I'm not sure any case falling over repeatedly for 8 hours is a common occurrence. If it is, I don't care what kind of case a person is using. He shouldn't be housing any cues inside it. Period.
The point is that since Jack is claiming that our interiors WILL harm a cue then he should back up that statement with proof. I am willing to give him a JB Case and a brand new cue and let him show us how it will damage a cue?
What exactly will do this damage? The soft fabric? The snug padding? Pulling the cue out through a padded cavity?
So he can have a hundred hours to show us how exactly my interior
WILL damage a cue.
Meanwhile, I would like to take my Justis and perform the type of actions which are common and which I think an unpadded case MIGHT adversely affect a cue. To me this is simple probability. Any cue maker will tell you that a piece of wood or a joint can break with jolting force at any time. Most of us in this business have seen cues broken with not much force. I had a Prather where the forearm sheared cleanly just from falling over. Jeff might remember it or he might not. I sold the cue to a customer and he came back a week later with a broken cue and he and his friends all swore to me that the cue FELL over, was not slammed, was not thrown, it simply fell over and broke. Jeff didn't even hesitate to fix it as he said it was a fault in the wood and not abuse.
Anyway, the point is that I don't think that there is anything in the normal range of use that Justis can do to our cases where a cue can be damaged. But I certainly believe that it's entirely possible to damage a cue while it's in a Justis when the case falls over.
John, I have had my case since 2009 with 0 issues. It has been knocked over a couple of times with the cues in there and they were inspected afterwards with no damage. So either I am an extreme example or this statement you provided above is false.
I have said many times that there are plenty of people who use Justis and other brands of cases without incident. But there are also people who have had incidents with Justis and other brands. Just because you don't wear a seatbelt does not mean others should follow your example. I tell people all the time that I leave my cues in the car through all seasons and don't have issues. Does this mean that everyone should have the same experience as me?
"Jack has told his customers that the newer interior is unneccesary. I don't agree. [/I]"
What part of this statement is false? Jack DID say this about his newer interiors on this forum. So that's true. I don't agree with Jack, also true.
Also, I work with some mechanical engineers that have their PE. Do I need to get them involved to really squash this garbage being posted
?
I am not going to argue that the interior won't provide better protection as I have not seen or tried it. However, I am a satisfied customer for 4+ years now on this case.
Yes please get them involved. Any information or data that helps the discussion of how much protection is sufficient for most accidents is always welcome. I am not sure what you are calling "garbage" because I haven't made any claims other than some padding is better than no padding and more padding is better than less padding. I mean really this is kind of a no brainer.
I put your cue into a tube with no padding and drop it you are NOT going to be happy about it. I add a little padding and you will feel better. I add a lot of padding and you won't care if I flip it down a flight of stairs. If padding doesn't matter then why do cue makers ship their cues to shows in padded flight cases?
FWIW, I leave my case top open while I play (especially in tournaments), and just this past Saturday it fell over. The Saturday before that it fell over too. It leans against a bench while I play and occasionally falls over because the base is an oval (and the open lid makes it lean further to that side).
While I think he may go overboard on the protection focus to some degree (i.e. turning an open case upside down with nothing falling out), I can appreciate the attention paid to the protective design. Despite my personal issues with JB, I doubt I'll ever own another case. The man may be a little strange (lol) and have some (relatively minor) communication issues, but the quality of his cases is top notch. He also stands behind his work with the determination of a honey badger.
There is a reason I go overboard. This is something that happened to me with a cue I loved. I mean some people act like this is something new......the name of Joe Porper's cases are Protect-A-Case. He marketed the snug fitting protection feature from the beginning. It was because I went from a Porper to an expensive leather case that didn't work as well as the Porper that I decided to created an interior for the "high end" case that worked as well as or better than the Porper.
These things really do happen, it's not my imagination.
Based on what he was wearing to the expo on Saturday, the above is an understatement. :thumbup:
Frankly, I have no problem with John and his determination to create a casr that protects your cues. More power to him. But I think it best to let the cases speak for themselves. Let the customers do the talking. Posting videos about your competitors makes you look both insane AND ridiculously petty and immature.
Yeah I thought that this jacket was a bit loud but it was a gift from a friend and it kind of grew on me. You have to be creative to understand Christian Audiger.
I had an incident this weekend that made me think about this conversation and John's interior. I have a Murnak that I like but have been nervous when I turn it on its side to slide out some of the cues (obviously the cues sit a bit recessed in the tubes). The other day I thought I had all of them out except the butt of a cue and when I gently tipped the case, the butt slid into my hand, but an extra shaft I forgotten about slid onto the floor. I'm always very careful with my cues, but in this instance I just forgot about the additional shaft in the case. It was a light bulb moment when I thought that I needed an interior which prevents cues from sliding out. I love my Murnak and am not sure I will let it go, but I don't believe there is an easy way to modify it. I may just go purchase some sleeves of fabric for the cues to sit in inside of the tubes. But this weekend I clearly saw the value in an interior which prevents the cues from sliding out easily--tough lesson.
