I have a seperate question about this approach to
keeping a shaft straight.....(personally not concerned about the possibility of correcting
existing warpage)
Doesn't exposing wood to the open environment (moisture/humidity) for an extended amount of time introduce a risk factor that at least equals, if not outweighs, the potential benifit of this storage method?
I always thought preventing over exposure to moisture/humidity was paramount in preventing wood distortion. Granted, this risk will vary from region to region as humidity levels do. The humidity levels in my house and even my bedroom vary from time to time and I personally feel better keeping my shafts in a quality case over hanging them in the open air.
This product IS very afordable, but if my $250 shafts swell or warp when I use it then the product all of a sudden becomes very expensive!
This is not intended to be a negative post in your f/s thread. I would just like my concerns addressed before I use a $2.50 product to store my $250 shaft.
Thanks
When a cue warps on it's own it is because the cue was not cured long enough or the wood was not treated correctly. Meaning that if it was not bent by external force then it's likely that the wood itself was not cured properly. If the cue was not subject to extremes like dipping it in boiling water and then putting it into the walk-in freezer immediately it should be able to withstand most conditions without warping or at the most exhibit very little movement.
Cues are stored openly more than they are in cases. They are exposed to humidity levels the same as everything else in your life. There are millions of cues that are in display racks in stores and in private homes.
I keep my cues in the car all the time no matter what the climate is.
As I said earlier the example for hanging wood is to look at how cue makers do it. Many of the best cue makers store their shafts in the hanging vertical position through every stage of cutting and curing.
Regarding the question of moisture exposure and hanging. When wood is going to be bent on purpose it is deliberately softened with water and heat. Then when sufficiently pliable the wood is bent to conform to whatever shape is desired, bound in place and allowed to dry. Then the wood is sealed to prevent moisture from seeping in. Thus if the bent wood never gets anywhere close to the moisture content and temperature that it was when it was formed it will retain that form indefinitely with only very slight movement if any.
This is the same with cues in the opposite direction. The cue maker takes a piece of wood and cuts a little off to make a straight round dowel. Then he lets that dowel be exposed to the air so that it can move as much as it is likely to. If it warps slightly then he cuts it again so that the dowel is straight and let's it cure more. The process is repeated until the goal is reached of having a piece of wood at shaft size where it's been pared down to the heart of the piece that refuses to move any longer. At that point the balance between how much moisture the shaft holds and the form of the wood (straight) is perfect. Only an extreme force or combination of forces would change the shape of the wood after that.
This is how the best cue makers do it. That's why their stuff is expensive because anything less than this process introduces the risk of putting out shafts that are NOT optimally cured and thus more susceptible to change.
Many cue makers opt for chemical treatments to impregnate their shafts against moisture absorbtion. This does work but it also can lead to shafts feeling "dead". Now there are chemical treatments that mitigate that dead feeling and these are often combined with natural curing to produce nearly warp-proof (with normal use) shafts. Still this process is expensive and must be rigidly followed for good results so in the manufacturing of cues it is only applied to the higher priced varieties while the lower end is done manually.
Essentially though unless you are planning to let your cue sit over a steam vent there is no downside to hanging it.
I personally prefer to steam and bend my shafts IF they develop a severe warp. There are any number of techniques out there for forming wood. Some people put them between elevated rests and use fishing weights to tease out the warp over time. I came across a website the other day where a guy wrote a long page about his experiments in this regard with the conclusion that the gain was only temporary as the warp came back.
The real conclusion should be here that when wood warps it is reacting to the environment and going to a state that it prefers to be in. Think of a rubber band. You can stretch it into a tight shape by force but when you let it go then it reverts to the shape it had at first. Wood is cellular which means that it's internal structure is essentially composed of tiny cups which are designed to hold moisture and nutrients for the cells to feed on. A piece of wood is not alive but the structure allows it to expand and shrink as it takes on or loses moisture and gets hot or cold. So this is why the only substitute for time-based multiple-pass curing is to essentially stabilize the structure through filling the cells with moisture-proof material.
In essence this taken to the extreme is what Dymondwood is. It's wood that has had all the cells filled with resin so that it is essentially a composite of wood and plastic and will not move from the state it's in. Makes for awesome rails on a pool table, stable inlays and butt pieces for pool cues but terrible shafts.
I find it fascinating that we use pool cues which are arguably one of the finest instruments made of wood and yet most of us know very little about the properties of the wood used in our cues and how that wood came from a giant tree down to a little pool cue.
