1965-66 Wico Palmer custom model

classiccues

Morgan set complete...
Silver Member
Nice cue, has a bow in the nose.. but still Wico pointed. Great piece of history, first Palmer with the foil I have ever seen ABOVE the wrap... Missing small piece in top of point...

JV

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wico_2.jpg


wico_3.jpg
 
Nice cue, has a bow in the nose.. but still Wico pointed. Great piece of history, first Palmer with the foil I have ever seen ABOVE the wrap... Missing small piece in top of point...

JV

Great Cue Joe, but how are you dating the cue? Now I am not saying your wrong in any way, but when did they actually start making WICO Point, I thought it was more like 1968. If you have more information about when WICO started maiing the blanks with these type of material in the forearm.

Thanks Joe, I would appreciate any information you have.
 
Nice cue, has a bow in the nose.. but still Wico pointed. Great piece of history, first Palmer with the foil I have ever seen ABOVE the wrap... Missing small piece in top of point...

JV

Great Cue Joe, but how are you dating the cue? Now I am not saying your wrong in any way, but when did they actually start making WICO Point, I thought it was more like 1968. If you have more information about when WICO started maiing the blanks with these type of material in the forearm.

Thanks Joe, I would appreciate any information you have.

Well I was only going by what the customer was remembering. She said she went with her husband to pick it up, she could be off a few years. She is 90 ish... Could be a few years later.

JV
 
Nice cue, has a bow in the nose.. but still Wico pointed. Great piece of history, first Palmer with the foil I have ever seen ABOVE the wrap... Missing small piece in top of point...

JV

Great Cue Joe, but how are you dating the cue? Now I am not saying your wrong in any way, but when did they actually start making WICO Point, I thought it was more like 1968. If you have more information about when WICO started maiing the blanks with these type of material in the forearm.

Thanks Joe, I would appreciate any information you have.

They may be called WICO blanks now, but Bob Meucci was making them at BMC cues before WICO. According to Peter Balner, Palmer bought a hundred or two of these blanks directly from Bog Meucci at BMC cues and it was around 1968 or so - WICO had nothing to do with the purchase at that time. I've learned that memory for exact year going this far back is unreliable.

Palmer was always looking for a reliable source of ebony pronged veneered cues. They stopped using these blanks because they did not think the vinyl veneered cues would be durable over time.

I've only seen a few Palmers with these vinyl points - I wonder how many survived?

Of special notice on the picture above is the shape of the vinyl piece where the ebony prong broke out - notice the vinyl is molded or extruded in a shape to accommodate the ebony prong.

Chris
 
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Great post. Pictures with a history lesson all rolled up in one. These are the post I like most.
 
While this cue is at Proficient getting cleaned up I noticed that the bottom was similar to a Model 5 from the first catalog, at leas the catalog that everyone calls the first.

I think this is a custom 5 where there are two bands of diamonds, instead of two bands of dots.. Here is a typical model 5 backend...

I am also attaching another WICO point forearm we had...

JV
 
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They may be called WICO blanks now, but Bob Meucci was making them at BMC cues before WICO. According to Peter Balner, Palmer bought a hundred or two of these blanks directly from Bog Meucci at BMC cues and it was around 1968 or so - WICO had nothing to do with the purchase at that time. I've learned that memory for exact year going this far back is unreliable.

Palmer was always looking for a reliable source of ebony pronged veneered cues. They stopped using these blanks because they did not think the vinyl veneered cues would be durable over time.

I've only seen a few Palmers with these vinyl points - I wonder how many survived?

Of special notice on the picture above is the shape of the vinyl piece where the ebony prong broke out - notice the vinyl is molded or extruded in a shape to accommodate the ebony prong.

Chris

Chris, do you mean that the bottom of the point, and the vinyl it sits in, is rounded rather than a v-bottom shape?

Scott
 
Proficient Billiards... worthy of praise!!!

Scot did a bang up job on this cue. You can see he wet sanded the back end, wow what a difference. He made a new shaft using the old parts and he filled in the missing piece of point, and restored the point tips very nicely. Normally I wouldn't have had any finish added, but you need to keep these things as stable as possible.. it came out quite beautiful...

Joe
 

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Wow, that's some amazing work there! I've been considering having him do some work, now I'm convinced!
 
I was always under the impression that WICO points were made by the Wiman Company that started in Saulk, MN in 1962. They are still in business and are one of the largest producers of PVC, both flexible and rigid, in the US.

The piece that shows under the cracked off point has either been molded or machined, as the extrusion process can't make a shape like that. The extrusion process is basically where a hopper full of melted plastic is pushed through an aperture cut in a flat plate (kind of like the old Play Dough sets where you changed flat plastic plates in front of a "press" to squeeze out various profiles and shapes). The process is continuous and can't be stopped and started to make points and parts that aren't uniform in size (see simplified sketch).

I don't think that vinyl would make the best veneers. They are hard to glue and usually require etching, like your PVC pipes would. They would be very good for temperature shifts and might offer an "expansion joint" for lack of a better descriptive term. I think that they were just a subtitute for ivory until more suitable materials came along...

Cool cue, Joe!

Steve
 

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I was always under the impression that WICO points were made by the Wiman Company that started in Saulk, MN in 1962. They are still in business and are one of the largest producers of PVC, both flexible and rigid, in the US.

The piece that shows under the cracked off point has either been molded or machined, as the extrusion process can't make a shape like that. The extrusion process is basically where a hopper full of melted plastic is pushed through an aperture cut in a flat plate (kind of like the old Play Dough sets where you changed flat plastic plates in front of a "press" to squeeze out various profiles and shapes). The process is continuous and can't be stopped and started to make points and parts that aren't uniform in size (see simplified sketch).

I don't think that vinyl would make the best veneers. They are hard to glue and usually require etching, like your PVC pipes would. They would be very good for temperature shifts and might offer an "expansion joint" for lack of a better descriptive term. I think that they were just a subtitute for ivory until more suitable materials came along...

Cool cue, Joe!

Steve

Steve,
Thanks for the comments.

I will say this, let me revise your tech talk. Plastics are hardly ram extruded. The extrusion process used to manufacture plastics is called continuous screw extrusion. The plastic pellets are in a hopper above the feed throat of the extruder. The extrusion screw turns at roughly 75-150 RPM. The feed screw has three sections, a feed section a transition section and a metering section. As the pellets are fed through the screw they start to melt due to shear and the added heat of heaters along the extrusion barrel. By the time they get to the end of the extruder they are at a very high pressure, 6500-10000 PSI. They are then fed through the die, in this case, a good die good produces a very accurate profile. Profile extrusion is very common, from small pieces to very large pieces like replacement window frames. V or L shapes are done routinely and the dies are not very complex. the take off equipment, the cooling tank, puller and cutter are a different story.

I am the most talented extrusion designer that is not employed in the plastics industry at the moment. :)

JV

some pvc extrusions
0,0,430,20421,500,296,5493c605.jpg


and an extrusion line
http://www.plasticextrudermachinery.com/image/ss1.jpg
 
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