Eye Alignment / Sighting Device - Home Made

Colin Colenso

Colin Colenso

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Expanding upon a method I've seen snooker coach Nic Barrow using in his coaching videos, I made this mirror slit set up so I could easily check and train my eye position over the cue.

This is useful for those who want to develop eye-dominant / one eye over cue alignment.

I used a stool + shoe box to get to table height, in front of a rectangular mirror with 2 sheets A4 paper sticky taped about 18mm apart, leaving a slit that wide.

By pointing the cue at the reflected cue, you can tell if your eye is on the vertical line by whether you can see the whole cue in the reflection. When you see the whole cue, if you glance up, you can see your eye.

Once in the position, you can shift focus from bridge to tip to along the cue in the reflection and train two aspects:

1. The faculty of strengthening the perception of the dominant eye, and it's perception for short and long focus.

2. Training the body and eye-body link to get familiar with this vertical over-cue alignment.

Here's a pic taken from above my head so you can pretty much see what I'm seeing in the mirror, though you can't see my bridge.

Colin
 

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Unique and Cool

Nice Post Colin,
Very unique and cool. Even though I am left eye dominant I like my right eye over the cue. This way I am at least in the same place each time and it seems to help a lot.


Colin Colenso said:
Expanding upon an method I've seen snooker coach Nic Barrow using in is coaching videos, I made this mirror slit set up so I could easily check and train my eye position over the cue.

This is useful for those who want to develop eye-dominant / one eye over cue alignment.

I used a stool + shoe box to get to table height, in front of a rectangular mirror with 2 sheets A4 paper sticky taped about 18mm apart, leaving a slit that wide.

By pointing the cue at the reflected cue, you can tell if your eye is on the vertical line by whether you can see the whole cue in the reflection. When you see the whole cue, if you glance up, you can see your eye.

Once in the position, you can shift focus from bridge to tip to along the cue in the reflection and train two aspects:

1. The faculty of strengthening the perception of the dominant eye, and it's perception for short and long focus.

2. Training the body and eye-body link to get familiar with this vertical over-cue alignment.

Here's a pic taken from above my head so you can pretty much see what I'm seeing in the mirror, though you can't see my bridge.

Colin
Click to expand...
 
Colin - great idea!!! I need to find a stool the right height now. I've used the folded paper with a line down the center (so the paper is "stepped"), but this idea is a really good one as well.

p.s. I wonder if Lord Kelvin was ever able to assign a numerical value to love...other than infinity.
 
Colin, it seems to me that you can only see the reflected cue in a straight line with the actual cue when your eye is in the proper place, with or without the sheets of paper - so the paper is an additional aid to help determine when the line is straight...?

pj
chgo
 
Patrick Johnson said:
Colin, it seems to me that you can only see the reflected cue in a straight line with the actual cue when your eye is in the proper place, with or without the sheets of paper - so the paper is an additional aid to help determine when the line is straight...?

pj
chgo
Click to expand...

I would need them to keep me from being distracted by the handsome guy staring back at me! :grin:
 
Patrick Johnson said:
Colin, it seems to me that you can only see the reflected cue in a straight line with the actual cue when your eye is in the proper place, with or without the sheets of paper - so the paper is an additional aid to help determine when the line is straight...?

pj
chgo
Click to expand...

The paper does a few things Patrick,

It stops the other eye seeing anything, and as you suggest, the edges provide a guide to getting the cue central and the eye central.

If you spend a few minutes on it, you'll see what I mean.

Colin
 
JAMSGOLF said:
Colin - great idea!!! I need to find a stool the right height now. I've used the folded paper with a line down the center (so the paper is "stepped"), but this idea is a really good one as well.

p.s. I wonder if Lord Kelvin was ever able to assign a numerical value to love...other than infinity.
Click to expand...
I think Lord Kelvin came to the same conclusion as Einstein. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110099/ :smiling-heart:
 
Colin Colenso said:
The paper does a few things Patrick,

It stops the other eye seeing anything, and as you suggest, the edges provide a guide to getting the cue central and the eye central.

If you spend a few minutes on it, you'll see what I mean.

Colin
Click to expand...
Clever idea, Colin (as usual).

pj
chgo
 
A pretty handy potter who plays left eye over the cue:
 

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Colin Colenso said:
Expanding upon a method I've seen snooker coach Nic Barrow using in his coaching videos, I made this mirror slit set up so I could easily check and train my eye position over the cue.

This is useful for those who want to develop eye-dominant / one eye over cue alignment.

I used a stool + shoe box to get to table height, in front of a rectangular mirror with 2 sheets A4 paper sticky taped about 18mm apart, leaving a slit that wide.

