Baking,Torching,Wetting,Flaming Chalk and Tips.

christopheradam

Christopher Adams
Silver Member
There was a post not long ago about someone who bakes chalk. 1hour at 350 was the recipe I beleive. :)
Has anyone tried tourching it with a blow torch :)
Or flaming it with a lighter. I lit up a piece with a lighter. Didn't seem to do anything special. Kinda felt like I was doing something illegal, like I was a drug addict cooking up some meth or something :).
Also I tried wetting a piece of cheap sports craft chalk. I get this crap on my tables at work and I sometimes accidently put it on my cue and it just really erks me to have this cheap stuff on my cue tip. Anyway, I figured If wetting it worked, I could just wet it beforehand and then if I accidentally used it I could deal with it. It doesn't work. It goes from the worst chalk in the world to the worst wet chalk in the world. I figured wetting may cause to be less granular. Nope!
I also was wondering, does wetting a pool tip help it to hold chalk after it dries out? I wet one of my old cue's tip and I'm gonna see how it works. I heard something about this working from somewhere.
 
christopheradam said:
There was a post not long ago about someone who bakes chalk. 1hour at 350 was the recipe I beleive. :)
Has anyone tried tourching it with a blow torch :)
Or flaming it with a lighter. I lit up a piece with a lighter. Didn't seem to do anything special. Kinda felt like I was doing something illegal, like I was a drug addict cooking up some meth or something :).
Also I tried wetting a piece of cheap sports craft chalk. I get this crap on my tables at work and I sometimes accidently put it on my cue and it just really erks me to have this cheap stuff on my cue tip. Anyway, I figured If wetting it worked, I could just wet it beforehand and then if I accidentally used it I could deal with it. It doesn't work. It goes from the worst chalk in the world to the worst wet chalk in the world. I figured wetting may cause to be less granular. Nope!
I also was wondering, does wetting a pool tip help it to hold chalk after it dries out? I wet one of my old cue's tip and I'm gonna see how it works. I heard something about this working from somewhere.

Christopher,
You shouldn't play with fire. I've been playing pool for over 35 years and I have never found it necessary to burn a piece of chalk.
 
You're experimenting and that is good. You will learn a lot.

I live in Oregon and it is quite wet most of the year. Chalk gets moist and cakes on. It is better if it is dry if you ask me.

To dry my chalk...

I bake it at 350 for 1 hour. Then I keep it in a plastic container with an indicating desiccant capsule (absorbs moisture). The capsule also changes color when it needs replacement. I also keep a capsule in my bag with my chalk. This has ended the caking problem. (Link below for desiccant capsules.)

I wish I could do something similar to my car, moisture on the inside windows is a big problem here. We could use wipers inside as well!

You mentioned tips. I heard that in the past, some pros purchased soft tips, soaked them in half and half cream/milk, then compressed them in a vise. I think the half and half had some chemical or glue effect of binding the tip material together or something? Anyway I did not find the compressing of the tips very scientific, as one tip might be harder than the next. So not a good idea if you ask me. (Unless you could measure how much pressure you were using to compress each tip.) With Moori and other high quality tips now on the market, I don't know if anyone still does this.

I have heard some players drop their shaft on the ground about 100 times to compress a new tip. And some others compress them in a vise before installing.

Also it is interesting to experiment with different tips. Material used (leather, pig skin), brand of tip, tip radius (quarter, nickel, dime), hardness (soft, medium, hard, very hard phenolic), size of shaft at tip (11mm, 12mm, 13mm), etc.

You can use electrical PVC cut in half with 220 grit sandpaper to shape tips differently. Here are the sizes for different shapes and coin sizes...

PVC sizes...
Dime (1/2")
Nickel (3/4")
Quarter (1")
Half dollar (1 1/4")
Billiard ball (2")

U.S. Coin sizes...
Dime ........ 18.00mm
Penny ...... 19.10mm
Nickel ....... 21.10mm
Quarter ..... 24.10mm
Half Dollar ...30.50mm

Also you can test the hardness of a tip with an insturment called a Type D durometer. Many tips out of the same box will be a different hardness. Some billiards dealers test tips sold for hardness with one of these gizmos.

Indicating desiccant capsules...
http://www.sorbentsystems.com/desiccant.html

Type D Durometer...
http://flexbar.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=20706
 
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