I am curious what are the things you look for in shaft selection, when choosing wood for a great playing shaft. Im sure opinions will vary.
shaft selection
- Thread starter skankhammer
- Start date
Yes, you are correct, the opinions will vary and thousands have already been written.
I'm trying to find a clever way of telling you to do a 'search'.
That may be one of the most popular topics in the data-base and it's all at your finger-tips.
You can have it all right now or you can wait days, weeks or months for the replies to come dribbling in.
Seriously.
I'm trying to find a clever way of telling you to do a 'search'.
That may be one of the most popular topics in the data-base and it's all at your finger-tips.
You can have it all right now or you can wait days, weeks or months for the replies to come dribbling in.
Seriously.
My apologies for the stupid question. Seriously.
It's not a stupid question, and KJ wasn't suggesting so. I think the only thing everyone can agree of is that the straighter the grain...the better or more desirable upon first inspection.
Color, ring count, TONE......on and on. ALL are debated and no two pieces are exactly the same regardless of how they look on the outside.
Some may even debate that 2 pieces can be exactly the same.....
Thanks for the reply. If am wondering what the different criteria cue makers use to select.
Stiffness.
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There has been many theories on shaft wood............ I don't care so much about growth rings.or how long it has been hanging or about the 60 times I have cut .010 off it........ I just want a straight and clean maple shaft the stays straight after the cue is built..................
Buy good shaft blanks from a reputable source.... take a healthy cut on them and let them hang around to get used to your shop and your humidity.......... then make shafts
Kim
Buy good shaft blanks from a reputable source.... take a healthy cut on them and let them hang around to get used to your shop and your humidity.......... then make shafts
Kim
I buy them and let them adjust to my area before I do any cuts on them. Learned the hard way and performed first cut from an inch dowel the day I received and almost all of them were unusable.
Let the rest sit for a few weeks and had no more problems.
Straight grain with no run out and as clean as possible. Don't care if they are light or dark just clean with no sugar marks.
Let the rest sit for a few weeks and had no more problems.
Straight grain with no run out and as clean as possible. Don't care if they are light or dark just clean with no sugar marks.
Thanks for the reply s. Alex, I have a friend who has one of your jump/break cues. It is terrific! One more question, what is runout.? I have heard that term used, but never understood it. I appreciate the responses. I have searched my original question, but was wondering if options have changed. Thanks again.
Look at the grain lines in the shaft or a 1 inch dowel and follow the lines. If they go from one end to the other and are straight this is what you want if they run off the shaft and are not straight this is run out.
I let them acclimate to my shop for a couple months typically. Ive had low growth ring shafts be stiffer than a high growth ring shaft and the other way around. Wood varies from one piece to the next. Straight grain and density are two main factors. Ive had a shaft move like hell only to go back straight a month or two later.....its wood. The rest we can bebate until dooms day and never finish discussing it lol.
Winner winner chicken diner! Shaft density is the key to primo shafts.
While selection is very important, until you dowel, taper turn, and season you don't really understand each unit even when they come from the same 1/4 sawn plank.
For shafts that are a little less dense, the machining process and controlling oscillation and tool push off during tapering becomes even more critical. Therein lies the difference between a high rejection rate compared to low.
Some dowels are just better than others concerning taper machining but slightly less dense shafts can be processed successfully with focus on controlling the machining process to the enth degree.
13 mm shafts that weigh less than 3.7 oz. are usually not that good. IMO. But there are exceptions. It's wood.
If a shaft at finished size is not vibrating or getting blurry in the middle when put between centers on a lathe at 1500 rpm, it is a good shaft the way I see it.
JMO
Rick
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How many times does a cue maker gripe & moan about receiving those junk, low grain count shafts with grain lines so faint you can hardly see them to even count? Then how many times does that shaft turn out to be amazingly stable, stiff, strong, and dense? But you won't use it in a nice cue because it would be perceived as being a junk shaft?
Truth of the matter is that we have it completely backwards. Each year of growth is broken up into two categories, early and late wood. Early wood is the brown/red grain line that we count. Late wood is the white in between. In hardwoods, the late wood is the strongest & most dense part of the grain. Early wood is considerably weaker & much less dense, as it's more porous. This is absolute, inarguable, fact. Applying this fact to cue shafts, logic dictates that the bolder & broader the early wood lines, and the higher concentration of them you have, the less dense & weaker the shaft will be. That pretty much means that those tight grain dark grain shafts that everybody seems to want so bad, are in all actuality more prone to being the worst shafts we can use in a cue.
It also flies in the face of the suppliers who heavily depend on marketing the wood as being slow growth, northern climate, colder climate wood. Technically speaking, the very best shaft wood should come from a growing environment where the conditions are mild in winter and wet & sunny during the summer. However, it's so deep ingrained in our cue culture beliefs that old growth & high grain count is the best, it's doubtful that anybody will be using low gpi shafts anytime soon. Well, except for production companies. Ever see a top tier production outfit using what we consider premier shafts? Nope, they use 3-8gpi shafts that are so white it's hard to count. Not raining on anyone's parade. Just some food for thought :duck:
That all said, I revert back to my original and long held belief that each shaft should be chosen individually for quality, with aesthetics being LAST in my criteria.
Truth of the matter is that we have it completely backwards. Each year of growth is broken up into two categories, early and late wood. Early wood is the brown/red grain line that we count. Late wood is the white in between. In hardwoods, the late wood is the strongest & most dense part of the grain. Early wood is considerably weaker & much less dense, as it's more porous. This is absolute, inarguable, fact. Applying this fact to cue shafts, logic dictates that the bolder & broader the early wood lines, and the higher concentration of them you have, the less dense & weaker the shaft will be. That pretty much means that those tight grain dark grain shafts that everybody seems to want so bad, are in all actuality more prone to being the worst shafts we can use in a cue.
It also flies in the face of the suppliers who heavily depend on marketing the wood as being slow growth, northern climate, colder climate wood. Technically speaking, the very best shaft wood should come from a growing environment where the conditions are mild in winter and wet & sunny during the summer. However, it's so deep ingrained in our cue culture beliefs that old growth & high grain count is the best, it's doubtful that anybody will be using low gpi shafts anytime soon. Well, except for production companies. Ever see a top tier production outfit using what we consider premier shafts? Nope, they use 3-8gpi shafts that are so white it's hard to count. Not raining on anyone's parade. Just some food for thought :duck:
That all said, I revert back to my original and long held belief that each shaft should be chosen individually for quality, with aesthetics being LAST in my criteria.
That and the smell of dust.
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Licking shafts to check for stiffness, puts you in a minority all right. This is the 21st centry!
Larry
No no no, that's not what he does. He doesn't lick shafts to check for stiffness. He licks the shaft to make it stiff.