common mistakes
- Thread starter ratcues
- Start date
Miscutting , glue lines , and buying the wrong equipement.
Jim
Jim
ratcues said:
I under estamated how perfectly the joint SCREW had to be centered. I have the 1st 5 Qs that I made in 1986. They are not pretty, when you start to unscrew them. Also, I think everyone has a problem with spraying a finish on Qs. I stated with lacquer, then Emron, & finally in my 2nd year I started & stayed with Dupont automotive clear...JER
I think the most common mistake is starting cuemaking in the first place. 
Has to be tooling and equipment.
Save a nickle now and end up costing a dime.
Has to be tooling and equipment.
Save a nickle now and end up costing a dime.
I think the most common mistake is starting cuemaking in the first place.
I agreed....the new builder has to really consider if they are going to do this as a living or if they're just fooling around. Can be very expensive and time consuming as I found out and not very profitable unless you pay your dues.
Although I can see how repair cues can be very profitable for some. Having fooling around with aspect of cue building and repairing, I think repair is the first step (Made half of the cost of my machine just from putting on 15 leather wrap). Chris....should really market by showing guys how easily it is to get their ROI from his machine. I will leave cue building to the Professional!!
Regards,
Duc.
I agreed....the new builder has to really consider if they are going to do this as a living or if they're just fooling around. Can be very expensive and time consuming as I found out and not very profitable unless you pay your dues.
Although I can see how repair cues can be very profitable for some. Having fooling around with aspect of cue building and repairing, I think repair is the first step (Made half of the cost of my machine just from putting on 15 leather wrap). Chris....should really market by showing guys how easily it is to get their ROI from his machine. I will leave cue building to the Professional!!
Regards,
Duc.
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I think most people start out building cues as opposed to repairing cues to see how cues are made and why. Any monkey can build a cue but to build one that plays well is a trick. You have to learn and try several construction techniques to see how each affects the playability.
I also see the same people selling cues that aren't their best work. You cannot sell a less-than-perfect cue just because you have time and money invested in it. If you put out junk, you will get known for it.
I also see the same people selling cues that aren't their best work. You cannot sell a less-than-perfect cue just because you have time and money invested in it. If you put out junk, you will get known for it.
The things I had problems with was knowing when to do what presedure. Figuring out how long to turn wood, some assembly problems and worst of all taking bad advice from another cue maker... Its all experimental and everyone does it differently. So take you time and figure out what workes for you..
I don't make mistakes, I make firewood and I have made a lot of it. Most of my mistakes are carelessness.
Forgetting to put the router on the taper bar and taking a straight pass down a cue, forgetting to tighten the bearing on the taper bar and having it pop up and nearly cut the cue in half instead of cutting the wrap groove.
These sound pretty dangerous, but I'm actually very careful around my power tools. I have never so much as nicked any part of my body on a saw blade or anything like that. Give me a razor blade or a freshly sharpened kitchen knife though and I will cut my hand every time.
Forgetting to put the router on the taper bar and taking a straight pass down a cue, forgetting to tighten the bearing on the taper bar and having it pop up and nearly cut the cue in half instead of cutting the wrap groove.
These sound pretty dangerous, but I'm actually very careful around my power tools. I have never so much as nicked any part of my body on a saw blade or anything like that. Give me a razor blade or a freshly sharpened kitchen knife though and I will cut my hand every time.
I also see the same people selling cues that aren't their best work. You cannot sell a less-than-perfect cue just because you have time and money invested in it. If you put out junk, you will get known for it.
__________________
Well said.
Tap. Tap Tap
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Well said.
Tap. Tap Tap
When I started there weren't the books & videos for help. I started by collecting a broken Meucci, then a broken Schon. Finally I bought a battered Mcdermott cue. Then I cut them lenghthwise, on the bandsaw. I made a drawing by measuring the whole butt, at 1 inch intervals. I also saw how they made the conection at the joint & handle & made a drawing by measuring that. Then I had to figure out what tools & techniques were used,to get the desired results. I bought a lot of cheap Maple to experiment with. I must admit that I stole, what I liked about each of those 3 Qmakers to make my 1st Qs. Years of development & change has taken place since then. I have no problem with people learning Qmaking in other ways, but m
y wife, my son & I learned the hard way & we had a ball doing it. THE JOURNEY IS THE FUN PART...JER
y wife, my son & I learned the hard way & we had a ball doing it. THE JOURNEY IS THE FUN PART...JER 
One mistake I've made (and learned from) was splitting a forearm from hydraulic pressure when installing a joint pin. I instantly found my solution by cutting a glue relief in the pin and gained the benefit of a 'locking' keyway. I have a tendency to use maybe a little more epoxy than is necessary but I find that preferable to not using enough. Ain't none of my work going to ever come apart because I didn't use enough glue.
