Break Cues

nevermiss

nevermiss

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Hello,

I have a question about the weighting of break cues, and I was hoping that some cuemakers with experience building them in various weights could chime in with their opinions. What is better for generating force on the cueball- a heavy butt (with more mass), a light butt (that can be accelerated more), or some combination in between? It is physics 101 that Force = Mass X Acceleration, so where do your opinions lie?

The reason I ask is that I had a break cue for a short period with an extremely light butt and I believe that I was breaking harder with it. As a sidenote, I am willing to concede that different people have different levels of strength which will probably affect the way that they can accelerate cues of different masses. Any and all thoughts are appreciated!

Dan
 
Someone once set up and had players breaking with different weight cues. I think they were between something like 17 and 22 ounce and they found it made very little difference in break speed. So unless you go to extremes in weight it will make very little difference. I noticed I broke less hard with a 29 ounce cue than with a 19 ounce. And I broke less hard with a 14 ounce than with a 19 ounce. So if you go too heavy you lose too much speed and the extra weight does not make up for it. Go too light and you don't have the mass to move the cue ball as fast even though you swing the cue faster. So my opinion is go between 17 and 22 ounce and use the one you are most accurate with. Accuracy is more important than an extra mile or two per hour.
 
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Graciocues said:
I match the weight and balance point of the players break cue to their shooter.
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I fully agree on this.
I am not a cue maker but I found that after spending unknown amount Of money on many, many break cues.
I have Dave jones match my main players weight and balance and simply added a stiffer shaft have worked for me the best.
Good luck on your quest.
 
Thanks for the help guys! The info from Dr. Dave is valuable, and I wish I would have been around for that testing. Sounds like pretty interesting stuff. It would have been great to hear what the people had to say about the different weights and their preferences afterwards for some qualitative data as well. Also, having a break cue mirror my playing cue seems like an approach worth investigating. Again, I appreciate all of your input.
 
nevermiss said:
Thanks for the help guys! The info from Dr. Dave is valuable, and I wish I would have been around for that testing. Sounds like pretty interesting stuff. It would have been great to hear what the people had to say about the different weights and their preferences afterwards for some qualitative data as well. Also, having a break cue mirror my playing cue seems like an approach worth investigating. Again, I appreciate all of your input.
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I think you should be happy with the mirror break butt. But for the shaft I suggest going a little stiffer, maybe a flat laminated maple shaft, hard linen based ferrule and a much harder tip than you use for shooting. You should try one of the one piece Mad Man Jump/Break Tips. We carry them on our cuesmith site.
 
Thanks cueman. I have had several break cues ranging from regular ferrules with hard tips, one piece phenolic ferrule/tip combos, and my last had a phenolic ferrule and Samsara break tip which I really liked. It is worth mentioning (though I hope it doesn't change the discussion) that from my experience, I was able to stick the cueball much more with Kamui chalk on break tips than with regular chalk. The extra friction was definitely noticeable in my opinion. It did leave more chalk on the cueball though.
 
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