Gus Szamboti article 1988

[JG-in-KY]

Going through some old National Billiard News and I thought this article was really interesting.

Gus Szamboti passes
By Tom Enfield - Philadelphia Inquirer, Tuesday Sept 6 1988

Gus Szamboti was known the world over for the slender beautifully shaped and perfectly balanced wooden sticks that he fashioned in the basement of his Bucks County home.
He made pool cues - "The best you can buy," said Gloria Walker of Exton, a former national and world champion in the games of eight ball and nine ball.
Similar comments were made in poolrooms all over yesterday as word spread that Mr. Szamboti, 56, had suffered a heart attack and died at his home in Penndel. His son Barry said Mr. Szamboti had been home only five days after being released from Temple University Hospital, where he had undergone surgery to replace a heart valve.
More than 200 pool shooters were at the Boulevard Social and Athletic Club in Northeast Philadelphia when the news of Szamboti's death got around about 7 p.m. Sunday.
"Some fellas cried, that's right," said Dawn Strahle, the counter person.
A beefy man, who never managed to quit cigarettes and who drove a Cadillac with a license plate that said CUES, Mr. Szamboti was a straight shooter as a person.
"He was always caring and never took advantage of anybody," said Walker, the owner of a Szamboti pool cue that she says helped make her a champion.
Many people who never knew Mr. Szamboti knew his cues. And they were works of art.
"There are so many things that are involved in making a good cue stick, and he knew them all - the proper wood to use, the drying, the balance and the tapering," said Walker. "I remember Gus telling me in my particular cue alone there are 212 pieces."
His cues weren't cheap. Mr Szamboti told an interviewer four years ago that the price ranges from $325 to $1,000. Among the owners are Steve Mizerak, a world pocket billiards champ well known for his Miller Lite beer commercials, and several time world champion Ray Martin.
"There are no books on how to do this," Mr. Szamboti once said of making cues.
He had grown up with a stick in hand. As a player, though he was never better than fair.
"I always played pool; I played since I was 8 years old," he said in the 1984 interview, recalling days when he could barely reach the green felt table top at St Ann's Boys Club on Lehigh Avenue in Philadelphia.
As an adult, he lived in Croydon before moving to Penndel about 20 years ago. An Army veteran who attended Pennsylvania State University, he was a design engineer for RCA Corp. for many years before deciding in 1972 that he could earn his living making cues.
Surviving, in addition to his son Barry, are his wife, Elizabeth Strocen Szamboti; two other sons, Anthony and Augustine, Jr; three daughters, Sharon Kruas, Ann and Elizabeth; three grandchildren, and a brother.

 

[mullyman]

Nice find. Wish I could get one of those cues for that expensive price of $350.00- $1,000.00. I'd give my left nut for that kind of price.
MULLY

 

[SSach]

Here is another one

IF ANYONE HAS THE ORIGINAL PAPER FROM 1984 or KNOW HOW TO GET IT PLEASE IM ME.


From the Philadelphia Inquirer


April 3, 1984

TAKING A CUE - HE TURNS OUT CUSTOM-MADE STICKS TO SUIT CHAMPIONSHIP POOL PLAYERS


Author: John Hilferty, Inquirer Staff Writer

Carefully, as if the lathe in his cellar were a precious jewel, Gus Szamboti wiped the gleaming gray metal with a rag.

"One thing you never do," he said, "is touch the metal bed of the lathe. It's because you've got moisture on your hands; it can cause rust."

A heavyset man whose sagging green work pants belie his fussiness, he explains that "I have always been a perfectionist."

Perfectionist. Artist. Picasso. Stradivari.

At one time or another Gus Szamboti, 52, has heard all of those praises
from the small, select group of clients that he serves from the basement of his split-level home in Penndel, Bucks County.

Gus Szamboti makes pool cues.

His customers include Steve Mizerak, the defending world pocket-billiards champion who is well known for his Miller Lite beer commercials, three-time world billiards champion Ray Martin and women's champion Gloria Walker of Exton, among others.

They also include doctors, lawyers, truck drivers and others who pay Szamboti $325 to $1,000 per cue in their search for perfection in an exacting sport.

Telling them that Gus Szamboti makes pool cues would probably be like telling a Phillies fan that Steve Carlton throws baseballs.

A person can scrape a fingernail along the shaft of a Szamboti cue and fail to find the line or fine crack that separates the intricate pieces of ebony veneer from the maple shaft and ivory ferrules.

Nor can the handler feel the stainless-steel joint that separates the two pieces of the cue.

Aficionados of the sport appreciate its mathematical precision and geometric balance. Unlike sports pursued with muscle, sweat, speed and vigor, billiards can be as soft as a breath, as fine as a hair.

