Dave,
I couldn't hit with these of course. First thing I did was unscrew and check for end grain damage, missing wood, or wood, collars and insert not lined up like they should be.
Can't see much grain on a complete shaft with insert and collar but looking at the joint end and looking at the shaft from joint end to ferrule I was looking at how evenly the spacing was on the growth rings and if they ran off to one side or the other or seemed to get cut away pretty evenly on both sides. I glanced at all of the shafts and probably looked more closely at roughly two-dozen before I decided I wasn't likely to find a better shaft.
Some of the growth ring counts seemed pretty high but I have found consistent growth rings from side to side more important than getting the highest number of rings possible and ignoring that they are tight on one side of a shaft or blank and more open on the other.
The nature of a tree's growth and the way they are cut up pretty much guarantees a little run-off. I wanted to get my own log sometime and split it then cut it but never got the chance. I'm a long ways from rock maple. Even if we had it in Louisiana everything tends to grow so fast here it would be unlikely to be quality wood.
I looked for defects in the other materials or extra wide glue lines too.
I am aware that you know much of this already however when I write for public consumption I try to cover the bases for everybody. Almost left out the first thing I did, eyeball the shaft to see if it appeared straight looking down the shaft from close behind the buttcap and rolling the tip on the display base that was a hard linoleum maybe two feet high. I was still doing machine work back then and had 20-10 vision or close to it so I trusted my eyes a lot more than I do now!
It sounds like a pretty involved check of each shaft but I spent more time unscrewing joints and putting them back together than anything else. After the first few it didn't take long to rule out most of the culls, about 75%. This doesn't mean there was this high of a ratio of bad shafts, just with about forty to choose from I could afford to be picky. I kept a couple of the best cues on the side and as soon as I decided a shaft was inferior to those I quit looking at it. I did "ping test" the cue I was buying, dropping the complete cue from about a foot straight down tip first onto the floor. This depends on the floor and the employees nearby, I would expect them to object if I did it to a bunch of cues. I remember the floor people watching me pretty closely while I was going over their cues like Tuco putting together a six-shooter! I looked a lot like my avatar at the time.
My opinion, after checking for true and handling damage which would cover manufacturing issues too, the main thing was runout. A few shafts had truly ridiculous growth ring runout, I was looking for one ring or less. This doesn't mean cut away by tapering the shaft of course, a bit of eyeballing to visualize if it would run out if the shaft was still a straight dowel.
A repeat, how choosy you can be depends a lot on how many shafts or blanks you have to choose from and how many times they have already been picked over. There were a few twenty dollar shaft blanks last I bought some used to build those forty dollar cues.
I tried to write what I looked at back then, in truth some I remember, some I am not positive. I bought this shaft to replace the one on my Meucci in the late eighties, early nineties at the latest. A friend at work had started playing and I rarely was so I gave him the cue maybe five years later, still with a straight shaft.
Hu
I Thank you for a wonderful response. No matter how many shafts I have cut, I am still willing to listen to anyone on the subject and again, you did a great job.
If by chance you still look for nice shaft wood for personal use, call me and I will give you a few for free. I have hundreds of pure beautiful blanks with fewer than 15 growth rings, my website promises 15 or more so over the years I have created a large amount with 10-14 rings and a larger amount with fewer rings, hundreds and hundreds with no where to go.
I can go look at 500 - 1000 board feet of beautiful material and be lucky enough to come away with 100 board feet but it costs more to pick thru the stacks. I could buy the entire stack, take it to Re-Cut and they would have it in turning squares or cored dowels faster than I could but the quality would be hit and miss so that is why I do what I do.
Thanks again for taking time to write what you did, many on here sure appreciate it,