Favourite wood for playability?

hit.

I believe that curly maple has a harder hit than birdseye maple. I deducted that from testing shafts made from both.
 
Assuming the cue is made by someone with the requisite skill and experience, this is what I have gleaned from the wisdom shared on this forum (and my own experience): a combination of maple, one of the various rosewoods, and/or purpleheart is a very good place to start.

Of course there are other woods to explore, but these are staples of many great playing cues.
 
You must also take into account the weight of various woods ebony rose woods Purple Heart can make you very heavy when you don't really desire it

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Fish2 asked for opinions so no one can be wrong in replying to his question.

Occasionally someone attempts to "impress' us with their definitive answer but answers are like a certain part of our anatomy-everybody has one.

As to your question of me some posts back, Fish2, I like a maple(your choice of straight grain, curly, birdseye or mix of these), a purpleheart core, and then full cut points, not inlays of ebony or brazilian rosewood. A straight grain maple grip and the joined parts cut to the taper of your cuemaker.

The result is a fine looking cue that, IMO, plays well if the cuemaker does his part.
 
Since it was not mentioned directly, I like a nice piece of East Indian Rosewood as a front. I see quite a bit of weight variation in EIR and prefer it on the heavier side.

Alan
 
Catamount said:
Tell us more. I've read good things about bamboo.
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I've made several cues with laminated and cored bamboo handles. The owners felt like they played exceptionally nice. I have an article on my website about the attributes of bamboo. Here is a transcript of the article:
"A few words about bamboo: I have long been interested in bamboo as a material to use in cues since my frequent trips to Asia showed me the strength of bamboo used for scaffolding in buildings that were 30 stories and more high. My interest peaked when my grand sons told me they were now using bamboo to make baseball bats. Evidently the ball just flies off the bat, much like it does with aluminum bats. Further research revealed that bamboo has a tensile strength of 28,000 pound per square inch as compared to steel at 23,000 psi. Those figures are for raw bamboo, not laminated which increases the tensile strength many fold. The best bamboo to use for baseball bats (and pool cues) is called "Tonkin" which comes from Guangdong Providence in China. This is the same species that is used to make flyrods. I was fortunate enough to find a company that made laminates from Tonkin in a 3/4" thickness. By glueing two laminates together I had a 1 1/2" turning square. Further research into bamboo baseball bats revealed that the top-of-the-line baseball bats were cored. That fit my cue making philosophy perfectly because I full length core all my cues, usually with purple heart. The result is a unique cue that has the attributes of a cored bamboo baseball bat. These are strength with just the right amount of flex, the lovely feel and look of bamboo and the "hit" which can be described as "lively". Try one of my hybrid bamboo cues--you will not be disappointed".

I am building one for a customer now with a segmented bamboo handle.

Bob
 

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QMAKER said:
I've made several cues with laminated and cored bamboo handles. The owners felt like they played exceptionally nice. I have an article on my website about the attributes of bamboo. Here is a transcript of the article:
"A few words about bamboo: I have long been interested in bamboo as a material to use in cues since my frequent trips to Asia showed me the strength of bamboo used for scaffolding in buildings that were 30 stories and more high. My interest peaked when my grand sons told me they were now using bamboo to make baseball bats. Evidently the ball just flies off the bat, much like it does with aluminum bats. Further research revealed that bamboo has a tensile strength of 28,000 pound per square inch as compared to steel at 23,000 psi. Those figures are for raw bamboo, not laminated which increases the tensile strength many fold. The best bamboo to use for baseball bats (and pool cues) is called "Tonkin" which comes from Guangdong Providence in China. This is the same species that is used to make flyrods. I was fortunate enough to find a company that made laminates from Tonkin in a 3/4" thickness. By glueing two laminates together I had a 1 1/2" turning square. Further research into bamboo baseball bats revealed that the top-of-the-line baseball bats were cored. That fit my cue making philosophy perfectly because I full length core all my cues, usually with purple heart. The result is a unique cue that has the attributes of a cored bamboo baseball bat. These are strength with just the right amount of flex, the lovely feel and look of bamboo and the "hit" which can be described as "lively". Try one of my hybrid bamboo cues--you will not be disappointed".

I am building one for a customer now with a segmented bamboo handle.

Bob
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The top contribution to the playing of a cue is the shaft as far as wood goes. Have you used this laminated bamboo for shafts yet?
 
cueman said:
The top contribution to the playing of a cue is the shaft as far as wood goes. Have you used this laminated bamboo for shafts yet?
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I agree with the shaft being a major contributor to the playing uniqueness of the cue. However, over the years I have began to think that the butt has more to do with it than
we had given it credit for in the past. With all due respect being given to the shaft the butt plays a significant part in the equation. When your trying to get that last 5, 10 or 15%
more of performance out of the cue there is not much "tweaking: left to be done with the shaft but the butt opens up a whole new frontier with wood combinations, pin materials,
joint materials and construction methods. Just my thoughts on the subject,

I played around with it several years ago with bamboo shafts but when you get down to 13mm it looses its stiffness and gets to whippy. In order to get the most out of it it needs to be in compression. That is trapped between a solid forearm and a threaded but cap and sleeve. People like it for a handle sleeve when coupled with BRW, BKW, PH and Walnut which it what I have used it with. I might try it with a cored forearm/butt sleeve in the future.
 
