Care and Feeding of a Fine Pool Cue by Richard Black

T

TerryZak

New member
Greetings Folks,

I searched through the list of forums and couldn't find one dedicated to maintenance. If this is the incorrect location for this post, please advise and I'll try to figure out how to move it.

I've seen the jpg's of Richard Black's fine article, Care and Feeding of a Fine Pool Cue and though hey, it's 2025 we should have something better. So I approached a friend who's a computer guy and he wrote something in Python to convert the jpg's to a MS Word file. I then checked line-by-line against the original jpg's and made corrections as needed along with formatting for easy reading.

So here is a PDF of the entire article to share with our community. All rights are to Mr. Richard Black. I have no idea how to contact him for permission to post this, so if there are any issues, please advise and I can remove the post if necessary.

Kind regards,

Terry
 

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I bought my RB Split Diamond model directly from Richard in 2002 and beyond the hundreds of cues that have passed my hands since then - his is still my favorite player and will never leave me- it is my one, true untouchable and always will be - goes to my sons someday.
 
The only caveat I'll offer is my experience contradicts what Richard wrote about cleaning a linen wrap but then again, my experience is with Cortland Linen wraps. I have 4 cues with Cortland liinen wraps and eventually, the wraps become almost slick like and shiny where I position my grip. So I lightly spray distilled water on the wrap and use a white terrycloth cotton towel to wipe the wrap dry. I don't get the wrap wet that you can see or feel it, just lightly damp.

It is important to twist dry the wrap rotating the cue butt and you rotate in the direction the wrap was spun to avoid fraying the strands. Doing it this way helps flatten the individual strands instead of lifting them but the last step is to glass burnish the wrap. It is hard work but necessary if you want you wrap to last years. The Cortland Linen #9 on my Runde Schon is 40 years old; my last Jerry R. CL wrap is almost 10 yrs.

Both look and feel fantastic but I attribute that not because I do something amazing. Nope, it's the wrap that's unique and amazing. There are few other linen wraps, except for a couple of other Cuttyhunk fishing line brands, that are comparable with Cortland Linen. But no ther linen wrap feels the same are Cortland Linen due to its uniformity in strand diameter being manually checked by a line operator as the fishing line was braided.

So I use a heavy glass beer mug & burnish the cue wrap rotating it. This takes 10-12 mins. before my arm tires. I do it 3-4 times a night watching TV
It usually takes about 6-7 sessions before the wrap becomes just as smooth as I like it to be.. I'll do this about once a year and it works with CL.
 
Bavafongoul said:
The only caveat I'll offer is my experience contradicts what Richard wrote about cleaning a linen wrap but then again, my experience is with Cortland Linen wraps. I have 4 cues with Cortland liinen wraps and eventually, the wraps become almost slick like and shiny where I position my grip. So I lightly spray distilled water on the wrap and use a white terrycloth cotton towel to wipe the wrap dry. I don't get the wrap wet that you can see or feel it, just lightly damp.

It is important to twist dry the wrap rotating the cue butt and you rotate in the direction the wrap was spun to avoid fraying the strands. Doing it this way helps flatten the individual strands instead of lifting them but the last step is to glass burnish the wrap. It is hard work but necessary if you want you wrap to last years. The Cortland Linen #9 on my Runde Schon is 40 years old; my last Jerry R. CL wrap is almost 10 yrs.

Both look and feel fantastic but I attribute that not because I do something amazing. Nope, it's the wrap that's unique and amazing. There are few other linen wraps, except for a couple of other Cuttyhunk fishing line brands, that are comparable with Cortland Linen. But no ther linen wrap feels the same are Cortland Linen due to its uniformity in strand diameter being manually checked by a line operator as the fishing line was braided.

So I use a heavy glass beer mug & burnish the cue wrap rotating it. This takes 10-12 mins. before my arm tires. I do it 3-4 times a night watching TV
It usually takes about 6-7 sessions before the wrap becomes just as smooth as I like it to be.. I'll do this about once a year and it works with CL.
Click to expand...
4 with cortland?? Lucky devil!!
Gotta be scruggs!!!😉
 
Mensabum said:
4 with cortland?? Lucky devil!!
Gotta be scruggs!!!😉
Click to expand...
Yup……and all of the cues would have Cortland but I couldn’t find any for my last cue made and Bob didn’t have any.
I could have waited but the ivory ban in CA was about to kick in so I was fighting the calendar deadline to receive the
cue. Jerry R. was also building me a custom cue at the very same time and he was able to find CL #9 and that was my last cue built using Cortland Linen #9 as a wrap. Both cues arrived Memorial Day weekend 2016. Five weeks later CA’s
Ivory ban took effect so it was a close call. I just didn’t have time to find some CL for the cue Bob was building for me.

BTW, I miscounted. Five of my cues use Cortland Linen and I forgot my ‘85 Runde Schon also has it too. The cue is a closet queen because I switched to ivory joints a couple of decades ago. 4 of the 6 cues in my 6x12 case use Cortland Linen. The photos of the Schon cue shows you a wrap almost 41 years old and still good as new. I played with this cue for 20 years before retiring it after I got my Scruggs cue and just kept adding more cues so my Schon remains retired.
 

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Bavafongoul said:
Yup……and all of the cues would have Cortland but I couldn’t find any for my last cue made and Bob didn’t have any.
I could have waited but the ivory ban in CA was about to kick in so I was fighting the calendar deadline to receive the
cue. Jerry R. was also building me a custom cue at the very same time and he was able to find CL #9 and that was my last cue built using Cortland Linen #9 as a wrap. Both cues arrived Memorial Day weekend 2016. Five weeks later CA’s
Ivory ban took effect so it was a close call. I just didn’t have time to find some CL for the cue Bob was building for me.

BTW, I miscounted. Five of my cues use Cortland Linen and I forgot my ‘85 Runde Schon also has it too. The cue is a closet queen because I switched to ivory joints a couple of decades ago. 4 of the 6 cues in my 6x12 case use Cortland Linen. The photos of the Schon cue shows you a wrap almost 41 years old and still good as new. I played with this cue for 20 years before retiring it after I got my Scruggs cue and just kept adding more cues so my Schon remains retired.
Click to expand...
I got a chubby just looking at them!!😂
 
Bavafongoul said:
Yup……and all of the cues would have Cortland but I couldn’t find any for my last cue made and Bob didn’t have any.
I could have waited but the ivory ban in CA was about to kick in so I was fighting the calendar deadline to receive the
cue. Jerry R. was also building me a custom cue at the very same time and he was able to find CL #9 and that was my last cue built using Cortland Linen #9 as a wrap. Both cues arrived Memorial Day weekend 2016. Five weeks later CA’s
Ivory ban took effect so it was a close call. I just didn’t have time to find some CL for the cue Bob was building for me.

BTW, I miscounted. Five of my cues use Cortland Linen and I forgot my ‘85 Runde Schon also has it too. The cue is a closet queen because I switched to ivory joints a couple of decades ago. 4 of the 6 cues in my 6x12 case use Cortland Linen. The photos of the Schon cue shows you a wrap almost 41 years old and still good as new. I played with this cue for 20 years before retiring it after I got my Scruggs cue and just kept adding more cues so my Schon remains retired.
Click to expand...
You know me Matt.
Scruggs all the way, but that Schon is a real eye catcher!! What a beauty!!! 😍
 
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