Detonating the cue ball.....is it possible?
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Mike Mertins
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Iv'e seen seen it done with an older ball and have seen it done to numbered balls but not recently with a newer set. The Mid-West Nineball tour banned the use of phenolic tips for breaking but I'm not sure if ti had anything to do with cracking the cue ball.
It's possible with a plugged cue ball
If by the word "detonate" you mean as in fragments and shards all over the place? No. I don't think it's possible. You would need an explosive charge inside the ball, or else a heck of a lot of kinetic energy externally, to do that -- far beyond a human arm's abilities with a swinging cue.
But, I have seen, with my own eyes and arm, knocking the plug out of a plugged bartable cue ball. It was a long time ago in Norfolk, VA (mid-1980s when I was stationed there in the Navy), but I was in the live music club "On Stage" (just outside the gates of the Norfolk navy base). I was playing a regular some cheap racks of 8-ball, and I broke really hard one rack -- I mean, I REALLY layed into it, wrist-snap, forward lunge, back foot kicking into the air and all. Ka-BOOM! The cue ball hit the head ball of the rack, and a split second later, one of the fluorescent tubes in the overhead table light exploded, sending that white powder all over the place. The cue ball lay on the table, wobbling back and forth like one of those "Weeble" toys, with a huge perfectly round sink-hole on top, exposing the metal core of the cue ball. At first, we thought the cue ball itself jumped up into the light. But we ruled that out when we saw that if the cue ball did go up into the light, it was too big to knock out only one of the three fluorescent tubes. On the floor right beside the table, we found the plug that popped out of the cue ball and bulleted into the overhead light.
Now to this day, I don't know if that happened because the cue ball's plug was weak, or I had a once-in-a-lifetime surge of "superhuman" strength (the same kind resulting from adrenalin -- when an old lady lifts a car off of someone trapped underneath), or what. Personally, I think it was the former. But what I can tell you is that the owner of "On Stage" at that time built a little display case with that disemboweled cue ball and its plug, against a backdrop photo of the mess that the shatter fluorescent tube left on the table. And he displayed that on a wall of the establishment all the way until the day I left the Norfolk, VA area in 1990.
So I'd say this is indeed possible -- at least with a plugged cue ball, but that cue ball will have to have been compromised with age and abuse, methinks.
-Sean
If by the word "detonate" you mean as in fragments and shards all over the place? No. I don't think it's possible. You would need an explosive charge inside the ball, or else a heck of a lot of kinetic energy externally, to do that -- far beyond a human arm's abilities with a swinging cue.
But, I have seen, with my own eyes and arm, knocking the plug out of a plugged bartable cue ball. It was a long time ago in Norfolk, VA (mid-1980s when I was stationed there in the Navy), but I was in the live music club "On Stage" (just outside the gates of the Norfolk navy base). I was playing a regular some cheap racks of 8-ball, and I broke really hard one rack -- I mean, I REALLY layed into it, wrist-snap, forward lunge, back foot kicking into the air and all. Ka-BOOM! The cue ball hit the head ball of the rack, and a split second later, one of the fluorescent tubes in the overhead table light exploded, sending that white powder all over the place. The cue ball lay on the table, wobbling back and forth like one of those "Weeble" toys, with a huge perfectly round sink-hole on top, exposing the metal core of the cue ball. At first, we thought the cue ball itself jumped up into the light. But we ruled that out when we saw that if the cue ball did go up into the light, it was too big to knock out only one of the three fluorescent tubes. On the floor right beside the table, we found the plug that popped out of the cue ball and bulleted into the overhead light.
Now to this day, I don't know if that happened because the cue ball's plug was weak, or I had a once-in-a-lifetime surge of "superhuman" strength (the same kind resulting from adrenalin -- when an old lady lifts a car off of someone trapped underneath), or what. Personally, I think it was the former. But what I can tell you is that the owner of "On Stage" at that time built a little display case with that disemboweled cue ball and its plug, against a backdrop photo of the mess that the shatter fluorescent tube left on the table. And he displayed that on a wall of the establishment all the way until the day I left the Norfolk, VA area in 1990.
So I'd say this is indeed possible -- at least with a plugged cue ball, but that cue ball will have to have been compromised with age and abuse, methinks.
-Sean
Hillbilly was banned from a tournament, for doing this very thing.
I can't remember how many he cracked, but it was several.
I can't remember how many he cracked, but it was several.
I've seen two OB's & one CB broken from breaking. The CB split into two pieces about 1/3 & 2/3 of the ball. One OB split nearly thru the middle and the other just shaved a silver dollar-sized flake off. Two of the balls were broken by amateurs with decent breaking power & the other was by a semi-pro with big power.
Detonating Cue Ball
I remember reading a story about Willie Hoppe going back with someone and using the ivory balls that he had won the championship with.
The ball disintegrated from being dried out.
I believe the story because I bought a set of ivory billiard balls and they had some cracks in them and I kept handling them every day and the oils from my hands brought them back to really nice condition
I remember reading a story about Willie Hoppe going back with someone and using the ivory balls that he had won the championship with.
The ball disintegrated from being dried out.
I believe the story because I bought a set of ivory billiard balls and they had some cracks in them and I kept handling them every day and the oils from my hands brought them back to really nice condition
matta:
That sounds like one of the plugged cue balls like I describe in post #4 above. I agree that these will do this, after they've had enough wear and [severe] abuse.
I've never seen a good (read: non-barbox) cue ball broken ever, either. Sawn in half? Yes. But not broken or "detonated" as the OP asks.
-Sean
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I played in an 8 ball tourney once and when I broke, the 10 ball, which was in the middle of the rack, split into two pieces. Both myself and my opponent were confused as to how to proceed. I kept the 10 ball for several years afterward but lost it in a move.
Have you seen this?
http://forums.azbilliards.com/showthread.php?t=168677
Never know what you might find inside a cue ball
http://forums.azbilliards.com/showthread.php?t=168677
Never know what you might find inside a cue ball
About that 4B inside the aramith CB...my guess is that aramith had some left over balls from snooker sets (yes you can buy a set of 15 balls numbered for pool, but in 2-1/8" size) and put a magnetic layer & shell on them to take them up to 2-1/4". A frugal approach, but not something I would expect of aramith.
mosconiac:
A thoughtful insight, except that snooker balls aren't numbered / don't bear number markings. There was one response in that thread (methinks from Cornerman / Fred Agnir) that the "inner" balls were out-of-spec (size-wise) normal object balls, that were repurposed as "cores" for these cue balls. I personally support this idea, as it drastically reduces waste. (Unlike the polyester balls of old, the Phenolic resins they use in balls today, once cured, cannot be melted down, shredded, or reused. It's like an epoxy that once cured, it cannot be broken down and recycled into its constituent parts. Polyester, at least, can be melted down and recycled. Phenolic resins can't.)
So once you make a ball with phenolic resin, you're stuck with it. And if it's out-of-spec (e.g. it's undersized, even though it was perfectly spun and rolls perfectly), you have to find a way to repurpose it, otherwise you have to throw it in a landfill. I think what Saluc is doing is great. The only thing might be their quality assurance -- they need to do a better job of bonding the magnetic shell to that repurposed object ball, and a better job of bonding a new outer layer of phenolic resin on top of that magnetic shell.
-Sean
Mind you I didn't play in the nicest places growing up but I have broken 4 balls in my life. Two of them were cue balls that simply popped the outer shell, one was a ten ball which broke in two fairly even pieces, and last but not least there was a four ball that actually did shatter into many pieces. Like I said tho, all of these were in not the nicest of places, and yes they were all on bar boxes.
