Swoopy stroke on Myth Busters

[straightline]

Mythbuster's analysis is flawed. If the gun barrel is moving laterally when fired, the bullet is traveling laterally, too while it is in the barrel. Once it leaves the barrel, the side motion is no longer being applied, but it is then on a trajectory with the lateral vector added to the barrel's outbound vector. It would travel in a direct straight line because there is no longer side influence, but not directly in line with where the barrel was pointing when the the bullet left the barrel. Kind of like throwing a baseball straight out the window of a moving car. It would travel in a straight line (assuming no spin on the ball), but would land "down the road" from where it left the window.

Ok. This makes sense.

 

[gregcantrall]

If only you could have figured out how to turn it into a shaft, it would have been awesome! Even better than....

View attachment 601007

With a swoop shaft the need for a swoop stroke is eliminated. This could lead to limits on how many cues you can have in your bag. “ Hey what did you use on that shot? A 9 or perhaps a 10?”

 

[Patrick Johnson]

Bought it on eBay about 10 years ago you can see me using it at the 12 second mark in this video

The last shot of the video is the shot I invented that is insane

What's it made of?

pj
chgo

 

[Fatboy]

Back when I was a teen trying to learn on my own, I did give the swoop stroke a try for awhile. Most of the time I swerved too quick or too late but once in a few dozen tries I did get the cue ball to jump around the table like a wild child! I miscued before I got that much action just with tips of english so I decided there was some validity to the swoop stroke. I also decided that it was too unreliable to bother with.

The gun is a different deal, the bullet is always going down a straight barrel. If you turned a barrel whippy enough to fling a bullet like a major league curve ball what would the result be?

Gun barrels have a far more interesting phenomena that was unexplained last I knew. Same bullets from the best makers in the world, loaded to a degree of accuracy that is far beyond the average reloader, shot through multiple barrels from the same manufacturer. Some will cut the wind much better than others. Generally call them hummer barrels. Some are supremely accurate too, I had one such magic barrel. Others aren't particularly accurate by benchrest standards but they still shoot bullets that cut the wind better than other barrels.

It was a mystery benchrest shooters chased for decades. As far as I know they are still chasing it!

Hu

They will be forever chasing it. The allure of bench rest!
Best
Fatboy

 

[eg9327]

I was playing DCC one year and one of my opponents tried giving me that as a tip to get more English. I thanked him for his help, but I really was wondering if he was a goof or was just trying to throw me off.

 

[Straightpool_99]

Back when I was a teen trying to learn on my own, I did give the swoop stroke a try for awhile. Most of the time I swerved too quick or too late but once in a few dozen tries I did get the cue ball to jump around the table like a wild child! I miscued before I got that much action just with tips of english so I decided there was some validity to the swoop stroke. I also decided that it was too unreliable to bother with.

The gun is a different deal, the bullet is always going down a straight barrel. If you turned a barrel whippy enough to fling a bullet like a major league curve ball what would the result be?

Gun barrels have a far more interesting phenomena that was unexplained last I knew. Same bullets from the best makers in the world, loaded to a degree of accuracy that is far beyond the average reloader, shot through multiple barrels from the same manufacturer. Some will cut the wind much better than others. Generally call them hummer barrels. Some are supremely accurate too, I had one such magic barrel. Others aren't particularly accurate by benchrest standards but they still shoot bullets that cut the wind better than other barrels.

It was a mystery benchrest shooters chased for decades. As far as I know they are still chasing it!

Hu

My guess would be that the "crown" of the barrel is somehow better formed in the good barrels. I don't know if that's the correct term in English.

I feel like swooping strokes are driven by people misapplying stuff they’ve seen in ping pong or tennis where various spins are imparted on a ball moving toward them and they are striking with a flat surface that can’t just precisely hit an off center point on a stationary ball. And tennis gets a lot of action through the air with just a little spin due to the Bernoulli principle. But pool is simply different. The moment of contact is too short and the ability to impart a ton of spin with a controlled straight forward effort is already available.

It reminds me of people that think they can get special action by snapping their wrist on a pool stroke because of taking a bad analogy from martial arts of a twisting fists on a punch for more power.

