Drilling shaft to reduce squirt??

[Omar]

I'd hate to cause someone to lose a lucrative job, but why can you not get used to the 'hit' of any of those shafts? If I am convinced something helps my game, I learn to use it. We are humans. You don't have to be a Marine to adapt and overcome.

I have to agree with you. I just watched a video on YouTube where our own DrDave was measuring the squirt of different tip material / height combinations. For comparison, he included an example with a Predator Z2. The average difference in squirt between the LD and regular shafts used for the remainder of the tests was around 3/4" over a length of the table shot with a 9/16" tip offset.

I played with a Predator shaft for a lot of years. Their marketing claims they reduce squirt by 40% as compared to a regular shaft. Did I play better with their product? Maybe, maybe not. 40% better? No way. That tells me that squirt isn't the only variable in the equation when shooting with english.

I have a tape at home where they ask Nick Varner about squirt. He says "You can play awfully good pool without knowing anything about it. If you over cut a ball, aim it thicker next time."

I like that philosophy.

 

[the breed]

I have done this to a few shafts as an experiment. Drilled a 5/16 hole 10 inches deep with a small gun drill. Drilled a slightly larger hole 3/4 of an inch deep. Have some nice 8mm balsa 10 1/2 inch long dowels that I fit a 1 1/4 inch piece of carbon fiber arrow shaft on the end of. Carbon is glued to balsa and entire thing is glued into shaft. 1/2 inch of carbon fiber cored with balsa sticks out end of shaft as tenon. A bamboo ferrule is attached to the tenon and fiber tip pad with ultra skin tip. Worked great on both a standard shaft and with a radially laminated blank. Felt good and definitely had lower deflection. Compared them to Lucas hybrid and 314-2 shafts. Were better than both.

 

[ryanshea]

I am intrigued by the breed's gun drill / arrow approach. Could you share some details on your gun drill setup (I am assuming you need a basic lathe of some sort to be able to do this)?

I have drilled out a few shafts using brad point bits and a ghetto drill setup without a care in the world for what remained of the tenon - of course I paid the price on some, but others have worked out wonderfully. Filling the inside with expanding foam, cutting down the ferrule, and then just using a backing on my tips seems to be working okay. My cues have very little value, so I did not have much to lose.

http://www.muppethouse.com/2013/03/diy-low-deflection-cue-shaft.html

I would love to get a few radially laminated shafts from cuestock and try to drill them out and use them with no ferrule at all.