Care and Feeding of a Fine Pool Cue by Richard Black

T

TerryZak

New member
Greetings Folks,

I searched through the list of forums and couldn't find one dedicated to maintenance. If this is the incorrect location for this post, please advise and I'll try to figure out how to move it.

I've seen the jpg's of Richard Black's fine article, Care and Feeding of a Fine Pool Cue and though hey, it's 2025 we should have something better. So I approached a friend who's a computer guy and he wrote something in Python to convert the jpg's to a MS Word file. I then checked line-by-line against the original jpg's and made corrections as needed along with formatting for easy reading.

So here is a PDF of the entire article to share with our community. All rights are to Mr. Richard Black. I have no idea how to contact him for permission to post this, so if there are any issues, please advise and I can remove the post if necessary.

Kind regards,

Terry
 

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TerryZak said:
... I've seen the jpg's of Richard Black's fine article, Care and Feeding of a Fine Pool Cue ...
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Thanks for the article. It takes a lot of work to turn a jpg into text.

Do you know the original date and publication?
 
garczar said:
Love it. That's the too-cool-for-school old school way. I love the spit on the tip tip. I've been doing that for 40+yrs.
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I loved the part where he recommended chucking the shaft up in a hand drill and spin sand it was 80 grit. Just kidding..
 
I bought my RB Split Diamond model directly from Richard in 2002 and beyond the hundreds of cues that have passed my hands since then - his is still my favorite player and will never leave me- it is my one, true untouchable and always will be - goes to my sons someday.
 
The only caveat I'll offer is my experience contradicts what Richard wrote about cleaning a linen wrap but then again, my experience is with Cortland Linen wraps. I have 4 cues with Cortland liinen wraps and eventually, the wraps become almost slick like and shiny where I position my grip. So I lightly spray distilled water on the wrap and use a white terrycloth cotton towel to wipe the wrap dry. I don't get the wrap wet that you can see or feel it, just lightly damp.

It is important to twist dry the wrap rotating the cue butt and you rotate in the direction the wrap was spun to avoid fraying the strands. Doing it this way helps flatten the individual strands instead of lifting them but the last step is to glass burnish the wrap. It is hard work but necessary if you want you wrap to last years. The Cortland Linen #9 on my Runde Schon is 40 years old; my last Jerry R. CL wrap is almost 10 yrs.

Both look and feel fantastic but I attribute that not because I do something amazing. Nope, it's the wrap that's unique and amazing. There are few other linen wraps, except for a couple of other Cuttyhunk fishing line brands, that are comparable with Cortland Linen. But no ther linen wrap feels the same are Cortland Linen due to its uniformity in strand diameter being manually checked by a line operator as the fishing line was braided.

So I use a heavy glass beer mug & burnish the cue wrap rotating it. This takes 10-12 mins. before my arm tires. I do it 3-4 times a night watching TV
It usually takes about 6-7 sessions before the wrap becomes just as smooth as I like it to be.. I'll do this about once a year and it works with CL.
 
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