American Grown Wood-----Used In Cues

CocoboloCowboy

CocoboloCowboy

Cowboys are my hero's
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Will all talk about products from off shore, Mexico, Central & south America. Wonder what woods, our U.S. Pool Cuemakers would be forced to use, if they only had access to American Grown RAW MATERIAL.

Hopefully some Wood Experts, and Cuemakers will chime in....
 
A number of varieties of ash. Not used much on pool cues but used often on snooker cues. :smile:
 
Which happens to be the Minnesota/Ontario region. All the asian imports come with maple shaftwood originally imported from either the US, or Canada.

Mr Hoppe said:
Only the finest hard rock maple to be found on the planet. :thumbup2:
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One of my cues has a shaft made of 100 year old American Black Walnut .
Started out as a tree limb in my great-grandfathers back yard , then spent 90 years as a leg on an end table in his living room . Next stop was my nephews high school woodshop class , where it turned into an 11.5mm , 15:1 taper shaft on an old Spaulding cue (with a factory 'tennis racquet' wrap)
Maybe just because the wood is so seasoned , but this is one stiff-hitting cue with almost no deflection .
 
Here's at least a partial list (taken from a couple internet sites) of hardwoods that grow somewhere in the U.S.

alder, ash, aspen, basswood, beech, birch, black cherry, black walnut, butternut, buckeye, American chestnut, cottonwood, cypress, dogwood, elm, gum, hackberry, hard maple, hickory, holly, locust, magnolia, maple, poplar, red alder, redbud, red oak, royal paulownia, sassafras, soft maple, sweetgum, sycamore, tupelo, white oak, willow, yellow poplar​

If cues were built from only U.S. woods, we'd sure miss a lot of the exotics, but I imagine we could still have some excellent playing cues.
 
AtLarge said:
Here's at least a partial list (taken from a couple internet sites) of hardwoods that grow somewhere in the U.S.

alder, ash, aspen, basswood, beech, birch, black cherry, black walnut, butternut, buckeye, American chestnut, cottonwood, cypress, dogwood, elm, gum, hackberry, hard maple, hickory, holly, locust, magnolia, maple, poplar, red alder, redbud, red oak, royal paulownia, sassafras, soft maple, sweetgum, sycamore, tupelo, white oak, willow, yellow poplar​

If cues were built from only U.S. woods, we'd sure miss a lot of the exotics, but I imagine we could still have some excellent playing cues.
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Being from somewhere else is what makes the wood exotic and in some cases desirable from a visual stand point (collectability). From a playability stand point the woods of North America are great. Dufferin ,Viking,McDermott and others have been building great hitting cues for years with mostly north american woods. We just don't live anywhere along the equator which is where most of the exotic hardwoods come from.
 
Even out here in the desert I have great cue woods.
Mesquite that is sandy brown to rust red & often full of curly & burled figure. Desert ironwood that is kinda like mesquite on crack, with black grain & swirls and deep chatoyance. Mulberry that has hickory type grain but is vibrant, bold yellow. Western walnut that is very much like any other walnut with dark brown wood & black grain. Then we have mountain cedar & juniper, which are softer but beautiful reds & oranges with crazy figure. There's pecan that's kinda like a blonde hickory. We have several varieties of oak. Heck, we even have a couple different types of maple, one of which is hard maple.

Go to the west coast & you have big leaf maple, redwood, manzanita, buckeye, several types of fruit trees, etc.

Go to the midwest & NE and you have probably 100+ types of hardwoods that vary in color and grain.

Go south to Florida's keys and you have MANY of the exotic rosewoods & such that grow in the Yukatan.

Point being, there's abundant native woods that all would be amazing in cues but we never see any except maple. There are woods nobody has ever heard of such as manzanita, eastern piss elm, spiny allthorn, redbud, red elm, sumac, etc. that are simply stunning. But they aren't commercially timbered because they aren't abundant or large or requested by the world lumber market. The woods in the USA that are commercially timbered are a TINY percentage of the species that actually grow here.
 
Really? Please tell me more. I was told that the best shaft wood came from Minnesota/Wisconsin/Ontario. Which is why alot of cue companies like Dufferin, McDermott have their factories close to the wood source.

rackem said:
And Russia I have been told.
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ctyhntr said:
Really? Please tell me more. I was told that the best shaft wood came from Minnesota/Wisconsin/Ontario. Which is why alot of cue companies like Dufferin, McDermott have their factories close to the wood source.
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I know what rackem means, Russia has huge tracts of forest including maple. Actually many of the woods found in north america and the nordic countries are represented in Russia....just different species in most cases.
A good example is the siberian larch while scandinavia has the Norwegian larch, the British Isle have a larch similar to the Norwegian variety. The larch is used mostly over in those areas the way pine is used here, as a construction wood, however I know for a fact that the Siberian variety can be used as a substitute for teak in deck construction. Sorry if this post gives you flashbacks to Monty Python. :grin-square:
 
ctyhntr said:
Really? Please tell me more. I was told that the best shaft wood came from Minnesota/Wisconsin/Ontario. Which is why alot of cue companies like Dufferin, McDermott have their factories close to the wood source.
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Maple grows all over the northern hemisphere. I even see it growing sporadically out here in the NM mountain areas.
 
That is true, Vermont is also full of maple trees. I'm not a cue builder, but was told that a sign of a quality pool cue will have maple shafts sourced from Wisconsin, Ontario or Minnesota.

On the other hand, snooker cues use ash shafts.

qbilder said:
Maple grows all over the northern hemisphere. I even see it growing sporadically out here in the NM mountain areas.
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