel differently. As I know it, only a very few build this way. The rest build similar to the way I build. The way I build does not place importance on the level of quality at which the phenolic was manufactured. If at some point my phenols begin vaporizing & dusting away then i'll rethink my position. But as of now I have never seen a phenolic that wasn't harder & stronger than ANY of the woods we use in cues, so as I see it all are cue grade. Just some thoughts....
 
ISO is a standards organization, it is not a standard by itself. So when you say ISO 95%, that has no meaning. There may be an ISO standard for phenolic grades, I have no idea whether there is or not. What we need to find is the ISO specification number. It generally is stated like ISO (standard number) : (year published). There is a huge catalogue of ISO specs BTW, not easy to find random things by browsing it.
 
Piercyexclusive said:
And if people dont want to pay for something a little more expensive to have a consistent "batch" of something then that's fine with me .... But, I want materials that can provide me with consistent results and it would not matter what "batch" the products come from.
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As soon as you put a piece of wood in your cues you are no longer obtaining consistent results.
 
phenolic iso

Piercyexclusive said:
dont know. I haven't test it out yet..... I will now. but I think the cue balls are non linen based and the iso testing of those are not known to me yet but will be testing it soon. thanks
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I wonder if the lower iso weighs less? What part of the cue is it used for.
If a ferrule it might lessen deflection?
Bill
 
qbilder said:
Any cuemaker that has been around the block knows who has phenolic worth getting & who's isn't so hot. A little time & research is all that's needed to educate one's self in the choosing of phenolics and suppliers. But regardless, if you are depending on the grade of phenolic to provide the hit you desire then you have more to worry about than just how many air bubbles it has in it.

Phenolics we use in joint collars & buttcaps & rings is nothing more than a reinforcing agent to protect the ends of the jointed areas from cracking & such. The cue's construction and wood quality is what gives the hit & feel. The exceptions I can think of are piloted steel joints and solid ivory joints. But any time the joint is merely a reinforcing collar, then it should not be affecting the hit so long as the cue's faces are cut true square and the woods are of at least medium density such as maple.

I form this opinion based on years of trying to find that special material or construction technique that would make my cues hit & play better. After all the experimentation & cues built, I calculate all my findings & arrive at one conclusion. The cue has to be built solid with good wood, and every cue has to be built with repeated specifications to give each cue the hit that you like and to be consistent from one cue to the next. I use phenolic, bone, ivory, polymers, wood, etc. for my joint collars & none feel or hit noticeably different. Way back when my cues were a crap shoot to knowing how they'd feel & play, I thought things like that mattered significantly. Now I see things differently. Nothing's mystical anymore. Phenolics are chosen for how clean they cut & how they look, not what grade they are or how they were manufactured. If I build my cue correctly, that phenolic will not affect the hit negatively nor positively. It'll just be there to reinforce the end of the wood and add an aesthetic accent. If I were constructing my cues in such a manner that structural integrity was reliant on my accent pieces, then perhaps i'd feel differently. As I know it, only a very few build this way. The rest build similar to the way I build. The way I build does not place importance on the level of quality at which the phenolic was manufactured. If at some point my phenols begin vaporizing & dusting away then i'll rethink my position. But as of now I have never seen a phenolic that wasn't harder & stronger than ANY of the woods we use in cues, so as I see it all are cue grade. Just some thoughts....
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I have to assume he was talking about phenolic for tips.
I can't imagine someone claiming that changing the phenolic in a joint ring or butt cap is going to change the way a cue plays in any discernible manner.
 
Eric I was thinking the same thing...glad you said it......and sheldon I belive he was making that claim......like eric crisp said aside from machine ability and finish quaility I don't belive it makes a huge difference......but if your useing a soft plastic at the joint then that may make a difference......but not between phenolics........we have enough complications in cue building up to this point already and it makes building cues hard due to the general public taking things out of context.....I can see it now....a customer looks at a cue he likes in my shop and has his wallet in his hand and boom......what is the iso rating on the phenolic used in this cue!!!!!!!!!!!!!..wwwwwhhhhhhhhhuuuuuaaaaatttttt??????......well now my jaw has hit the floor and the guy is on his way out the door becuase he has heard hearsay on the subject thru a hundred other people........that being said.....percy I would love to here of a source for better phenolics if it means pricing is better and quaility is up........lord knows the stuff is expensive enough as it is................interesting thread
 
The OP way out of his league. He contradicts himself with his stories and thinks a piece of cactus is wood (he has another post showing a dried piece of cactus that he thinks is an exotic wood).


Best to let this thread die.
 
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