Well I started with repair, and did that for many years before even considering building. I guess My biggest mistake on building was not realizing for every one thing that can go right, there are ten things that can easily go wrong, and learning those things the hard way, so as to make sure they didn't happen again is all part of the game.
The first cue i built I also had a blow out in the joint. I made it through the handle joint fine, with no blowout, but once that first cue was almost complete and I went to install the pin without any relief, and to make things worse bottoming out the pin, I heard a sound, and then after the glue dried I popped the cue out and saw the blowout right below the joint. I should have known right then what i was in for
That cue stays around to remind me of that incident, along with a few others I keep in a box.
This is one of those things You can work yourself to the bone on, and still get let down when something goes wrong and ruins all the hard work. It seems like a good test of will to me, If you don't go broke first. Greg
The first cue i built I also had a blow out in the joint. I made it through the handle joint fine, with no blowout, but once that first cue was almost complete and I went to install the pin without any relief, and to make things worse bottoming out the pin, I heard a sound, and then after the glue dried I popped the cue out and saw the blowout right below the joint. I should have known right then what i was in for
That cue stays around to remind me of that incident, along with a few others I keep in a box.This is one of those things You can work yourself to the bone on, and still get let down when something goes wrong and ruins all the hard work. It seems like a good test of will to me, If you don't go broke first. Greg
Getting in a hurry to finish a cue was my first problem I can remember. It took me 2 days to go from lumber to finished cue. I think the wood store ripped me off because it didden't stay straight. Seriously it is very hard to take your time and season wood to finish the first few cues. I recomend people look at their first few as dry runs. Build them to try out techniques and see what way you like doing things. Burn them when you finish.
As others have said, NEVER sell anything that is not the best you can do! You will hear all the "I don't mind that"s and "I won't tell anyone you made it"s but in the end it is your reputation you will hurt. I still have my first pointed cue that I keep around, It is hiddeous. I will post some photos when I get a chance. Chris.
As others have said, NEVER sell anything that is not the best you can do! You will hear all the "I don't mind that"s and "I won't tell anyone you made it"s but in the end it is your reputation you will hurt. I still have my first pointed cue that I keep around, It is hiddeous. I will post some photos when I get a chance. Chris.
I see some major mistakes that beginning cuemakers make as I deal with them on a daily basis.
First mistake is they rush things too fast in order build a cue. My suggestion for someone who wants to build a cue fast is buy some wood with some turns on it that just needs a little taken off to finish and work with that for a while. Old bar butts are great for making butts out of almost instantly. Just thin them down a little and they look like new and have aged plenty long already. Buy some shaft blanks either pre tapered to final sanding size or a couple of MM oversized so you can finish them fast. Buy some other wood and start turning it slowly while you are mastering your joints, butt plates, ring work and finish on the old bar butts, and tips and ferrules on the tapered shaft blanks.
A second mistake I see made is trying to cut too many corners on education and not utilizing what info is out there. I know this sounds like a plug here, but it is the truth. Why re-invent the wheel and waste all those $$ re-inventing it. A $50 DVD or $70 book or both will save you a lot of headaches. Buying the wrong piece of equipment to start with is the most common mistake made. Many buy a $200 to $400 wood lathe and call me wanting to know what it will take to make it a quality cue building or repair lathe. They are usually shocked at what it really costs to make a wood lathe do half as good of a job as a metal or cue lathe. The Book eliminates those costly mistakes.
A third mistake is trying to learn too much before actually building some cues. I have had guys call me and want to know every little detail about how to put their first joint pin in perfectly straight. Then call back six months later to go over it again because they forgot what I told them, and had still not tried anything. I once asked one guy who was notorious for doing this type of thing multiple times, why he is so afraid to make a mistake and that he needs to just go get his hands dirty and build a cue. Just do it and learn from your mistakes. I told him his expectations being so high for his first cue was hindering him from getting any experience. He replied, "Yes, but maybe I will build a very high quality cue also."
I never saw his first cues and he did finally become a cuemaker. But he wanted to have a college level cue building education and have every technique memorized before actually building a cue.
