If you have taper bars set up, and want to create a cue from a blank, then schmelke would be my first choice. Inexpensive, and if it turns out good, you could hand it out to friends, or sell it, or shoot with it. If you need to setup taper bars, and, or don't have a good lathe to do the work with, then bar cues work well. They are usually free, but just don't have enough meat on them to take many turns to: straighten them, get the points even, then take a finish pass and all come out good and normal size, in my experiances. A lot of the cheap bar cues nowadays are from china and will be twisted beyond belief after a couple months of hitting the bar scene.
JMO,
Dave
