" all american classic " cue question

desi2960

desi2960

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
i was looking at some of the old one piece cues for one to use as a conversion. i found this " all american classic " cue that was one piece of solid maple , OR so i thought. not being so pretty i set it aside think i might use the straight grain maple at a later date.
a couple days later i was looking for another piece of wood and the light hit the one piece maple just right and i thought i saw a point. i had to look under magnification, but sure enough this old cue was straight grain maple full splice into straight grain maple. it measured 54 inches long, 13.5 mm at the tip, 1.27 butt and appx 17 oz.
a short, light weight, fat shaft, full splice maple into maple. my question was why the full splice? it would have been much easier just to make it out of one piece of maple. maybe because someone figured out that a full splice makes for a stiffer hit?
btw i am using it for a conversion, and will post photos later.

chuck starkey
 
I'm guessing that two short pieces finger spliced together tend to stay straighter than one long solid piece.
 
hangemhigh said:
My friend wanted something similar, an Ebony into Ebony full splice with 4 Ebony veneers!
Click to expand...

???? really? Odd. Was it for stability & stiffness purposes or did he just want a black butt with phantom lines? Would be cool if under a light that could show it but otherwise just black.
 
qbilder said:
???? really? Odd. Was it for stability & stiffness purposes or did he just want a black butt with phantom lines? Would be cool if under a light that could show it but otherwise just black.
Click to expand...

He wanted a "phantom" cue with Gaboon and Madagascar. Gaboon points with Madagascar front with M/G/M/G veneers. John Davis said the same thing about it being just black, you two think alike. I think JD built it for him though. Pretty sweet cue with black-lip MOP inlays.
\
Chuck's cue will be awesome, very distinct yet subtle. Can't wait to see it when finished.
 
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desi2960 said:
i was looking at some of the old one piece cues for one to use as a conversion. i found this " all american classic " cue that was one piece of solid maple , OR so i thought. not being so pretty i set it aside think i might use the straight grain maple at a later date.
a couple days later i was looking for another piece of wood and the light hit the one piece maple just right and i thought i saw a point. i had to look under magnification, but sure enough this old cue was straight grain maple full splice into straight grain maple. it measured 54 inches long, 13.5 mm at the tip, 1.27 butt and appx 17 oz.
a short, light weight, fat shaft, full splice maple into maple. my question was why the full splice? it would have been much easier just to make it out of one piece of maple. maybe because someone figured out that a full splice makes for a stiffer hit?
btw i am using it for a conversion, and will post photos later.

chuck starkey
Click to expand...



sounds like that may be an old billiards (3cush etc) house cue......
 
push on tip

dick might be right,the front might have been broken. it did have a push-on ferrule and tip.
 
I don't think it was just for stability that they spliced maple into maple. Manufacturers use specific size woods for their projects. They cut thousands of them to length, width and thickness sizes. This is not a full splice blank it is a full splice one piece cue. That means the shaft was spliced into a handle section. They probably had thousands of shaft sections cut to length, and it was probably easier to take a 42" or what ever length shaft blank and splice it into a maple handle than it would have been to to cut and turn a 57 inch piece of wood. Also the shaft wood section would have been thinner wood than the handle section. To have built it out of one piece of wood they would have had to taper the shaft section out of butt size material also. I have seen many maple into maple house cues through the years. So I think the primary reason is wood savings and ease of doing it since they were already set up to make full splice cues. Stabilty would have been a secondary benefit.
 
classic-cueman is the Man

Folks, I don't know Chris personally but his posts are always informing and he never talks down or ridicules any question. He is an asset to az billiards. Thanks for explaining Chris I learned something.
 
desi2960 said:
i was looking at some of the old one piece cues for one to use as a conversion. i found this " all american classic " cue that was one piece of solid maple , OR so i thought. not being so pretty i set it aside think i might use the straight grain maple at a later date.
a couple days later i was looking for another piece of wood and the light hit the one piece maple just right and i thought i saw a point. i had to look under magnification, but sure enough this old cue was straight grain maple full splice into straight grain maple. it measured 54 inches long, 13.5 mm at the tip, 1.27 butt and appx 17 oz.
a short, light weight, fat shaft, full splice maple into maple. my question was why the full splice? it would have been much easier just to make it out of one piece of maple. maybe because someone figured out that a full splice makes for a stiffer hit?
btw i am using it for a conversion, and will post photos later.

chuck starkey
Click to expand...