Cue building is not like a normal college course where you can learn it all from books or DVD's. It is more like a trade school education where you get some book learning, along with hands on training at the same time. Without the hands on experience and gaining a feel for things you will never be a quality cuemaker. Feel is something you cannot teach. It must be developed from experience.
First mistake is they rush things too fast in order build a cue. My suggestion for someone who wants to build a cue fast is buy some wood with some turns on it that just needs a little taken off to finish and work with that for a while. Old bar butts are great for making butts out of almost instantly. Just thin them down a little and they look like new and have aged plenty long already. Buy some shaft blanks either pre tapered to final sanding size or a couple of MM oversized so you can finish them fast. Buy some other wood and start turning it slowly while you are mastering your joints, butt plates, ring work and finish on the old bar butts, and tips and ferrules on the tapered shaft blanks.
A second mistake I see made is trying to cut too many corners on education and not utilizing what info is out there. I know this sounds like a plug here, but it is the truth. Why re-invent the wheel and waste all those $$ re-inventing it. A $50 DVD or $70 book or both will save you a lot of headaches. Buying the wrong piece of equipment to start with is the most common mistake made. Many buy a $200 to $400 wood lathe and call me wanting to know what it will take to make it a quality cue building or repair lathe. They are usually shocked at what it really costs to make a wood lathe do half as good of a job as a metal or cue lathe. The Book eliminates those costly mistakes.
A third mistake is trying to learn too much before actually building some cues. I have had guys call me and want to know every little detail about how to put their first joint pin in perfectly straight. Then call back six months later to go over it again because they forgot what I told them, and had still not tried anything. I once asked one guy who was notorious for doing this type of thing multiple times, why he is so afraid to make a mistake and that he needs to just go get his hands dirty and build a cue. Just do it and learn from your mistakes. I told him his expectations being so high for his first cue was hindering him from getting any experience. He replied, "Yes, but maybe I will build a very high quality cue also."
I never saw his first cues and he did finally become a cuemaker. But he wanted to have a college level cue building education and have every technique memorized before actually building a cue.
Cue building is not like a normal college course where you can learn it all from books or DVD's. It is more like a trade school education where you get some book learning, along with hands on training at the same time. Without the hands on experience and gaining a feel for things you will never be a quality cuemaker. Feel is something you cannot teach. It must be developed from experience.
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How about not learning wood enough?
Start making cues because he has all the tooling and money and dvd's but knows next to nothing about wood?
Start making cues because he has all the tooling and money and dvd's but knows next to nothing about wood?
Here is my first attempt at a v point cue. I made this cue around 13-14years ago. Lets see, the joint was too thin, points too short, points were round because the cutter had a radius at the tip, the wrap groove was around .050 too deep, the wrap started coming loose the first night of play, I used krylon spray can clear coat. I did manage to get the joint pin straight by some miracle. When I started building cues I coulden't find any info at all. I just learned by trial and error. I used to cruise pawn shops for cues I could buy and cut apart. It took a while but once I finished my first "good" cue the satisfaction was undescribable. I would have killed for all the books and videos and az billiards back then. I would have shaved a few years off of the initial learning curve. I layed a rough cut forarm next to the cue to show how wide and round the points are. I recieved offers to sell the cue when it was done, I am glad I did not sell it. I would have made $75 and this cue would be haunting me. Chris.
Its hardly avoidable, but I've taken some expensive beatings on poor quality and, or unusable materials. I attribute this to the cost of learning and try not to cry too much about it. A few years ago I bought several hundred dollars worth of what were represented to be top grade shaft dowels only to have a couple of cuemakers laugh at the grain runout/movement in 95% of them. 
I also split a gross box of Valley housecues with a cuemaker only to find out that the points were horribly short, staircased, and already too skinny where the joint would be. If I had to put a number on it, I've easily mis-spent/wasted 5-6 thousand dollars, maybe more...and there's more "learning" coming somewhere down the pike.
Martin
I also split a gross box of Valley housecues with a cuemaker only to find out that the points were horribly short, staircased, and already too skinny where the joint would be. If I had to put a number on it, I've easily mis-spent/wasted 5-6 thousand dollars, maybe more...and there's more "learning" coming somewhere down the pike.Martin
ratcues said:
The learning was and is always aggravating but it defines who we are.
Very similar to wood, Everything has to be seasoned. If I just listened and never did what I was told not to do, I wouldn't understand half of what I think I understand.
Very similar to wood, Everything has to be seasoned. If I just listened and never did what I was told not to do, I wouldn't understand half of what I think I understand.