Cleaning shaft and butt, will this be detrimental?

G

gascoigne

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Hi guys,

I want to know if the way I'm cleaning my stuff will pose any long term problems.

For the shafts, I use a wet furniture wipe(disposable type) to clean the chalk stains. Then I wipe it down with a cloth and the wood will feel very woody(hahah can feel the grain). Then I will apply wax, wait awhile then clean the shafts with cloth, rubbing it to burnish it. And last, I use a leather burnisher to rub it off.

As for the butts, I use a mild car liquid wax polish and do the same as you would a car. I would like to know it this would pose any problems? I have been doing this for 4 years and my cues actually has maintained its gloss, but they were all filipino cues. May I know will it affect the finish of a custom cue, for eg. Coker or Madden?

Thanks for your inputs!
Josiah
 
I would ask Coker or Madden first. But if it were one of my cues, just cleaning with the wipe will be all that is needed.
Neil Lickfold
 
If you do not have a lathe to burnish and dry yuour shaft out with or at least a drill to spin it with, I would say quit or you may have problems. If you can spin the cue fast enough to burnish and dry the cue they it should not cause problems. Wax should not have much effect on the finish.
 
If you're feeling the grain then you're raising the grain in the wood. Most of the time I use regular shaft cleaner, but murphys oil soap works well too. Just make sure you're wipping it off completely. allow to dry then I wax with q-wax or Butchers wax. This works great!
 
But regular shaft cleaners can't remove the chalk in the grain...I tried plenty of them...Yeah I'm using Q-wax also, it works wonders! Makes regular cleaning so much easier...

sun526 said:
If you're feeling the grain then you're raising the grain in the wood. Most of the time I use regular shaft cleaner, but murphys oil soap works well too. Just make sure you're wipping it off completely. allow to dry then I wax with q-wax or Butchers wax. This works great!
Click to expand...
 
I don't use liquids when cleaning shafts - except from extreme cases.
In this case I take a micro cloth and wet it with hot water, then squeeze as much
water from it as possible, almost dry feeling. Then I fold the wet/damped
portion in to a are of the cloth which is not wet, and wipe the dirt of using
the DRY side of it against the wood. Always move to a clean spot of the
micro cloth (dry side becomes damped and blue).
Then I immediately put it in the lathe and do a thorough burnish of the shaft
to produce heat to make any humidity evaporate - leather burnish and
then apply a very small layer of polish which is also burnished.

This procedure is very rarely done, since I use a micro cloth in the pool hall
and try to wipe of the shaft every now and then. I some times use a lot of
pressure with my thumb (dry cloth) - almost with the nail area - and it keeps
the shaft pretty clean.

As Chris mentioned, using liquids if you cant create the heat while burnishing might
give you problems where the shaft wood might catch humidity and
change the structure and playability.
I have destroyed a Predator 314 using a damped cloth and no lathe..

This might also be worth a read : http://chalkers.com/articles/id38.htm

Kent
 
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I have great results cleaning my shaft using Magic eraser with very little alcohol (wring out as much as possible) clean the shaft with a few swipes. Then turn the magic eraser to a drier spot and wipe the shaft down again. I then wipe it down with a towel. Then I use 2000 grit wet/dry sandpaper (dry) to polish and then a piece of undyed leather to burnish the shaft.
 
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