Your thoughts on taper roll?

billiardthought

billiardthought

Anti-intellectualism
Silver Member
I just recently received a new sneaky pete from Schmelke. I got them to fit an OB pro+ to it. I am very happy with my purchase and the cue shoots great.

I have noticed that if I roll the cue on the table, a sliver of light comes through below the shaft every half roll. The tip does not leave the table surface. When you view the cue rolling from above, it doesn't appear to have that kind of 'oscillating' roll you notice when cues are out of whack.

Do any of you pay any attention to this? Do you try and find a way to correct this now or do you wait for a turning point where it does start to bother you? I have never really let it bother me, and have certainly had it on previous cues. Just not sure where taper roll turns into "your cue is not straight bud"....
 
A tiny bit of variance on the shaft is fine, it may not only be the shaft but also the facing that is a tiny bit off, either on the shaft or the cue.

My son's cue is like that, depending on which shaft I put on it, it shows slightly more wobble when together, but shafts and cue apart roll fine.
 
This has been discussed ad nauseum here, but my favorite way to explain my way of thinking on it.

Imagine you have a straight, steel rod that rolls perfectly flat on the table.

Now, take a file, and file away pieces of metal from one side.

Now when you roll the steel rod, light shines through.

Is the steel rod still straight?
 
If you're really worried about it have your friendly neighborhood cue repair person put it between centers on his lathe and spin it. You'll easily see whether it's true, or not.
Rolling a cue on a pool table is not always reliable. A small piece of grit can make it jump as the cue rolls over it making you think it's warped.
I always took the cue apart and placed the butt end of the shaft on the table surface, and the tip end on the rail edge. With the flat of my hand I would lightly roll the shaft back and forth, checking for irregularities. The same technique is used for the butt, as well. :smile:
 
DrGonzo said:
This has been discussed ad nauseum here, but my favorite way to explain my way of thinking on it.

Imagine you have a straight, steel rod that rolls perfectly flat on the table.

Now, take a file, and file away pieces of metal from one side.

Now when you roll the steel rod, light shines through.

Is the steel rod still straight?
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No, it is not still straight. By removing material in that portion you have moved the center of the cross-section. It is now curved with a non-circular cross-section in one place.

That said, straight doesn't matter if you have a good stroke and straight won't help if you have a bad stroke. It doesn't matter how you hold the cue, whether the bend is up, down or anywhere in between.

I shot some of my best pool ever with an Adam that I bought for $40. The shaft had nearly 1/4" of bend.

It's nice to have a straight stick...I guess.
 
ElCorazonFrio said:
No, it is not still straight. By removing material in that portion you have moved the center of the cross-section. It is now curved with a non-circular cross-section in one place.

That said, straight doesn't matter if you have a good stroke and straight won't help if you have a bad stroke. It doesn't matter how you hold the cue, whether the bend is up, down or anywhere in between.

I shot some of my best pool ever with an Adam that I bought for $40. The shaft had nearly 1/4" of bend.

It's nice to have a straight stick...I guess.
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It's still straight, just non-circular.

If you put a laser line between the 2 ends they would still be level.

Only way to have a straight shaft with that thinking is to have it be the same diameter end to end. A cue shaft is not a level dowel, nor is it a perfect triangle shape, it's more like a coke bottle with curves, but the center point should go from center of tip to center of pin without bending. If that line is even, unless someone really chewed up the tapering, the shaft is fine.

I drew a very rough picture as an example, green line is center of one end to center of the other end.
First one is not straight, other 2 are straight but not parallel.

picture.php
 
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Even the very best cues sometimes develop taper rolls over time. Don't let it bother you.
You seem to have a sober and reasonable attitude about it, don't let the microscope cue inspectors get to you. Every time I see one of those guys rolling their cue back and forth, back and forth while staring in manic fascination, thats a telltale sign that they have no clue at all. That being said, if you are buying a brand new cue (fresh off the lathe) and there is a significant roll allready, that might be a sign that the cuemaker has chosen a bad piece of wood that will warp more in the future, or that he just doesn't care about his reputation.

Wood will often warp when moving from one climate type to another, some cue shafts will move with the changing of the seasons as well. Those minor movements have no practical effect. Nobody on earth has a stroke accurate enough to be affected by these small rolls, and if the roll is large enough to be seen by the naked eye you just turn the cue to compensate.
 
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If the shaft rolls good on the table by itself, the shaft is straight.


