When I have talked to other cuemakers though it seem no one wants to do 5 points and I was just curious why that is
I suspect that if the cue includes veneers, it takes another purpose built fixture for mitering the veneer stack & for gluing it, that would be applicable only to 5pt.
As far as machining the parts. it hardly matters when short splice is used. It's just a different setting on your dividing head. + 25% additional labor for the extra point. :wink: 5 point could be machined with 90deg tooling or end mills by using a couple dividing head settings and changing the offset between. For efficiency, however, a dedicated 72 deg cutter is involved. E.g., high dollar custom.
Then, as has been mentioned, it depends on how the maker's fixtures are set up for changing tapers.
My machines are all general purpose heavy metal & wood-whacking machines. so need set up each time, for whatever op. But between set ups, any one is about as good as another.
From my impression, most cue-makers try to standardize their make. This is good for the customer because they can rely on a "John Doe" cue having the expected "John Doe" hit.
The appearance of things like point tapers will be the one they expect, etc. Even bigger, it allows the cue-maker to be more efficient making cues, keeping the price range favorable for the customer while perhaps allowing the maker a smidgeon of occasional profit for his time in a time consuming practice when everything goes smoothly. Adding 5 pts to the mix requires other dedicated tooling that takes quite a while to amortise, realisitically, unless a lot of 5 point cues are sold. Maybe even another set of dedicated machines to even begin to get the efficiencies in the same place as their 4 point cues.
smt
Edited: Actually, it just occurred to me - for a short splice cue, the cutter angle can be (more or less) "anything".
So a 5 point short splice cue could be built with regular 4 point parts and tooling. So long as the angles were considered to meet where desired.
IOW, set the dividing head for 5 spaces, but just use regular 90 tooling and adjust depth so it all works out visually. If that leads to short points, adjust taper until it looks better.
Is this how people who make them (5 pt) actually do it?
I tend to always think in terms of full splice, in which case the special tooling and fixtures are necessary or else the joinery gets complicated in a different way.