As others have pointed out:
originally, one of the reasons for splicing cues was to reduce the
tendency to warp and/or move in other ways.
I recall seing maple-to-maple house cues from the 60s.
There used to be much more variation in house cues.

Hard as it may be to imagine - in the period just prior to the
release of "The Hustler"(1961), hardly anyone had 2 pc cues.
I would guess 2 - 3 % of players.

Anyone else remember when they were just call jointed cues?

Dale

Dale
 
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cueman said:
I don't think it was just for stability that they spliced maple into maple. Manufacturers use specific size woods for their projects. They cut thousands of them to length, width and thickness sizes. This is not a full splice blank it is a full splice one piece cue. That means the shaft was spliced into a handle section. They probably had thousands of shaft sections cut to length, and it was probably easier to take a 42" or what ever length shaft blank and splice it into a maple handle than it would have been to to cut and turn a 57 inch piece of wood. Also the shaft wood section would have been thinner wood than the handle section. To have built it out of one piece of wood they would have had to taper the shaft section out of butt size material also. I have seen many maple into maple house cues through the years. So I think the primary reason is wood savings and ease of doing it since they were already set up to make full splice cues. Stabilty would have been a secondary benefit.
Click to expand...

that makes a ton of sense, definitely learned something here too....you would obviously have a ton of maple on hand and i guess especially if you had a big order to fill or wanted to pump the numbers then that would be the ticket.

-greyghost-
 
cueman said:
They probably had thousands of shaft sections cut to length, and it was probably easier to take a 42" or what ever length shaft blank and splice it into a maple handle than it would have been to to cut and turn a 57 inch piece of wood. Also the shaft wood section would have been thinner wood than the handle section. To have built it out of one piece of wood they would have had to taper the shaft section out of butt size material also.
Click to expand...

Bell Forest has equipment from a bye gone house cue manufacturer. They were showing me a big doweling machine that was equipped with a pneumatic closer on the donut cutter. It was designed to put a full length one piece cue length of material in one end & it came out the other end tapered & shaped at sanding size. They had no lathe to cut the wood round or taper. It was done in one big variable cut of a doweling machine.

I never bought it, but seriously considered it. If it were closer & didn't weigh a metric ton, i'd have grabbed it & went. I did buy the splicing jig for full splice bandsaw cut. The grooving machine was as big as the doweling machine, or I would have bought it, too. Basically a big floor model shaper with a jig set up to cut the point grooves. There were three machines used to make one piece spliced or non-spliced house cues & none were a lathe. I'd have never believed it if I hadn't seen it. I might be wrong but I believe it was National Cue Co.'s equipment. With these machines, it would have taken only a few minutes to build a full splice house cue. Cut the pieces one day & glue them up, then send them through the doweler the next day & they're basically done. Nuts. It's easy to understand how a factory could produce thousands of cues fast. What's not easy to understand is why there are no longer factories like that remaining in the USA.
 
qbilder said:
Bell Forest has equipment from a bye gone house cue manufacturer. They were showing me a big doweling machine that was equipped with a pneumatic closer on the donut cutter. It was designed to put a full length one piece cue length of material in one end & it came out the other end tapered & shaped at sanding size. They had no lathe to cut the wood round or taper. It was done in one big variable cut of a doweling machine.

I never bought it, but seriously considered it. If it were closer & didn't weigh a metric ton, i'd have grabbed it & went. I did buy the splicing jig for full splice bandsaw cut. The grooving machine was as big as the doweling machine, or I would have bought it, too. Basically a big floor model shaper with a jig set up to cut the point grooves. There were three machines used to make one piece spliced or non-spliced house cues & none were a lathe. I'd have never believed it if I hadn't seen it. I might be wrong but I believe it was National Cue Co.'s equipment. With these machines, it would have taken only a few minutes to build a full splice house cue. Cut the pieces one day & glue them up, then send them through the doweler the next day & they're basically done. Nuts. It's easy to understand how a factory could produce thousands of cues fast. What's not easy to understand is why there are no longer factories like that remaining in the USA.
Click to expand...
The Asians came in with newer equipment and cheaper labor and $10 house cues were no longer worth building here.
 
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