If it doesn't roll straight when it is on the butt, it can only be four

different things that can be wrong.:smile:
 
hang-the-9 said:
It's still straight, just non-circular.

If you put a laser line between the 2 ends they would still be level.

Only way to have a straight shaft with that thinking is to have it be the same diameter end to end. A cue shaft is not a level dowel, nor is it a perfect triangle shape, it's more like a coke bottle with curves, but the center point should go from center of tip to center of pin without bending. If that line is even, unless someone really chewed up the tapering, the shaft is fine.
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No, you can have tapered and straight. You can have circular to triangular cross-section and straight. You cannot remove material from one side of something straight in a small section and have it still be straight.

Here's why:

Straight in this case is defined by the geometric centers of the cross-sections all aligning along a single axis. When you remove material from one side of a circle, you have basically made a D-shape. The geometric center of that new shape will not be in the same spot as the circle you have flattened, ipso facto, the center is not on the same axis as the rest of the part.

If the shaft is straight and there are no major defects in the finish, there may well be light under parts of the shaft, but that light will be the same as you roll it. If the amount of light changes, IT IS NOT, by ANY definition STRAIGHT.

If you can't understand this, you have no business talking about what is or isn't straight.
 
Every shaft i've ever rolled has a taper roll, even from the best cue makers on the planet. It is what it is. If the tip don't come off the table then roll with it... lol, get it, roll with it... I really do crack myself up...
 
cbi1000 said:
Every shaft i've ever rolled has a taper roll, even from the best cue makers on the planet. It is what it is. If the tip don't come off the table then roll with it... lol, get it, roll with it... I really do crack myself up...
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The biggest problem is that nothing is straight. You give me something 'straight' and I can prove that it isn't.

It's all about the tolerances. If people were intelligent or informed, they might accept a shaft as 'straight' if the variance by any measurement was less than, say 0.040"...or something.

But, we get opinionated, uneducated buying public and makers of equipment who are equally uneducated and we get BS terms like, 'Taper Roll' as a new standard.

When I buy something 'straight' for the equipment I design and build, I specify a tolerance. I then measure that part to verify it is in that tolerance.
 
ElCorazonFrio said:
No, you can have tapered and straight. You can have circular to triangular cross-section and straight. You cannot remove material from one side of something straight in a small section and have it still be straight.

Here's why:

Straight in this case is defined by the geometric centers of the cross-sections all aligning along a single axis. When you remove material from one side of a circle, you have basically made a D-shape. The geometric center of that new shape will not be in the same spot as the circle you have flattened, ipso facto, the center is not on the same axis as the rest of the part.

If the shaft is straight and there are no major defects in the finish, there may well be light under parts of the shaft, but that light will be the same as you roll it. If the amount of light changes, IT IS NOT, by ANY definition STRAIGHT.

If you can't understand this, you have no business talking about what is or isn't straight.
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I am not sure if we have a communication problem or what here, but it sounds like you are saying the following.
If I start out with a perfectly straight piece of square steel tubing then notch one side of it so an ant can pass below it while it is laying on the floor it sounds like you are saying this steel would no longer be straight.
If I take my perfectly straight cue and file a groove 180 degrees around the joint area even though it is not perfectly round it will still be straight.
 
I play just as bad whether the cue is straight or has a slight taper. As others pointed out, don't let it get to your head. I think this is only useful when you're looking to buy a new cue, and use it a bargaining tactic to drop the price.
 
billiardthought said:
I just recently received a new sneaky pete from Schmelke. I got them to fit an OB pro+ to it. I am very happy with my purchase and the cue shoots great.

I have noticed that if I roll the cue on the table, a sliver of light comes through below the shaft every half roll. The tip does not leave the table surface. When you view the cue rolling from above, it doesn't appear to have that kind of 'oscillating' roll you notice when cues are out of whack.

Do any of you pay any attention to this? Do you try and find a way to correct this now or do you wait for a turning point where it does start to bother you? I have never really let it bother me, and have certainly had it on previous cues. Just not sure where taper roll turns into "your cue is not straight bud"....
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So there are a few things you can check. Sight down the assembled cue from the butt side and slowly turn it. You can see even small warps like this. If the shaft looks offset at the joint (the butt and shaft are not on the same line) then the joint was not properly aligned. The facing need to be mated and this is usually an easy $15, 5 minute fix by a cue maker. More rarely a pin is bent, but still can be fixed.

