Here is what cuemaker Thomas Wayne posted on the subject in February of 1997:
Deflection/Squirt and the Predator shaft phenomenon explained:
First a bit of history…
My first experiments with loaded shafts came about for the same reasons
as many other cuemakers: the search for better performance. Yes, that’s
right, the brass weighted ferrule (I tried steel) is OLD news. Many
before me, and many after me have played with it, all obtaining the same
results. I won’t bore you with the physics involved (though believe me,
I could), but the massive sideways cueball movement caused by a weighted
ferrule proves conclusively that greater tip mass produces less shaft
DEFLECTION (correct use of term; see B. Stroud definitions) and
correspondingly greater cueball deflection, which we lovingly call
"SQUIRT". This discovery prompted the question: What happens if we
REDUCE the mass at the tip of the shaft (I have coined the descriptive
phrase "negative loaded ferrule")? The answer to this helped me solve
another problem (actually two problems) I was having with Ivory
ferrules.
Because the winters in Alaska are so dry, Ivory ferrules tended to crack
uncontrollably. After much experimentation, I discovered that replacing
the standard maple tenon inside the ferrule with a softer wood allowed
the Ivory to shrink around the tenon -compressing it slightly- without
cracking the ferrule. This in turn led to another interesting
discovery. Ivory ferrules weigh approximately 25% more than phenolic
ferrules and, as I already knew, this causes them to exhibit more
squirt. Lo and behold, the softer tenon also weighs substantially less
than a maple tenon, and this factor eliminated the increase in squirt
caused by the heavier Ivory ferrule. The softer wood I use is Alaskan
Yellow Cedar, which as strong longitudinally as maple, but weighs almost
as little as Balsa. Plus it exhibits the least tendency to warp of any
wood I have ever seen.
Fast forward to the early nineties. Alan Clawson approached me at a
tournament in Philadelphia to show me the new innovation he was involved
with: the Predator shaft/ferrule system. At that time, they wanted to
interest other cuemakers in buying laminated shafts from their company.
In the original illustrations he showed me, the ferrule tenon was drawn
as a SOLID phenolic rod. Of course, in production, the Predator ferrule
tenon is actually a thin walled HOLLOW phenolic tube extending about 2
to 3 inches into the shaft. To this day, I don’t know if the diagram I
was shown was a "smoke screen", or if they had intended to originally
use solid rod. Based on my understanding that it was to be solid, I
knew I wasn’t interested (phenolic weighs much more than maple), so I
passed. Incidentally, the idea of a laminated shaft is as old as the
hills; most of us have experimented with it at one time or another. In
fact, I have been told by a number of other long-time cuemakers that
George Balabushka experimented with laminated shafts in the sixties! As
an interesting bit of trivia, the Predator shaft is NOT patented (I
don’t believe it can be); the only patent of record for a laminated
shaft is co-held by Colorado cuemaker Dave Kikel. Nor have I been able
to find any recorded patent for the Predator ferrule system. Of course,
if any cuemaker wants to achieve results similar to the Predator, all he
has to do is run a Yellow Cedar tenon approx. 3 inches into the business
end of a shaft and use an additional ¾ inch or so for the ferrule tenon.
So, now you know just as much as I do about the Predator shaft (well,
maybe not quite as much), but we still haven’t answered two key
questions: 1) Why does the shaft with lower tip-mass (negative
loaded) squirt less? And 2) Should we really care so much about this
great spawn-of-Satan: SQUIRT?
Why lower tip mass reduces squirt if easy: the
equal-and-opposite-reaction principle factors in relative mass. Lets
ignore, for a moment, the major linear forces involved in driving the
cueball down the table, and just focus on the peripheral forces caused
by an off-center hit. And, for the purpose of illustration, lets liken
that action to one of hitting a round ball with a hammer- sort of like a
croquet mallet. If it’s a tennis ball and a sledge hammer, the ball is
gonna zoom with very little effect on the sledge. But if it’s a tack
hammer versus a bowling ball, well, I hope you get the picture. (Go
ahead and talk among yourselves a bit, if you need.) The lower mass
shaft tip is more easily moved aside- NOT flexed or bent, simply
shifted- by the cueball, resulting in what? Less squirt!
But is this result good? Do we really want less squirt, do we need less
squirt? ("…You want me on that wall, you NEED me on that wall!" Jack
Nicholson in *A Few Good Men*) Allow me to draw an analogy that relates
to my own profession… Every metal lathe in my shop has a dial attached
to the crank handles on the cross-slides. These dials are calibrated
with index marks that indicate each increment of travel occurring during
the use of the crank handle. So, by paying attention to these dials, I
can monitor and control the travel of the cross-slide (and therefore the
cutting tool) to an accuracy of ½ of one thousandth of an inch! If I
really wanted control, I could fit these cranks with dials twice as big,
with twice as many graduations. What I actually have done is equip
each lathe with electronic digital readouts which are accurate to 100
times the cross-slide dials. This gives me LOTS of fine-tune
adjustment. Now suppose instead I put little bitty dials with just a
few graduations on my cross-slides. Boy, I sure wouldn’t have much
range of control, now would I? Have you noticed how the Predator fans
have praised the small amount of english required to achieve dramatic
results? Wow! I just hope you always are applying the english exactly
the way you want it. After all, the cue doesn’t know whether you
executed the shot correctly, it just blindly performs as you direct it
to. I don’t think anyone would disagree that any cue that enhances and
amplifies good execution can just as easily enhance and amplify BAD
execution. If the car you drive is typical, it requires 2 ½ revolutions
of the steering wheel to turn the tightest radius possible for that
particular make/model. But certainly Detroit has the technology to
equip your car with a steering mechanism which could crank the front
wheels "lock-to-lock" with just a quarter turn of the steering wheel.
Would you like that? Huh, would ya? I didn’t think so.
Squirt exists. Every top player has learned to work with and around
it. If you believe that your game will be better with a "squirtless"
cue, buy a Predator. Or ask your favorite cuemaker to make you a
low-mass-tip (negative loaded) shaft. If he didn’t know how before (no
shame in that, very few do) he certainly will after he reads this
article. Just don’t blame me if your higher highs come with some lower
lows. My friend Bill, the mountain biker, loves to buy the latest in
titanium seat-post bolts- at $60 a pop- so he can shave 1/3 ounce off
his bike. My suggestion of passing up lunch to shave 1/3 ounce off his
ass seems to fall on deaf ears. As my water-skiing training partner,
Bob, loves to say (about new, ‘improved’ equipment): "Everybody wants to
BUY a better turn". My advice, as someone who really does know a little
something about pool cues and about physics, is: focus on improving
your game, too. Achieve skill and understanding in pool the same way
you get to Carnegie Hall (ask any musician).
TW
If you happen to know something about this, please enlighten me a bit, I'd very much appreciate it. I bet there are many folks around who know a lot more than I do, as I'm way too young to know a thing about the history behind all this. 
(Credit due where it's due... 
