Burnishing mushroomed tip or shaving

genuino

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Might be a dumb question, but is bothering me a little lately. A tip mushrooms due to compression after a period of time, almost everybody I know burnish it back to shape, my issue is, correct me if I'm wrong, it will be back to shape but the integrity of the tip is gone, pushing it in by force and making it taller again, it will mushroom a lot quicker after that. A few like to shave it and pick the heck out of it to get some of the compression hardness out of it. If I follow a little logic (my logic :)), I prefer the shaving, am I wrong? What are the pros and cons of each method?

M
 
I never burnish it back into shape.
Whenever I put a new tip on, elk masters or soft triangles, I know there is going to be an initial mushroom.
So I beat the hell out of the tip for a couple days, and once it mushrooms, I stick it back on the lathe, trim the shroom off, burnish the sides again, and that's it.
Rarely mushrooms after that.
 
Might be a dumb question, but is bothering me a little lately. A tip mushrooms due to compression after a period of time, almost everybody I know burnish it back to shape, my issue is, correct me if I'm wrong, it will be back to shape but the integrity of the tip is gone, pushing it in by force and making it taller again, it will mushroom a lot quicker after that. A few like to shave it and pick the heck out of it to get some of the compression hardness out of it. If I follow a little logic (my logic :)), I prefer the shaving, am I wrong? What are the pros and cons of each method?

M

You are 100% correct. There are no pros of the "push it back into shape method". The cons are what you already described. The only solution for this problem is to trim off the excess tip, and live with whatever hardness it has compressed to. If you are experiencing this problem a lot, you may want to try a different tip. I install tons of tips, and almost none of them experience mushrooming to any significant degree. Maybe after months of play I might need to shape up the tip once, to remove the tiniest little bit of mushrooming that most people wouldn't care about. I would only consider doing this on a lathe with a sharp blade. The idea of "picking the heck out of it to get some of the compression hardness out of it" is a bad idea for exactly the same reason that you already understand about smushing the tip back into shape. You are essentially destroying the structure of the tip to make it softer. Why not just use a soft tip that is of good quality? I think the Kamui black super soft, the G2 soft, the Ultra Skin soft, and the Ki-Tech soft are all great choices that are able to hold their shape and not really require much if any trimming or shaping over their life span.

KMRUNOUT
 
Thank you guys!

Like the idea of beating it up at first then shaving it. Thought about a softer tip, but feels that it gives more english than I intend for the way I play.
You learn something new everyday, thanks!
 
I always break with my playing cue so depending on what tip I get the mushrooming you're talking about.
I use the Porper's Mushroom Tool to fix it. Good as new afterwards but you gotta learn how to use it and not take too much off at once.

http://www.amazon.com/Pocket-Porper...5898791&sr=8-2&keywords=mushroom+tip+pool+cue

Also just to add, sometimes I've played with a mushroomed tip for a while just to test it and I kinda like it. So should this ever happen again I won't be in any hurry to shape it back.

Since I started playing with hard tips exclusively I don't get much mushrooming, been doing that for about two years now and I LOVE playing with hard tips and would never go back to that super soft, soft or medium stuff. Just feels too mushy with less control, plus they get harder as you use them and your cue it constantly changing in feel.
 
I've read some people have the sides of the tip go slightly inward to account for the mushrooming
 
Back
Top