You Been Punked!!!!!!!!!!!!
Happy April fools day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You have been PUNKED old CUE Style..!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When presented with these pictures I had to think of a fun way to present them. With the Hopkins show as my backdrop, I decided to go Ashton Kutcher on you. I hope you have enjoyed the pictures as much as I have enjoyed presenting them. But I want to give you some pertinent and more importantly truthful information, as well share with you some billiard cue history. But to be honest, the phone calls I have had to have while maintaining my composure were classic.
All the pictures have come courtesy of Paul Rubino.
www.rubinocues.com He owns all the material I have presented. Paul really needs no introduction, but lets just say, if its an old cue, he knows it and as good as anyone, in the industry. Paul’s knowledge was not acquired by sitting at a computer e-mailing or trying to find info via online databases. It was acquired by due diligence, research, and a love for old cues and equipment. You might wonder what Paul has in his possession, well here is a little sample, original Paradise screw on ferrules, as well as other material, all the Palmer stuff we have shown and then some. He was also fortunate enough to acquire Rambow’s equipment. He owns his lathe, tools, materials that include shaft wood, Rambow’s inlay materials, screws, joints, ivory Hoppe rings, and so on. The Palmer items are a list onto themselves. All the old materials, rings, plastics, pearlescents, the works.
Paul also does spot on restoration work. He is the only cuemaker I know that can duplicate the tri-color wraps of Paradise and Palmer to perfection. Plus having all that original material, doesn’t hurt either. One other nice thing about Paul, he refuses to restore cues that don’t need it.
About the Billiard Encyclopedia
Paul and Victor Stein, spent over $ 250,000.00 (1989) dollars to be as accurate as possible in writing the encyclopedia. That included trips to Europe, all over the states, interviews, and everything you can imagine that went into writing it. There is a new encyclopedia coming out in December, with never before seen cue collections and cues, don’t miss it.
Now onto the old materials and old cue talk. Palmers lathes do reside in Blatt billiards, in NYC. Rambows lath Paul has, Balabushka’s lathe is still in service with Pete Tasacarella, and obviously Gus’s lathes are still being put to use by Barry. BTW Tad has most of Harvey Martins stuff. Paul has mentioned to me that in the Palmer materials, he located some of the Bakelite in black, white marble that was only prevalent in Paradise cues, as well as Paradise sized joints. It is possible that some material trickled in, or Palmer had it and just never used it in their designs, maybe just for repairing Paradises.
Irish linen
Billiard cues have been wrapped with all sorts of materials. Brunswick offered fishing equipment back in the early 20th century. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that they might have been the first company to utilize fishing wrap as a wrap materials. This fishing wrap was commonly irish linen. It was a very common material in its day. It has come in a multitude of colors since its inception. It was available in solid colors such as black, green, crème, white, red, rainbow, etc.. it also came is speckled, white with green, white with black, white with blue. These wraps have been around since the 1930’s and 40’s. The fishing lines had names of cuttyhunk, camouflage, twisted linen, etc. I own spooled Cortland line that is white with blue spec (1930’s), Cortland #9 in crème, as well as others. Please look at the photo that shows Cortland 9 next to a white with black speck cuttyhunk that came with the Rambow cache of materials. So even Rambow used white with black spec.
Hope you enjoyed this thread as much as I did, look for our historical section to be posted within the next couple of weeks….
One last image..
Best..
JV
