Drawing the rock

[Shorty]

Can you post a picture of your bridge? I'm not inclined myself, but I know a few guys who can build anything we design out of metal.

Jim

Here are pictures of my bridge. Basically it is made out of 1/2 inch metal conduit, with ten penny nails welded at 1 5 7 and 11 o'clock positions. The top two are cut off shorter, so I can rotate it around for shorter heights. You can actually offset all four of these positions to achieve different heights if you want. In an ideal world, I would love for the tube that the shaft slides through to be made of a plastic or nylon that would not nick up my shaft so bad, but I play with a Predator and I figure I can always get another one if it gets bad enough. Believe it or not, all it does is make a black ring down where the bridge slides all the way back when I pick up the cue. The problem with nylon or plastic though, is it may make it lighter...and on the contrary, I think it may need to be heavier.

As far as me drawing the rock, I think I am trying to punch the ball and not stroke through it. I seem to be mentally worried about hitting the cue ball more than once on my stroke. I am going to try and slow down my stroke and see what happens.

Thanks guys for all your inputs!

Shorty

 

[jhendri2]

Here are pictures of my bridge. Basically it is made out of 1/2 inch metal conduit, with ten penny nails welded at 1 5 7 and 11 o'clock positions. The top two are cut off shorter, so I can rotate it around for shorter heights. You can actually offset all four of these positions to achieve different heights if you want. In an ideal world, I would love for the tube that the shaft slides through to be made of a plastic or nylon that would not nick up my shaft so bad, but I play with a Predator and I figure I can always get another one if it gets bad enough. Believe it or not, all it does is make a black ring down where the bridge slides all the way back when I pick up the cue. The problem with nylon or plastic though, is it may make it lighter...and on the contrary, I think it may need to be heavier.


Shorty

What are the length of the nails? I may have an Idea.

Jim

 

[SkippyFL]

Hey Shorty, I know a couple of people in town that may be able to help with fabrication of a plastic one. Also I have a couple of connections at some machine shops in town for modification of the metal design. My dad being a manufacturing engineer has its benefits.

Next time I'm over we'll see if I can iron out your stroke. I think you are having the same problem I have from time to time... not keeping the cue level all the way through the ball. I tend to pull my head slightly from time to time and it raises the contact point on the cue ball. Then as ARM said the ball just stops dead and laughs at me.

BTW you'd be proud of us... we played 4 or 5 games of one hole last night.

Skippy

 

[Shorty]

What are the length of the nails? I may have an Idea.

Jim

The nails are like 3 inch nails that have had the points cut off. I then put rubber toggle switch covers over the end to protect the felt of the table and provides a better sticking feet for it.

Shorty

 

[Snapshot9]

Have you tried ...

Shorty ... Have you tried having a little bag like a beanbag sort of. A guy in Vegas with one arm and one leg used one of these. It is also useful when
shooting off the rail to keep the cue stroking straight and not all over the place.

You can make an indention in it for your cue, and if you don't fill it up too tight,
the indention could be very low to the felt. My mom and I made one for a
one arm guy here, and I think we used salt as the filler (only about 1/2 full
though), and Mom sewed the bag together from some material she had.

 

[Shorty]

Shorty ... Have you tried having a little bag like a beanbag sort of. A guy in Vegas with one arm and one leg used one of these. It is also useful when
shooting off the rail to keep the cue stroking straight and not all over the place.

You can make an indention in it for your cue, and if you don't fill it up too tight,
the indention could be very low to the felt. My mom and I made one for a
one arm guy here, and I think we used salt as the filler (only about 1/2 full
though), and Mom sewed the bag together from some material she had.

Yeah I have seen this idea and it works good...just one small problem with it, my arms are not long enough to get it where it needs to be and then being able to snatch it back up if the cue or another ball is coming toward it. Make sense?

I am working on some ideas and will tweak mine some perhaps with some weight, as well as tweak with my stroke some and see what I can do.

Thanks for the suggestion though!

Shorty

 

[Jal]

Here are pictures of my bridge....Shorty

Although your bridge is pretty ingenious, I would think a small hand rake would work better. I'm picturing a square piece of wood with a relatively short handle and v-grooves of various depths cut into each side. The grooves would be at an angle with respect to the long axis of the handle so that you could rotate the rake to any of the four positions and still have them pointing straight ahead.

I would think this would be much more stable than the one you're currently using since you could press it down into the cloth, but maybe I don't understand your situation.

It certainly would be easy to craft out of wood.

As far as the draw goes, you shouldn't be lifting your bridge off the table at all. I don't think you should try to correct this with a heavier version of your (or any other) bridge, but take a good look at your stroke instead.

Where you hold your cue can make a big difference as far as the "punchiness" is concerned. Your arm just naturally starts to decelerate at some point, and holding the cue too far forward can cause this to start prematurely.

I have a little longer than normal cue (60") and yesterday I experimented with holding it at the very end to see if I could increase the length of my best attempts at power draws. I found, much to my surprise, that I could add about fifty percent more distance on a fairly consistent basis. This is much more than I anticipated for various reasons which I won't go into, but it indicates that I was probably decelerating the cue before impact instead of having it coast into the cueball.

So I would suggest that you try moving your grip hand back as far back as you can without compromising comfort and accuracy.

Just some thoughts.

Jim

 

[DaveK]

Yeah I have seen this idea and it works good...just one small problem with it, my arms are not long enough to get it where it needs to be and then being able to snatch it back up if the cue or another ball is coming toward it.

Perhaps a small loop on the top would work for retrieving the bag with your cue. Sliding the shaft through a loose loop would be about the same as sliding it across the top of the bag, I would think. Also, you could position it rather well hanging from your cue. I can just see you slinging it into position like a side-arm fly fisherman !

As far as back spin applied to the cue ball, I cannot get anywhere near as much spin when using the bridge. I have found that if I follow through a lot, trying to end up with the tip on the cloth an inch or two the other side of the cue ball (in a straight line with the line-of-stroke), I do OK, but never like a normal hand bridged shot. I'd be interested in others experiences in this area ... can you get the same backspin when using the mechanical bridge ?

Dave, who thinks about pool and inventions fairly regularly