Nobody here gets it, Tony isnt about the art and inlays, that's secondary to playability. Tonys passion is building the best playing cues in the world, the inlay work is added to "blanks" s tony calls them per a customers order. the "blank" is a 8 pt cue with no inlay work, he builds them long before a customer orders a cue.
he builds around 12-15 blanks a year and some get chopped up because the wood does funny things along the building process, so every year he builds as many cues as he has good blanks. its a good process so people dont have to wait forever for a cue and he can take his time building perfect blanks.
I have a very heavly inlayed BB that took 5 months and 2 weeks to inlay, it dont play any better than my regular one, its just art/flash same cue under the hood, Tony and his grandson work on the designs together and Tony never does the inlay work. tony works with the wood, making sure the wood is what he is looking for, monoriting the humidity 24/7 in his shop. working with adhesives, lubricants, design work for construction processes that other cue makers dont use. One example is there is no pin at the A joint in the butt, its one piece of wood from the bumper to the pin-how many other cue makers do that? very few. there are reasons for everything. the ivory over SS on the joint isnt for looks, its there to regulate the weight of the joint, not everyone has the same amount of SS or ivory, depending on the cue he uses different amounts of ivory/SS to get the balance he is looking for.
Tony is a scientist and a cue maker, the inlay/art stuff is where the profit is at, he keeps the C&C machine running to bring in the $$ to drive his passion to build the best playing cues there is. thats his bag, I dont know any other person like that.
Unless you been to his shop and really know him you just dont get it, I know I didnt get it. now that I have been there many times and know him well I get it. I was just going to ignore this thread, but it got to the point i couldnt stand it any longer so I spoke up. I played the past 3-4 years with a Boar as my player, my cue has been used by damn near everyone, i let people use it and they all say the same thing. Ask Max, Shane, JA, Ralf, Cotton, Tang, Mike dechane, Artie, Rodney, Pinnigar they all say the same thing. guys that hate me who arnt kissing my ass still say the same thing, "that might be the best hitting cue ever" and they might be right. I have gus thats similar, ray martins gus plays similar to boars. I will add one thing I wouldnt like the Boars on slow cloth, 860/760 is what Tony has designed them for-they dont have enuff backbone for the old slow cloth.
Its about playability not art for Tony. As far as inlays go thats a C&C pissing contest these days, 10 years ago it was more the man not his machines. those days are gone. I have inlays in a Boar so small anyone needs X2 magnification to see them, so what? that's over IMO, all that counts is how it plays. and a few cue makers can make that happen, Gus did with Sears tools 30 years ago, tony said he learned more from Gus than anyone else. Look at Barrys cues, how good do they play? perfect. and he aint putting 1000 inlays in them. the C&C pissing contest is for other posers, not the real guys.
