Take all of the weight out of your break cue

According to someone who is in a position to know, there are more people playing heyball than all other cue sports combined. Kinda scary.
95% of them are in one place: China. I don't care how many play there, its still boring as fk to watch.
 
Please post your results! I won’t be putting weight back in anytime soon

i read your post a few months back and tried it. my break suffered. ended up going the other way and stuffing as many weight bolts in there as i can.

i think if you have good technique and hours to practice the break, a weightless break cue is the ultimate weapon, but for a banger like me the weight gets me the best results.
 
i read your post a few months back and tried it. my break suffered. ended up going the other way and stuffing as many weight bolts in there as i can.

i think if you have good technique and hours to practice the break, a weightless break cue is the ultimate weapon, but for a banger like me the weight gets me the best results.
That's what's so cool about this game. Whatever works for ya.
 
I’m pretty short (and no longer young). I do not get a lot of cue speed. It seemed the harder I tried to add speed to my break, the slower it went and accuracy was terrible.

I tried a heavy break cue and went up 1.5 MPH without adding any effort. Heavy works for me.
 
I’m pretty short (and no longer young). I do not get a lot of cue speed. It seemed the harder I tried to add speed to my break, the slower it went and accuracy was terrible.

I tried a heavy break cue and went up 1.5 MPH without adding any effort. Heavy works for me.
Speed x mass = force, my break speed is terrible, adding weight was the only "weigh" to get a little more speed......
 
speed (velocity) times mass equals momentum. Just saying. Conservation of momentum is the relevant physics.
Actually, it's conservation of both energy and momentum. Momentum can be divided between the cue ball and cue stick during the hit in an infinite number of ways if only momentum is considered. It is conservation of energy that forces the single result that we see.
 
I don't think the actual formula for ball speed versus stick speed was ever mentioned above.

The faster the stick moves, the faster the ball moves. Twice the stick speed, twice the ball speed.

In addition to that simple relationship, there is a multiplier that is related to the weights of the ball and stick. This multiplier says how much faster the ball will be moving than the stick was moving just before contact. Yes, the ball typically goes out at a faster speed than the stick comes in.

Ball_speed = Multiplier * Stick_speed

For a six-ounce stick, that multiplier is one, so the ball comes out at the stick speed and the stick stops dead.

For a ten-ton stick, the ball will have twice the speed of the stick, and the stick will slow down a tiny, tiny amount.

For more interesting cases, you can use the formula:

Multiplier = (Stick + Stick)/(Ball + Stick) where Ball and Stick are the weights (or masses) of the ball and stick.

For an 18-ounce stick and a 6-ounce ball (more or less normal) we get Multiplier = (18+18)/(6+18) = 36/24 = 1.5

That means that the ball will come off with 150% of the incoming stick speed.

In the real world, sticks and tips are imperfect and some energy is lost and the speed of the ball is reduced from the ideal. If you want to increase your break ball speed, the easiest way to do it is to get a more efficient tip. Hard tips seem to be more efficient. That change alone will probably give you more speed improvement than a two-ounce change in your break cue, if you currently use a typical playing tip.

Another source of energy loss is in spinning the cue ball. More energy into spinning the cue ball = less energy into its speed forward. The standard WNT break shot uses a lot of spin.
 
KE = (mv^2)/2

Cue speed is more important than weight. That's why MLB players don't swing 35oz bats anymore.

Control is another thing entirely, but if you're looking for maximum cue ball velocity you want the intersection of where the cue weight crosses your maximum hand speed.
 
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