Send me an email to
jb@jbcases.com and a picture of your interior. I will tell you how to modify it without taking it apart so that you can keep the cues from falling out.
I think you might Because you see everything depends. I like John and I like Jack. But I personally have watched john attempt this cue won't fall out test with Jamie Wernsmans case and dumped about 20k worth of cues on the floor before jamie could stop him. Luck no cues were hurt in the test . Jamie likes a thin cue and there fore may still slide out . The best protection for a persons cues at the end of the day is vigilance .
I don't remember this. Jamie owns one of my cases and it's a butterfly. Unless we did it with another case. But even so this is a PERFECT example of what I mean. No one wants to see their cues hit the floor ever. The fact is that with some cases the cases has to be tipped slightly to get the cues to come out enough to grab the parts. And in an unpadded case the fact is that ALL the cues would go crashing to the floor if the case somehow got inverted with the lid open. See the above example.
This is where you're wrong. It IS a Barton vs. Justis issue. But... its an issue that John created. He's the one making these dumb videos. He's the one offering padded interior 'upgrades' to Justis cases. John is on a mission to sway people who are Justis lovers into 'realizing' that John makes the best cases around. PERIOD. He'll claim that's not his goal. That "its all about protection". But its not. Its about a pissing contest in which he wants to make Justis look bad.
No Brian, I didn't create this issue. I have talked about my interiors for 18 years and said plainly that I feel they are more protective than interiors with no padding. It's really that simple.
Jack himself created the feud with his false accusation of design theft. Despite offering peace dozens of times he has persisted in making snide remarks about me and our products. And now he is making the claim that our cases WILL damage cues. That claim is something that Jack CANNOT prove and can absolutely cause others to believe him even though he can't back it up. On the other hand every claim I have ever made about his ProLite interiors has been 100% factual and can be proven easily as I did at this past Super Billiards Expo.
As for making Justis look bad. Look, he said that he makes his interiors to be removed easily. If he looks bad when customers see under the hood then that's his problem and not mine. If a cue maker here was found to be doing decals instead of inlays then he would be burned alive after being flayed.
I just removed the interiors and showed people how the cases are built. I removed my own as well and showed them our guts. People are not stupid they can look and touch and feel the difference. No sleight of hand here.
Justis is more than welcome to make his own videos about my cases. You can help him. Go ahead. Any of you can. Anyone is free to acquire my case, dissect it and criticize it. If you're right then people will see it, if you're wrong then people will see it. Let's have MORE exposure on how the cases are made rather than less.
I don't understand how informing the customers about our quality and doing comparisons is a bad thing. This is done every day in every industry. Just imagine a world where you weren't allowed to extoll your virtues and compare them to the competition.
Maybe I did trivialize the grudge issue in my attempt to defend the products and not the people.
This is where I shut up
It's clear that I most focused on Jack because I believe that Jack has been very unfair to me on a number of levels. Most unfairly are the claims that our cases WILL damage cues. That's what all this boils down to for me. I can pick apart every nasty snide remark he makes and expose the hypocrisy in them. But when he speaks about performance of my cases and flat out lies about it then it's over the line in my opinion.
come on guys... it's ridiculous now
No Roger, it's not. When a man says your product WILL harm the thing that product is built to protect then he better be able to back that statement up or face the consequences.
There was NO reason for Jack to make a thread titled "Eat Your Heart Out John Barton".
As if I would be somehow jealous of Dusty's cutie sporting a Justis case. Jack builds pretty cases and all women appreciate pretty things. But he somehow figured that because a seven year old finds his case to be pretty that this means something. Like now his marketing line will be the Choice of Children or something.
Any of us can build pretty cases. The art of case making has evolved tremendously over the past decade. Some of us do pay attention to how well the case protects and some of us don't. Those that don't are usually quiet about it and manage to have plenty of business despite the lower level of protection. Only Jack has gone to the extreme to attempt to justify putting crappy interiors into a loose fitting leather bag.
The motto of this is if you mess with the bull then you get the horns. No one says a word about Predator or OB or Tiger's claims of better performance. I can go through the billiard magazines new and old and find many claims by cue makers that their cues are superior because of x-feature or y-technique and NO ONE here has a word to say about it.
I don't think Jack is a bad person at heart. I think he is stubborn and misguided and extremely unreasonably defensive about how he builds cases. It is my opinion that he would rather be smothered under a mountain of leather than to change how he builds cases. It is my opinion that he doesn't really care much about his customer's cues.
Maybe this is because he never had to save for weeks and months to buy a cue only to see it damaged in a PREVENTABLE accident. Less than $1 in padding prevents 99% of cues from falling out of a case.