Of course you can get more power by snapping your wrist! Straight power, that is, not really anything different. It's easier to visualize if you imagine your arm as a whip. Some people have no hand to arm coordination and do not properly time the snap to benefit maximally. A lot of stuff is going on in a pool stroke, there is also hand strength which can give your stroke an extra boost by propelling the cue forward at the exact apex of the snap/swing. There is nothing magical about this, but the human body was not meant to generate power by swinging the forearm with a locked elbow like a robot. More muscle groups, plus timing, gives extra speed. When I see these locked joint gurus, I'm also reminded of karate:

The opposite would be locked elbow, locked wrist, with which you have difficulty getting any power at all. Also some people misallign their bodies or mistime the snap, so they get a downward motion. In some circumstances you can get more draw or spin this way. (Masse/pique).

 

[BilliardsAbout]

Nope. Maybe you're thinking of backhand english.

pj
chgo

I see your point. I would amend my statement, though, to include topspin and backspin, not just english.

 

[Luxury]

The website is too broken to figure out what it is. It seems to be a slip-on rubber tip. Is that right?

Simple as that, yes. It was nice to get the feel for practicing masses knowing I wasn’t damaging my table. That was about 10 years ago that I did all that practicing and I’ve still yet to do a full masse in competition.

 

[ShootingArts]

My guess would be that the "crown" of the barrel is somehow better formed in the good barrels. I don't know if that's the correct term in English.

This is the most obvious area but if there is a difference it can't be found even under high magnification. When I crowned barrels I had a specially cut high rake tool to cut the last thousandth or two off, maybe a half thousandth or less at a time. Consistency was excellent!

The first bit of flight leaving the barrel is critical. Also some gases leave the barrel before the bullet. With crowns seemingly not the difference I speculate that some barrels form this cloud so that it offers better protection from crosswinds than other barrels. This remains unproven.

If we have a five mile an hour cross wind near the muzzle it has far more effect than a five mile an hour crosswind near the target. Somehow the bullet seems to fare better in the first few feet of flight, or that is my opinion. Others could be offered and have equal weight. Perhaps the bullet flies a little better from these barrels and the difference is during the entire flight.

"hummer barrels" was one of those recurring threads on benchrest forums. As far as I know nobody has gotten past the theory stage although one man was able to get time on an electron microscope. We don't know and we don't know what it is that we don't know!(grin) Much like some subjects on AZB, considerable heat was generated by barrel threads but no light.

Hu

 

[MattPoland]

My guess would be that the "crown" of the barrel is somehow better formed in the good barrels. I don't know if that's the correct term in English.

Of course you can get more power by snapping your wrist! Straight power, that is, not really anything different. It's easier to visualize if you imagine your arm as a whip. Some people have no hand to arm coordination and do not properly time the snap to benefit maximally. A lot of stuff is going on in a pool stroke, there is also hand strength which can give your stroke an extra boost by propelling the cue forward at the exact apex of the snap/swing. There is nothing magical about this, but the human body was not meant to generate power by swinging the forearm with a locked elbow like a robot. More muscle groups, plus timing, gives extra speed. When I see these locked joint gurus, I'm also reminded of karate:

The opposite would be locked elbow, locked wrist, with which you have difficulty getting any power at all. Also some people misallign their bodies or mistime the snap, so they get a downward motion. In some circumstances you can get more draw or spin this way. (Masse/pique).

Robotic strokes with controlled joints is exactly what you see from professionals because trying to do a “Hiyaaa!” With your wrist may generate power but you’re sacrificing precision. Even a monster draw shot doesn’t need wrist action to move the cueball. You’re risking that cue tip drifting upward and not drawing at all, drifting downward and miscuing, or drifting sideways and missing the shot. I’m not saying your wrist need to be locked but it also doesn’t need to be treated like a whip. It just needs to be relaxed so that you’re not involving unnecessary muscles in your stroke. You can control all the power you need with a little bigger backstroke to give your stick a little more time to accelerate before hitting the cueball. Your arm can handle all that. No need to complicate things.

 

[Guy Manges]

Thats a push , actually guiding the the cb, in some situations that could get someone hurt. I thank in times past that was used to push balls out of the way inorder to make a ball.