By pointing the cue at the reflected cue, you can tell if your eye is on the vertical line by whether you can see the whole cue in the reflection. When you see the whole cue, if you glance up, you can see your eye.

Once in the position, you can shift focus from bridge to tip to along the cue in the reflection and train two aspects:

1. The faculty of strengthening the perception of the dominant eye, and it's perception for short and long focus.

2. Training the body and eye-body link to get familiar with this vertical over-cue alignment.

Here's a pic taken from above my head so you can pretty much see what I'm seeing in the mirror, though you can't see my bridge.

Colin
Click to expand...

Hi Colin,

I see you are up to your old tricks as usual LOL. Great Idea.. Mirrors are great helpers for establishing head position...

I have one in the basement that has painters tape vertically to serve as the alignment for the cue and thin strips horizontally so I can confirm that I am keeping my eyes level...

I use a small ring binder reinforcer as my target below where the vertical tape ends and I line up to try and point the cue at the center hole of the reinforcer while using the guide lines to bring my eyes into a square sight picture......

With my convergence defficiency it was an exercise in futility as I have to keep an eye over the cue but it was very interesting to play with... I may take another mirror and try the paper trick.....

Hope all is well....

Chris
 
The Renfro said:
Hi Colin,

I see you are up to your old tricks as usual LOL. Great Idea.. Mirrors are great helpers for establishing head position...

I have one in the basement that has painters tape vertically to serve as the alignment for the cue and thin strips horizontally so I can confirm that I am keeping my eyes level...

I use a small ring binder reinforcer as my target below where the vertical tape ends and I line up to try and point the cue at the center hole of the reinforcer while using the guide lines to bring my eyes into a square sight picture......

With my convergence defficiency it was an exercise in futility as I have to keep an eye over the cue but it was very interesting to play with... I may take another mirror and try the paper trick.....

Hope all is well....

Chris
Click to expand...
Thanks Chris,

Your set up sounds interesting. Not sure if doing this will help much, but I've been trying to play under my left eye in recent months but noticed I drift off at times and it's hard to check it. I figure doing this regularly, will make any other position feel wrong.

Wish I could get my eyes level horizontally but I fear I'd wrench my neck. 25 years ago I played all stretched out, chin on cue, but the body doesn't want to go there anymore... my eyebrows get into the line of shot when I get my chin down on the cue and I can hardly breathe. LOL

Cheers,
Colin
 
Colin Colenso said:
The paper does a few things Patrick,

It stops the other eye seeing anything, and as you suggest, the edges provide a guide to getting the cue central and the eye central.

If you spend a few minutes on it, you'll see what I mean.

Colin
Click to expand...

Most players need the other eye to see something to get to their correct alignment. I might be misunderstanding your point, but I think we're talking about establishing an alignment using whichever eye or combination of the eyes that establishes a straight line.

I'm very right eye dominant in all testing, but have recently discovered that with the cue stick under my left tear duct I see a straight line to the target. If I close my right eye, all bets are off, as I use a blended image to correlate center of the cue ball.

Best,
Mike
 
Couldn't you just use stand up picture frames with white paper and sit it on the table. Also you could put the mirror in stand up picture frame behind the paper??
 
Mikjary said:
Most players need the other eye to see something to get to their correct alignment. I might be misunderstanding your point, but I think we're talking about establishing an alignment using whichever eye or combination of the eyes that establishes a straight line.

I'm very right eye dominant in all testing, but have recently discovered that with the cue stick under my left tear duct I see a straight line to the target. If I close my right eye, all bets are off, as I use a blended image to correlate center of the cue ball.

Best,
Mike
Click to expand...

Hi Mike,
Yes, most use a blended image, though I'm noticing a lot of the top snooker players have the cue under one eye. I assume that is their dominant eye, but perhaps it's not the case.

Over the years I can get confused signals from time to time, perhaps because dominance varies or is not very strong. So it's still a bit of an experiment, but this should help me to isolate one variable while testing... i.e. Eye position relative to the cue.

Cheers,
Colin
 
One Pocket John said:
I posted this in another thread.

This helps you to get your body on the shot line while standing and the cue under your strongest eye while bending over into the shooting stance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wafKOsa8-M
You can watch the whole thing or fast forward to 6:20 min.

Good idea Colin

John
Click to expand...

Basically The coach actually crosses the shot line and feeds his non dominant eye some information that really could cause a double cross if this was a cut shot... Crossing the shot line is as bad as swaying off the shot line as both mean you have thrown out all of the aiming you just did standing up at the table......
 
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