A hand made cue...

Yup, traditional snooker cues are made with hand planes.

An AZBer posted such work over in the gallery recently. He used traditional methods to start making snooker cues.


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it is a thing of beauty to watch a man make ANYTHING with out any computerized assistance. I am in awe of what can be done with modern technology. To me this man has inlaid a small part of his soul, so to speak...

I am still a firm believer the best cues are made with out computerized or pantograph assistance. My cue isn't, but that is neither here nor there, different strokes folks!

best regards,

Justin
 
I thought I was doing things the hard way when I first started out building them on just a wood lathe. He had a wood lathe and still chose not to use it for tapering. My hat is off to him as he is really good with his hands.
 
cueman said:
I thought I was doing things the hard way when I first started out building them on just a wood lathe. He had a wood lathe and still chose not to use it for tapering. My hat is off to him as he is really good with his hands.
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I was at a guys shop years ago and he used a wood lathe and a hand held belt sander to do his tapering. Abe Rich used to have, I think it is called a centerless sander/grinder and he would feed a shaft through and use a little side pressure with his hand to produce his shaft tapers.
 
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macguy said:
I was at a guys shop years ago and he used a wood lathe and a hand held belt sander to do his tapering. Abe Rich used to have, I think it is called a centerless sander/grinder and he would feed a shaft through and use a little side pressure with his hand to produce his shaft tapers.
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I once visited Abe and all he had at the time was a wood lathe a long tool rest for his hand tool tapering and it had a little metal turning attachment he could use to do his joint work. He was complaining about another Hall of Famer's cues bringing thousands of dollars when in his words "he was not even a turner." So I assumed he did all his turning on that lathe.
 
cueman said:
I once visited Abe and all he had at the time was a wood lathe a long tool rest for his hand tool tapering and it had a little metal turning attachment he could use to do his joint work. He was complaining about another Hall of Famer's cues bringing thousands of dollars when in his words "he was not even a turner." So I assumed he did all his turning on that lathe.
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i miss abe.
i lived in miami and would visit his shop and talk with him about many things
R.I.P.
 
huh?

With all the gyrations I go through to make sure the cue and pin and everything comes out perfectly straight...............

this guy does it with a wood lathe, a hand plane, and some sand paper.........

how does he keep it straight????

go figure.....

Kim
 
One cuemaker...I'm thinking it was Thomas Wayne?? used to tell an interesting story about a guy that literally whittled his cue with his pocketknife out of a birch tree I think it was. Supposedly he did a very decent job too. Hat's off to this guy in the youtube vid, nice job for what he has to work with.
 
whammo57 said:
With all the gyrations I go through to make sure the cue and pin and everything comes out perfectly straight...............

this guy does it with a wood lathe, a hand plane, and some sand paper.........

how does he keep it straight????

go figure.....

Kim
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Hi Kim,

It's a lost art. Why, because it is obsolete because of technology.

Cool to watch because it is primitive. Now rub some whale blubber on it and run out in snooker!.:clapping:

rick
 
JAlan said:
One cuemaker...I'm thinking it was Thomas Wayne?? used to tell an interesting story about a guy that literally whittled his cue with his pocketknife out of a birch tree I think it was. Supposedly he did a very decent job too. Hat's off to this guy in the youtube vid, nice job for what he has to work with.
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I heard the same and I think you are correct that it was Thomas W.
 
DoubleD said:
Funny statement. If people were interested in having cues because they involved 'technology', they would not have any wood in them. They wouldn't be decorated and they would be boring.

Much of a cue is art, so beating that particular horse with technology is a bit asinine.

Of course this is the age where the top ten hits on the radio are all sung by the same 'artist' (autotune) and most people will sit through 'Avatar' several times but won't watch 'Lawrence of Arabia' or 'Chinatown'.

