I can usually see when drilling & tapping, and something goes south, just about as soon as It starts. Dave is correct though, in that there are many things against You when doing them that way, even when you start off on center, if everything isn't trammed well, It can cause the drill and the piece your drilling to fight against each other, start to hop, and walk all over the place. I've had luck step drilling, and using somewhat stubby tooling, followed by a carbide reamer. I have also bored the hole, only I haven't tried the router yet. It does sound promising though, wish I had a extra lathe I could setup and dedicate to something like that. I usually use a manual mini boring tool. I have to aggree, no matter how you go about It, It does work better to bore the final ID in most cases. I found that out early on Myself.
When I first started out, one of the biggest hurdles were drilling good centers, and staying inline. Not just in the "A" joint, but even the pins. Step drilling, followed by reamers, or the boring bar helped eliminate most of those problems. That, and a few good drills, because not all are created equal.
I was happy last night when I had some that the "A" had been ready to glue up for about 2 years, and I just now got back around to messing with. I screwed them together, ran em between centers in the lathe and 2 still ran true at the "A" joint.
Still even though I've gotton over some of the hurdles involved, It's still like playing a game each time, trying to manipulate everything to work to My advantage. One of these days I would like to setup a station for "A" joint work only. As It is now, I have to drill slower, and It helps to keep things running true center. What I sometimes worry about though, is heat that could be picked up. There's a fine line of just how slow I can go, so I still have to feed the TS at a decent rate of speed, just try to slow It down enough to keep control of the center, so It doesn't start to walk.
Ohh, ofcoarse like all the things involved with this, there has to be a bad apple somewhere in the bunch. I did have a third cue that had been put to the side with the other 2, while I was working on other cues in that 2 year time period. It was basically just a coco handle that ran all the way to where the butt cap would be, with a curly maple forearm. It did have some runout at the "A" joint when I checked. The coco ran true all the way up the handle to about 3 or 4 inches from the "A" joint, then ran off a hair. The forearm side already had stitch rings & the threaded rod glued in It, so would have sucked If the forearm ran off. Atleast I can just cut a few inches down on the coco, machine a new joint, and still save the cue. I'll just core the bottom, plug It with a dowel & add a curly sleeve. Probably look nicer and balance better anyhow.