Szamboti puts the same intricacies and mental concentration to work on the seven lathes in his crowded basement. All of his expensive cues are turned on precision metal lathes, not wood lathes. The latter, as finely tuned as they may be for the woodworker, lack the control of precision lathes, Szamboti said. He uses his two wood lathes for sanding only.

All of his metal lathes, he said, can grind to a tolerance of two one- thousandths of an inch, less than the thickness of a human hair. Szamboti must use a magnifying head piece to follow the microscopic trails left by his cutting tools.

Besides the forest of lathes, each one of which plays a different role in the making of a cue, there are two table saws, two band saws and four radial- arm saws. Two of the latter are fitted with the heads of high-speed routers. These perform cutting jobs on the shafts, which are made from lengths of maple that begin as 1 1/2-inch-thick squares.

The machines are set up with special jigs and templates made by Szamboti during the 16 years he has been working in his basement.

"There are no books on how to do this," said Szamboti, whose art grew
from his love of the game.

"I always played pool; I played since I was 8 years old," he said,
recalling the days when he could barely reach the green felt table top at St. Ann's Boys Club on Lehigh Avenue.

His skill at the game was average, he said, although he emulated his uncle, Lou Esposito, who played championship-level pool in the 1940s, an era that produced such players as Willie Mosconi, Jimmy Caras and Ralph Greenleaf.

Szamboti always had good mechanical skills, he said, and used to repair and make motorcycle parts in his spare time. He once had a pool cue made for
himself by a local cue maker. The finished job, he said, shocked him.

"I thought, God, if I can't do better than that. . . ."

So he began making cues part time while he worked for RCA in Camden as a mechanical draftsman and raised a family with his wife, Elizabeth; they have three sons and three daughters.

As his reputation grew by word of mouth among professional pool players, Szamboti quit his RCA job in 1973 and went to work in his cellar full time.

He has always worked alone, a craftsman who has had neither teachers nor apprentices.

His sons and daughters, most of whom are grown, have entered such fields as drafting, electronics, tool and cutter grinding, chemistry and accounting.

"I couldn't work with anybody else," said Szamboti. "It would break my concentration. Sometimes my wife sits down here to keep me company. But she
keeps quiet and I don't even know she's there."

His customers order by mail or telephone, and some provide precise specifications. "A guy will tell you he wants a fat butt, a medium butt or a thin butt, or whatever," he said.

There are no exact specifications or limits prescribed for the measurements of a cue by professional pool-shooting associations. "If you want to play in a tournament with a broom stick, that's your business," said Szamboti.

Szamboti said a cue on the average measures 57 to 59 inches in length, weighs 19 1/2 to 20 1/2 ounces and has a shaft that tapers to 13 millimeters in diameter at the tip.

He has never advertised - "I'm low key; I'd get flooded with too much mail" - and has enough work to last him for two years.

"I don't need it," he said of taking on additional work. "I'm just in it to make a living, to live decently. . . . If I make 120 cues a year, it's a lot."

Szamboti can make a finished cue in two full working days, but he said the necessity for precision slows the job. There can be as many as 40 to 50 pieces or components in a cue, including hand-carved brass or ivory insignias that personalize the cue. Among them are lightning bolts, snakes, hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades.

In a desk drawer, Szamboti keeps a supply of cut-up pieces of elephant tusks, which he adds emphatically, "I buy legitimately."

"That's why people wait a year, a year and a half for a cue stick," he said.

And yes, Szamboti has a pool table in his home. It won't fit in the basement with all of the tools. It is placed where most families have their dining-room table, making it a centerpiece of the Szamboti household.

On the wall near the pool table is a rack containing two rather old, ragged-looking pool cues, each with an assortment of nicks, scrapes and dents.

Szamboti smiled sheepishly. "Oh, those are house cues," he said, factory- made ones. His wife added, "He's like the plumber that has a stopped-up drain."

"I sold my own cue," Szamboti said apologetically. "One of these days I'll make myself a cue again."

 

[trainer]

185.00

Nice find. Wish I could get one of those cues for that expensive price of $350.00- $1,000.00. I'd give my left nut for that kind of price.
MULLY

that's what i paid 4 mine in '77.still straight as a string today..
Terry O.

 

[JAM]

Here's a few excerpts taken from an article I found in Snap magazine from January 1991 entitled "AUGUSTINE SZAMBOTI":

Augustine Szamboti was born on November 25, 1931, in Philadelphia, grew up there, got married, began training as a draftsman, then moved into a career as a technical designer at RCA, working on basic computer boards -- a high-tech industry of the times. His work on cues began as a sideline, and he served a kind of apprenticeship by furnishing blanks for an established master, George Balabushka.