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QMAKER said:
I agree with the shaft being a major contributor to the playing uniqueness of the cue. However, over the years I have began to think that the butt has more to do with it than
we had given it credit for in the past. With all due respect being given to the shaft the butt plays a significant part in the equation. When your trying to get that last 5, 10 or 15%
more of performance out of the cue there is not much "tweaking: left to be done with the shaft but the butt opens up a whole new frontier with wood combinations, pin materials,
joint materials and construction methods. Just my thoughts on the subject,

I played around with it several years ago with bamboo shafts but when you get down to 13mm it looses its stiffness and gets to whippy. In order to get the most out of it it needs to be in compression. That is trapped between a solid forearm and a threaded but cap and sleeve. People like it for a handle sleeve when coupled with BRW, BKW, PH and Walnut which it what I have used it with. I might try it with a cored forearm/butt sleeve in the future.
Click to expand...

I totally agree. The butt does play a big part. Especially how the cue feels to the player. I am just wondering with all the negative things said about Maple, why it is still king among pool playing shafts. It is not just because it is easier to get as the shaft quality maple is much harder to get than many other woods. It is not because it stays straighter than all the rest of the woods as there are a lot of woods that are less prone to warping. Ash is the only wood that people bring up normally to say it plays as good or better than maple, but it looses out on grain smoothness. With all the thousands of woods out there that have been tried for shafts, there has to be a reason Maple is still king. I think it is because it all around plays and feels better than all the other discovered cue woods. If someone comes up with a smooth, low warpage shaft wood that plays better than maple they will have made the discovery of the century concerning pool.
 
Lots of good observations in this thread. As Chris says: Maple meets the criteria for a good shaft and so do ash, and there might be other woods out there just as good.
I thinks it's valid to draw the comparison to vine and food. Look at regions in Italy, France and Spain (to name a few) the local classic dishes, matches the vine, this is no coincidence, just as maple is abundant in USA and Canada, ash is very common in England, hence most snooker cues are made of ash.
If pool had long traditions here in Norway, maybe we would use pine or birch shafts, as those are the most common woods here :-)
 
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Bamboo -- from the ridiculous to the sublime. The 100 or so proven hardwoods are not good enough. The upside to Bamboo is that if we used bamboo for shafts they could be also used as punji sticks in the event we're near a war zone or if we get invaded.

 
i have experimented with bamboo

i bought some strand woven bamboo. which is almost like plywood. they shred the bamboo and reconstruct it using some type of adhesive. i made 4 or 5 cues, both butts and shafts. the strand woven will move quite a bit,. i liked the way it played, but it is very light.it was a fun experiment. but now about the only thing i use it for, is ferrules. i think the strand woven material makes great ferrules,..
 
cueman said:
I totally agree. The butt does play a big part. Especially how the cue feels to the player. I am just wondering with all the negative things said about Maple, why it is still king among pool playing shafts. It is not just because it is easier to get as the shaft quality maple is much harder to get than many other woods. It is not because it stays straighter than all the rest of the woods as there are a lot of woods that are less prone to warping. Ash is the only wood that people bring up normally to say it plays as good or better than maple, but it looses out on grain smoothness. With all the thousands of woods out there that have been tried for shafts, there has to be a reason Maple is still king. I think it is because it all around plays and feels better than all the other discovered cue woods. If someone comes up with a smooth, low warpage shaft wood that plays better than maple they will have made the discovery of the century concerning pool.
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Try red oak. Its like chocolate ice cream--once you taste chocolate (red oak) you'll never go back to vanilla (maple). Yet, they sell more vanilla than chocolate.
 
Joe Barringer said:
Bamboo -- from the ridiculous to the sublime. The 100 or so proven hardwoods are not good enough. The upside to Bamboo is that if we used bamboo for shafts they could be also used as punji sticks in the event we're near a war zone or if we get invaded.

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Hmmm. Didn't know bamboo was a wood, never mind a hard wood.
I do believe it is a grass. Oh yes, it also renewable. Just saying.
 
QMAKER said:
Try red oak. Its like chocolate ice cream--once you taste chocolate (red oak) you'll never go back to vanilla (maple). Yet, they sell more vanilla than chocolate.
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If red oak plays good for shaft wood, it would still fall short in the smoothness category.
 
QMAKER said:
Hmmm. Didn't know bamboo was a wood, never mind a hard wood.
I do believe it is a grass. Oh yes, it also renewable. Just saying.
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Who said it was wood? It is grass and unstable as well as being difficult to use. But hey, I'm satisfied with the 100 of so hardwoods out there that I don't need to go looking for trouble. :outtahere:
 
joe

if we do not experiment with different materials, we would still believe the moon is made of blue cheese.

if you don't make mistakes, you are not trying
 
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