Floaters

[Palmetto cue]

I've read several times on AZ about putting one piece tips in a bowl of water to cull out the bad ones. The floaters are supposed to be below par if I remember correctly. My question is how many use this method, and how reliable is it? I tried about 10 Triangle tips, and I observed three different results.
1. A few tips would indeed float, but I noticed they had a more heavy fuzz on the crown. You could see air bubbles trapped in the fuzz of the crown.
2. A few others would sink, but not all the way to the bottom.
3. The rest sank to the bottom.
I learned early on to keep my tools sharp, and keep heat to a min. That being said, only every once in a blue moon will I have to cut off a tip I just installed because I don't like the way it trims down, or feels. So, this isn't a big deal for me, but I'm curious of methods others use to pick the best tips because I would like to be able to pick out the good uns for the better players in my area. Thanks in advance for any replies to this post.... Mikey:thumbup:

 

[McChen]

i haven't found any reliable way of sorting the good one from the bad ones. the sinker/floater thing didn't really work at all, i got good floaters and bad sinkers. pressing doesn't help either, if the tip is crap, it'll just be a pressed crap tip. there were some other ideas like looking at the backs and sanding the bottom and looking at the color. i found you pretty much won't know until you start cutting the tip. i just put them on and if they cut down bad, i just cut it off and start again. perhaps the only real way would be to get a very expensive durometer or a microscope to examine each tip. i have found for the lepros and triangles that if you buy the 15mm size, they are much more consistent and you get much fewer bad ones. not exactly sure why, perhaps the bigger/thicker tips come from a better part of the hide?

 

[pescadoman]

i haven't found any reliable way of sorting the good one from the bad ones. the sinker/floater thing didn't really work at all, i got good floaters and bad sinkers. pressing doesn't help either, if the tip is crap, it'll just be a pressed crap tip. there were some other ideas like looking at the backs and sanding the bottom and looking at the color. i found you pretty much won't know until you start cutting the tip. i just put them on and if they cut down bad, i just cut it off and start again. perhaps the only real way would be to get a very expensive durometer or a microscope to examine each tip. i have found for the lepros and triangles that if you buy the 15mm size, they are much more consistent and you get much fewer bad ones. not exactly sure why, perhaps the bigger/thicker tips come from a better part of the hide?

I am fairly certain the hard coating on a LePro would make a durometer test unreliable. It is only after I begin cutting that they self destruct. I try and steer people away from LePros, but many people still love them.

 

[McChen]

you might be right about the coating on the le pro...not sure how hard it is. though even uncoated tips destruct on cutting too, like elks and triangles, a bad one will just puff out when you cut.

try the 15mm lepros, the boxes i've tried had much less bad ones in it. the 14mm and smaller sizes it seems i got more bad/mediocre tips than good ones.

 

[Sheldon]

Tap the tips on a hard surface. A flat piece of tile works well. I use the bed rail on my Porper lathe.
You'll quickly learn the sound a good tip and a bad tip makes, it's 99.9% effective. You'll be able to grade the tips for hardness too.

 

[McChen]

hmm...interesting. i tried with a bunch of triangles, not sure if i'm doing it right, or maybe i'm just tone deaf! mine all sounded pretty much the same to me. do you tap the bottom or the top of the tip? how hard?

 

[scdiveteam]

you might be right about the coating on the le pro...not sure how hard it is. though even uncoated tips destruct on cutting too, like elks and triangles, a bad one will just puff out when you cut.

try the 15mm lepros, the boxes i've tried had much less bad ones in it. the 14mm and smaller sizes it seems i got more bad/mediocre tips than good ones.

I have been doing cue repair at my pool hall for over 8 years and have over 400 regular repeat customers and in that time, I don't remember ever having a problem with LePros. They are the most popular and used tip world wide. The "coating" which you refer to will be gone on every surface when the tip is installed. On a Rockwell hardness test the coating's effect will negated.

Triangles are another story, they can expand and get soft sometime when you are cutting and shaping.

I always get the 15 mm also because I heard they were better, who knows.

When you are trimming or shaping the tip, try it an slower speed, that may help. Before I get close to the final blend with the ferrule, I always wet the tip and burnish at high speed with a paper towel and the cut the harder burnished leather slow before high speed sand finishing the side and wet high speed re burnishing after shaping.

Rick G

 

[JoeyInCali]

Tap the tips on a hard surface. A flat piece of tile works well. I use the bed rail on my Porper lathe.
You'll quickly learn the sound a good tip and a bad tip makes, it's 99.9% effective. You'll be able to grade the tips for hardness too.

tap tap tap .
Floating is like dowsing for water .

 

[Sheldon]

hmm...interesting. i tried with a bunch of triangles, not sure if i'm doing it right, or maybe i'm just tone deaf! mine all sounded pretty much the same to me. do you tap the bottom or the top of the tip? how hard?

I tap the rounded side. Triangles are pretty consistent, they should all sound pretty similar. Listen closely, and tap every tip you do, from now on. You'll get an ear for it. Since I found this method about 10 years ago, I have put on only 1 or 2 bad tips. It's really easy to tell the bad ones once you gain an ear for it.

 

[Palmetto cue]

I tap the rounded side. Triangles are pretty consistent, they should all sound pretty similar. Listen closely, and tap every tip you do, from now on. You'll get an ear for it. Since I found this method about 10 years ago, I have put on only 1 or 2 bad tips. It's really easy to tell the bad ones once you gain an ear for it.

Thanks so much everyone for all the info! Sheldon, I think I know what you are talking about. I found it out by accident though. Just slipped out of my fingers onto my garage floor. Thanks again :thumbup: