Identifying Wood

Biloxi Boy

Biloxi Boy

Man With A Golden Arm
Anyone have any ideas about identifying wood from pictures? By that I mean a cue owner looking at pictures, not posting pictures for opinions. My instinct tells me it should be possible but my experience tells me to forget it.
 
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Buzzard II

Buzzard II

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Look up Constantine's wood center. They sell a sample 50 piece box of veneers, size 4x9 inch. $29.95 Some quite exotic and rare. But the truth is it still a guess many times.

I took a McDermott butt from a M11B to SBE one year. I wanted to know what the wood was. It looks exactly like the Koa in a friend's guitar. I went to the McDermott booth and got some of the crew to look at it.

No one had a clue. Things like Zebra wood is easy, sometimes.

I used my sample pack to make exotic wood lens boards for Deardorff cameras. They are beautiful.
 
Kickin' Chicken

Kickin' Chicken

Kick Shot Aficionado
Silver Member
Biloxi Boy said:
Anyone have any ideas about identifying wood from pictures? By that I mean a cue owner looking at pictures, not posting pictures for opinions. My instinct tells me it should be possible but my experience tells me to forget it.
Click to expand...

After looking at many cues and descriptions you begin to develop knowledge like with many other things, experience is the teacher. ;)

you could search online sites for various wood types on knife maker, furniture builder sites, etc to become familiar with woods.

best,
brian kc
 
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jimmyco

jimmyco

NRA4Life
Silver Member
Buzzard II said:
Look up Constantine's wood center. They sell a sample 50 piece box of veneers, size 4x9 inch. $29.95 Some quite exotic and rare. But the truth is it still a guess many times.

I took a McDermott butt from a M11B to SBE one year. I wanted to know what the wood was. It looks exactly like the Koa in a friend's guitar. I went to the McDermott booth and got some of the crew to look at it.

No one had a clue. Things like Zebra wood is easy, sometimes.

I used my sample pack to make exotic wood lens boards for Deardorff cameras. They are beautiful.
Click to expand...

I bet they look amazing.
 
G

garczar

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
My ex was really good at identifying 'wood'. A little too good i found out. Why we split. ;)
 
G

Geosnooker

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Not a huge challenge.

The wood used for 99.9% of cues are going to be of a half dozen species...and a couple of those you can eliminate at a cursory glance.

It’s ‘possible’ it’s some rare exotic wood but it’s also ‘possible’ a random airplane flying overhead is a Spitfire.
 
Kickin' Chicken

Kickin' Chicken

Kick Shot Aficionado
Silver Member
Geosnooker said:
Not a huge challenge.

The wood used for 99.9% of cues are going to be of a half dozen species...and a couple of those you can eliminate at a cursory glance.

It’s ‘possible’ it’s some rare exotic wood but it’s also ‘possible’ a random airplane flying overhead is a Spitfire.
Click to expand...

so what do we usually see used for cues?

common ones are ebony, various burls, tulipwood, rosewood, cocobolo, bocote, and the maples (birdseye, tiger/curly, clear, spalted, and quilted).

some outliers are pau ferro and goncalo alves (seen often on SW cues), iron wood, blood wood, palm, african blackwood (BB likes to use this), mahogany (ex. sapele), lacewood, and zebrawood.

And I'm sure I'm forgetting a few plus many more exotic woods that we see on cues very infrequently.

One exotic I especially liked when I saw it was called bois de rose.

best,
brian kc
 
Buzzard II

Buzzard II

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I was about to write African Blackwood but Kickin' got it. I wonder if Geo could tell the difference between that and Ebony?
Oak, Ash, Koa, Wenge, various Mahogany and at least four types of Rosewood.

There are more and I'm not a real player so Jay or someone like that could really fill you in.
 
G

Geosnooker

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
An aside, most snooker cues are ash. The exception are Dufferin snooker cues which mostly use Canadian maple.

I’ve used the same cue for 14 years. If I pick up a different snooker cue in my collection, I ‘don’t think’ the type of wood is a major variable in how it plays. However, difficult to compare any one variable of another cue to the one we are used to.
 
Biloxi Boy

Biloxi Boy

Man With A Golden Arm
Thank all for ya'll's input. What I would like to do, with ya'll's help, is to create an "AZB Resource", by first developing lists and then getting ya'll to post photos of your cues (NOT YET) showing different examples of each Common Wood. If there is interest, we can consider adding Other Wood photos AFTER we complete the Common. Does this sound like a good plan?

Additions/corrections are requested and discussion is welcome. I am interested to hear if ya'll agree with PRED on rosewood and cocobolo being the same. If so, is this all rosewoods or which ones/are all rosewoods same family?.

Common 99.4%
bocote
cocobolo
ebony
ebony, Madagascar
ebony, ___________ (Suggestions?????????????)
maple, birdseye
maple, clear
purpleheart
rosewood, _________ (Suggestions?????????????)
rosewood, Brazilian
tulipwood

Other
african blackwood
ash
blood wood
goncalo alves
holly
iron wood
kingwood
koa
lacewood
mahogany
maple, quilted
maple, spalted
maple, tiger/curly
olive wood
palm
pau ferro
pink ivory
rosewood, African (bubinga)
rosewood, Madagascar (bois de rose)
rubberwood burl
snakewood
wenge
zebrawood
_________ oak (Suggestions?????????????)
_________burl (Suggestions?????????????)
 
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S

S.Vaskovskyi

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Well cue-building is my new hobby I enjoy learning. I'm quite a newbie at it but I have already some favorite woods I used in my cues. None of them were mentioned and there are some more in my collection which are also amazing. Mother nature is so good at creating some real beauty.
Here are two pj cues I'm finishing with the woods I just love. Just interesting if it will be easy to guess which woods were used for the forearm and buttsleeve. In fact what is also interesting to me how many cues out there with the wood used in the second example;)?
 

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Biloxi Boy

Biloxi Boy

Man With A Golden Arm
Having raised four kids, I should have realized the futility of saying "not yet". Let's try this one "NO PLAYING GAMES IN THE HOUSE, GO OUTSIDE." (very stern -- not laughing).

Thanks to PRED for initial tip and J. Betmore for Wiki reference. Since cocobolo and tulipwood, and others, are of the same genus as some rosewoods but are popularly not identified as a "rosewood", I am going to leave them as are in attempt to limit confusion.
 
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