Retail1LO said:
I keep waiting for a kind worded post from Arnot. *L* I don't supoose I should hold my breath.
I have made hundreds of kind post on RSB and AZ for over 14 years. I have helped hundreds of cuemakers over the years with their problems; many right here in AZ Billiards.
I do not like when the work of any cuemaker is reduced to the price of the materials and fails to take into consideration the investment in money, time, education, materials and supplies, overhead, insurance, taxes, labor, or the cost of electricity and water plus the price of a building to house it all in.
Sorry if you cannot see what I am talking about.
If and when you become a cuemaker you will understand better.
Good Cuemaking,
Of course I can see what you are talking about. I understand about costs, and realize the true cost of something is not seen only in the cost of materials for a specific job.
I didn't reduce the value of anybody's work for a particular job to the cost of materials alone, but essentially said it wasn't worth it to me to spend $175 of my hard earned money to have a stack leather wrap installed, especially when the cost of materials to me is about $10. My labor is worth something; however the effort and trouble to make the wrap turn out beautifully is an extra special thing to me. Kind of like spit shining your own shoes. There's something special in that, and paying a shoe shine guy to do it isn't the same.
By the way, if there is anybody else reading this who wonders where to get the leather for a stack wrap, the best place to go is certainly Tiger,
http://www.tigerproducts.com/store/product.php?productid=16148&cat=103&page=1 but if you want to take an alternate route, as I have already done four times, you can find some very nice leather calf skin leather lace, about 1mm thick, in various widths and colors right here:
http://www.leathercordusa.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=LCU&Category_Code=C9 They also have belting lace and many other kinds of leather lacing.
If you buy the 25 meter spool in 4mm width, the cost including shipping is about $20. That spool will probably be enough to do three cues.
Works just fine.
Mr. Wadsworth knows, as I do, that installing a stack leather wrap is a lot of work, and time consuming. IMHO, doing it myself is a nice project, and yields a satisfactory result.