Cue butt material

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EddieBme

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Hello Cuemakers and everyone.
I have a question about the best wood to build a cue butt out of, (solid or spliced) for the best feel, most feedback or sensitivity, and sound. If I use the same shaft to test hit with, and with hard tip.
I'm looking to have a 30" butt built with a 3/8" x 10 pin.
Eddie
 
Eddie,
The short answer is there is no best wood, many factors go into playability and feedback. That being said, many of the rosewoods are considered to have great feedback. At the top of that list many would consider Brazilian Rosewood. There are lots of great playing woods, and with every wood there are stars and t*rds. Your best friend is the cuemaker who puts your blank together.

Hope this helps,
Alan

Phelps Custom Cues
 
aphelps1 said:
Eddie,
The short answer is there is no best wood, many factors go into playability and feedback. That being said, many of the rosewoods are considered to have great feedback. At the top of that list many would consider Brazilian Rosewood. There are lots of great playing woods, and with every wood there are stars and t*rds. Your best friend is the cuemaker who puts your blank together.

Hope this helps,
Alan

Phelps Custom Cues
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Mr. Phelps is a wise man. I too, love BRW. There are some other "tonal woods" that are used by guitar makers and these work well with cues.
 
Choice straight grain BRW forearm, bocote handle, stag collars, G-10 joint screw and 4 oz shafts.

You had to ask.:D
 
Obviously subjective, but it's pretty easy to search this topic and find several woods recurrently mentioned. Searching more broadly for "tonewood" will provide a lot of information, as similar qualities in musical instruments are desirable to cues. There are also a number of species that could be excellent which haven't been applied much or at all to cues. The world of wood is pretty fascinating.

What surprised me most is the variability from piece to piece of the same species, which correlates to straightness, evenness, tightness of grain, and density in general, but even within that there are many outliers.

Personally, I've not made any of it into cues, but it is quite interesting to sort through a pile of spindle blanks and tap them to feel the tone and sustain. I've often found among the candidates I select visually for grain and appearance a piece that just resonates differently -- brighter in tone and particularly longer sustain. I've got a piece of olive that is just different somehow than every other piece I've seen. And a piece of BRW that seems like if you could somehow suspend it in air would resonate for minutes. I can't visually tell anything that makes those pieces different. But I've also not turned them into cues, so maybe I'm picking the wrong thing altogether.
 
I have a piece of kam-phi rosewood and the tone is exceptional compared to the other typical woods used for forearms. Maybe you could try something unique like this.
 
When you find that perfect hitting piece of wood be prepared for the reality that your cue is going to be very plain and ordinary looking. The obsession with figured wood is not helping the hit.

The "best" wood is rarely the prettiest.
 
Best is a subjective thing. I don't think there is one superior wood or construction technique, but I think it's fairly safe to say that all the woods that fall into a "tone wood" classification usually also works great for pool cues. The downside is that many of those woods like the Dalbergia and Diospyros genus are all on the CITES list now and will be harder to come by in the future.
 
Kim Bye said:
Best is a subjective thing. I don't think there is one superior wood or construction technique, but I think it's fairly safe to say that all the woods that fall into a "tone wood" classification usually also works great for pool cues. The downside is that many of those woods like the Dalbergia and Diospyros genus are all on the CITES list now and will be harder to come by in the future.
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It's also worth knowing what that means. People don't seem to have the same emotional reaction to harvesting a native tree to extinction as they do sport hunting a majestic animal, but maybe they'd pick different things if they did. There are even some domestic woods aside from maple which could be great and not threatened. Things like mesquite and Texas ebony -- although sourcing the woods might be a challenge.
 
thoffen said:
It's also worth knowing what that means. People don't seem to have the same emotional reaction to harvesting a native tree to extinction as they do sport hunting a majestic animal, but maybe they'd pick different things if they did. There are even some domestic woods aside from maple which could be great and not threatened. Things like mesquite and Texas ebony -- although sourcing the woods might be a challenge.
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Or desert ironwood.
Can be cored with a real good piece of maple and you will have a great hitting forearm.
 
Today | 10:38 AM

JC

When you find that perfect hitting piece of wood be prepared for the reality that your cue is going to be very plain and ordinary looking. The obsession with figured wood is not helping the hit.
The "best" wood is rarely the prettiest.

For me, (at this time), wrap, and inlays aren't important, a plain jane will be fine. I just want to have a cue that I like the feel of and the way it sounds, before spending money for a "Prettier" cue. I have a couple of, shafts that I like that fits a 3/8" x 10 pin.

Very interesting information that's been posted, but from what i'm getting
 
EddieBme said:
Also, I'd like it to weigh, about 15 ozs.
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15oz is no problem, most cues are cored anyway. But if you want a fullsplice, some woods might on the heavy side.
What kind of ringwork, buttcap, joint collar and joint pin is a big part of the equation.
 
Hi Kim. I'd like the cue butt to be as plain as possible, with only a black phenolic joint collar. So far, it seems like most of the cue builders think that Rosewood would be a good choice.
 
isnt african blackwood and ebony
considered among the top "tonal" woods ??
i guess brazilian rosewood should be considered too
 
Kim, when the cue is cored, what goes inside to fill the void? I have a SP cue butt that somebody cored out. The cue is cored out about 18" or so, then a smaller hole drilled and tapped, to hold a brass weight which basically was a 1/2" brass rod, 4" long and about 3/4" inch of threads.
 
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