If everything looks aligned and appear to be straight, it's probably the shape of the shaft. These shafts are tapered on a taper machine, which is a lathe set up to automatically taper shafts. They are usually then hand finished. The taper machines can vibrate and create a slightly oval shape. Hand finishing can do the same thing. You can check it by measuring the diameter from various points with calipers.

Either way, your deviation does not sound like an issue. If the shaft or butt rises more than, say, an 1/8th inch, then I would be more concerned. Over time, very few cues will stay dead straight - that's just the nature of wooden cues.
 
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fastone371 said:
I am not sure if we have a communication problem or what here, but it sounds like you are saying the following.
If I start out with a perfectly straight piece of square steel tubing then notch one side of it so an ant can pass below it while it is laying on the floor it sounds like you are saying this steel would no longer be straight.
If I take my perfectly straight cue and file a groove 180 degrees around the joint area even though it is not perfectly round it will still be straight.
Click to expand...

I think you are purposely taking this to levels of ridiculousness to try to prove me wrong.

I'm saying that in a 'taper roll', which is widely defined as a change in cross-section shape (i.e. it's not a circle any longer) which, when rolled on a flat surface, will show different high and low points.

Every cue I have had seen with 'taper roll' has had one side on the table and one off at certain points. This means that it is not straight. I don't care if it is because of a change in cross-section shape or simply a bend...It is not straight by any definition.

It obviously isn't one of those cute drawings that Hang-the-nine did...can't be one side isn't a mirror image of the other. Period.
 
ElCorazonFrio said:
No, you can have tapered and straight. You can have circular to triangular cross-section and straight. You cannot remove material from one side of something straight in a small section and have it still be straight.

Here's why:

Straight in this case is defined by the geometric centers of the cross-sections all aligning along a single axis. When you remove material from one side of a circle, you have basically made a D-shape. The geometric center of that new shape will not be in the same spot as the circle you have flattened, ipso facto, the center is not on the same axis as the rest of the part.

If the shaft is straight and there are no major defects in the finish, there may well be light under parts of the shaft, but that light will be the same as you roll it. If the amount of light changes, IT IS NOT, by ANY definition STRAIGHT.

If you can't understand this, you have no business talking about what is or isn't straight.
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It's still straight but not balanced. There is a difference between something being round and perfectly even and just being straight. The only way I'd see a shaft not straight is if the tip was moving around when rolled, not when the space under the shaft changed when you rolled it. Of course not many people would want a shaft that is tapered in some crazy way, but it's still straight even if a cuemaker cut a shaft in half and made it a D shape.

You are going down the road, not turning the wheel, straight, then the lane next to you merges into yours. Are you still going straight or did you all of a sudden turn right because the lane next to you went away? Did you have to turn the wheel when the other lane went away? Still going straight right? But the width along the road changed.

Here is another example, one is a "straight" candle stick, the other is not. Would anyone call the first candle stick NOT straight? Even if it has all those things bumping out?

tin-candle-holder.jpg


wood-candle-holder-wcdl-1bb.jpg


They both will wobble on a lathe when spun, but the first one has one center to the other with a straight line that does not leave the outside of the shape.
 
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hang-the-9 said:
It's still straight but not balanced. There is a difference between something being round and perfectly even and just being straight. The only way I'd see a shaft not straight is if the tip was moving around when rolled, not when the space under the shaft changed when you rolled it. Of course not many people would want a shaft that is tapered in some crazy way, but it's still straight even if a cuemaker cut a shaft in half and made it a D shape.

You are going down the road, not turning the wheel, straight, then the lane next to you merges into yours. Are you still going straight or did you all of a sudden turn right because the lane next to you went away? Did you have to turn the wheel when the other lane went away? Still going straight right? But the width along the road changed.
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Man, you need to work on your reading comprehension, then maybe take a refresher in geometry. Go back to school in engineering, work for at least a decade designing cnc machines and work on manufacturing process.

After that you might be almost qualified to argue with me about what is straight.
 
ElCorazonFrio said:
I think you are purposely taking this to levels of ridiculousness to try to prove me wrong.

I did not for it mean to come across that way at all. What makes this difficult is trying to explain from a keyboard. I can take a piece of tubing and put it in my lathe. The hole up the center can be dead straight but when I take an O.D. surface cut the bit may not remove material from the entire surface on the outside. Even though the I.D. and O.D. are not perfectly concentric with each other I would hesitate saying it is not straight.
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