BTW, books are obsolete technology, but bring a lot of enjoyment to many people.

dld
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You know....this could come full circle on us. There might be a trend in the future to use your own 'handmade' cue for playing. Something made by hand with little or no power tools. It happened in the traditional archery hobby, and is still happening.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring..
 
I think the "pure" way of thinking is comming back-at some point in time.
Over here Vinyl has been doomed but now new artist release music on it and a record (read-vinyl) players goes for $2000 and more...

When it comes to cues, people might want a hand made cue, but when they inspect it with the magnifier glass, they say this is not good enough and call the cue maker and complain.,,
People want the purity but still complain about glue lines, non even points and so forth....

What would we see in 10 years?

K
 
Chopdoc said:
Yup, traditional snooker cues are made with hand planes.

An AZBer posted such work over in the gallery recently. He used traditional methods to start making snooker cues.


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Was that little old me?

:-)

ImageUploadedByTapatalk1342294695.037159.jpg
ImageUploadedByTapatalk1342294720.238153.jpg
 
JAlan said:
You know....this could come full circle on us. There might be a trend in the future to use your own 'handmade' cue for playing. Something made by hand with little or no power tools. It happened in the traditional archery hobby, and is still happening.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring..
Click to expand...


I think there will always be at least a niche market for such things in general.

Whether or not it might become more popular in pool cues would depend on demand I think. There are those that appreciate the work at a fundamental level, but the masses are currently gravitating toward things like MEZZ, Lucasi, Players, and engineered shafts like Predator.

Trends do change though.

Look at the cabinetry trade. Even a lot of the stuff that people call "high grade" is really mass produced and often the people who made it and the people who install it couldn't work a coping saw correctly if their life depended on it. Yet there are still those who do such work with great skillful use of hand tools like chisels and coping saws.

Either way takes time and skill but it is different. If a person cuts an inlay pocket and inlay with CNC he has a lot of skill and time in setting that up and maintaining the equipment to do it perfectly. Once it is programmed he can use that in as many cues as he likes though. The one who does it by hand puts a lot of time and skill into as well. If he wants to do it again, even within the same cue, he has to repeat the entire process again. So it's different in many ways and th skills are different though they overlap.

Neither is "better" it just depends on what the maker wants to do and what the buyer wants to buy.




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hand made cue

Hat's off to him for the effort. But can you imagine what that would like like in one of Tikklers photos. Of course, there would be the token AZ flippers saying it was the greatest thing in the world, and at the same time
offering it for sale. Orville and Wilbur built things by hand, but I'm not lining up to fly it. The archers love the hand made bows, until they have to shot for score, then they are looking for arrow speed and stability.
I think it's great people are willing to do things by hand, but primative is for art not for function. You don't do things because they are easier, you do things because they are better.
 
I think in many cases technology has outstripped the primitive techniques and it isn't possible to meet the grade with primitive techniques. You're example of the Wright brothers is perfect.

I am not entirely convinced that it is strictly true with pool cues though.

Even if one wished to make an "engineered shaft" one could do it with primitive techniques.

Cue technology has come a long way, but I believe it is still essentially possible to replicate the same work with fairly primitive means. It often wouldn't be a reasonable undertaking of course, and the skills to accomplish it would be great of course, but nonetheless possible.

The wright brothers couldn't build a 747. But a dedicated craftsman could replicate modern cue work with relatively simple tools down to the last detail I believe.

EDIT: Since I am not a cue maker these are obviously the musings of the outside observer and very well simply may be cannon fodder. I generally defer to what the cue makers say, though that isn't always easy since there isn't always a consensus on matters.


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Is doing something by hand better? 'Better' is so subjective. We use tools because we can't do things with our bare hands. We use power tools because they are more efficient than hand tools (when used for the task they were designed for). Making cues without the use of power tools may make us all feel warm and fuzzy, but is the product truly an improvement over competing products? Is it more efficient? Sure there are beautiful cues that are truly handmade, but they can't approach the intricacy of a Richard
Black artwork.
 
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