We have more than 1,000,000 shafts in various stages of turning stocked in two warehouses.
I had a discussion with the factory owner about shaft wood the other day and what the grades are.
He said that to get to AA grade shafts they can only get about 300 pieces from every 60,000 squares that they get.
They sort and grade each piece after each stage, when it's cut into squares, afer the turning to round stock, after each taper cut and so on.
I don't know anything about these shafts on Ebay but I'd be leery of just random shafts from China for sale.
For one thing they advertise that the shafts are for Radial pins. There are copies of radial pins which look similar to orginal Radial pins. The shafts made for these copies do no fit well or at all to an original Radial pin. The pins in the picture look like the copies.
There are currently only two companies in China that are capable of storing as much wood stock for cues and letting that stock cure with time. Only those two companies can provide cues that are truly stable.
The other cue companies here, and there are many, are many years behind the best two, in both experience and capital. Even if they knew how to properly turn the wood and store it between cuts, they lack the captital to invest in many year's worth of wood inventory to sustain the flow of good wood to the production.
Almost any factory here can produce good looking cues. Only two, in my experience so far, can produce good quality cues that hold up over time.
There is no telling where random cues come from with no name or off-brand names.