Augustine's first shop had one lathe and 200 square feet of space. This was before he went into the business full time.

The first cue that Augustine Szamboti finished and sold was crafted for one of his co-workers at RCA: a Christmas present for her husband. That was in 1968, and it went for $25. The money came in handy because RCA, like other space-related industries, was cutting back on hours for its employees, and Gus had a family of six children to support. He took on cue repairing jobs too, plus the work with Balabushka. By 1973, the passion for crafting fine cues became his main livelihood.

What distinguishes a Szamboti from other fine cues? Ask owners and they will say, "It just plays better, somehow." Ask Barry, his son, and he says, "That's easy. It's the precision. In cuemaking, tolerances are extremely small and extremely critical. My father had a thing about precision." It may take a trained eye and hand to sense that precision to its fullest, but Barry shares his father's background and previous training in a technical field where precision in design and execution is a way of life.

What were the frustrations Gus Szamboti found in his work? Barry guesses that the tedium of the finishing process would have been one; it's a frustration shared by most cue makers. For his father, another frustration was the sensitivity of ivory, the maddening unpredictability that goes with its responsiveness.

How many fine cues did Gus Szamboti fashion over the course of his career? Barry says that they once figured his father made between 1,200 and 1,300 "genuine Szamboti." But the total might appear to be ten times that number, so powerful has the legend become.

(You should know that Gus bought back that very first 1968 cue later in the '70s, in case anyone offers to sell it to you.)

By today's longevity standards, he as still in his prime when he died in September of 1988, a few months short of his fifty-seventh birthday.

Rodney Morris told me several years ago that he had been playing with the same cue since 1994, and as you might guess, it's a Szamboti. :smile:

JAM

 

[Nine Ball]

I'd give my left nut for that kind of price.
MULLY

:withstupid: :nono: :nono:

 

[Barbara]

Unfortunately, this is the 20th anniversary of Gus' passing at such a young age.

Fortunately, Barry managed to find a way to quit smoking 9 years ago. He was my inspiration to quit 8 years ago.

I can only hope that Barry will be around to replace my tips, sit and talk and joke about in his shop for many years to come.

Barbara

Going through some old National Billiard News and I thought this article was really interesting.

Gus Szamboti passes
By Tom Enfield - Philadelphia Inquirer, Tuesday Sept 6 1988

Gus Szamboti was known the world over for the slender beautifully shaped and perfectly balanced wooden sticks that he fashioned in the basement of his Bucks County home.
He made pool cues - "The best you can buy," said Gloria Walker of Exton, a former national and world champion in the games of eight ball and nine ball.
Similar comments were made in poolrooms all over yesterday as word spread that Mr. Szamboti, 56, had suffered a heart attack and died at his home in Penndel. His son Barry said Mr. Szamboti had been home only five days after being released from Temple University Hospital, where he had undergone surgery to replace a heart valve.
More than 200 pool shooters were at the Boulevard Social and Athletic Club in Northeast Philadelphia when the news of Szamboti's death got around about 7 p.m. Sunday.
"Some fellas cried, that's right," said Dawn Strahle, the counter person.
A beefy man, who never managed to quit cigarettes and who drove a Cadillac with a license plate that said CUES, Mr. Szamboti was a straight shooter as a person.
"He was always caring and never took advantage of anybody," said Walker, the owner of a Szamboti pool cue that she says helped make her a champion.
Many people who never knew Mr. Szamboti knew his cues. And they were works of art.
"There are so many things that are involved in making a good cue stick, and he knew them all - the proper wood to use, the drying, the balance and the tapering," said Walker. "I remember Gus telling me in my particular cue alone there are 212 pieces."
His cues weren't cheap. Mr Szamboti told an interviewer four years ago that the price ranges from $325 to $1,000. Among the owners are Steve Mizerak, a world pocket billiards champ well known for his Miller Lite beer commercials, and several time world champion Ray Martin.
"There are no books on how to do this," Mr. Szamboti once said of making cues.
He had grown up with a stick in hand. As a player, though he was never better than fair.
"I always played pool; I played since I was 8 years old," he said in the 1984 interview, recalling days when he could barely reach the green felt table top at St Ann's Boys Club on Lehigh Avenue in Philadelphia.
As an adult, he lived in Croydon before moving to Penndel about 20 years ago. An Army veteran who attended Pennsylvania State University, he was a design engineer for RCA Corp. for many years before deciding in 1972 that he could earn his living making cues.
Surviving, in addition to his son Barry, are his wife, Elizabeth Strocen Szamboti; two other sons, Anthony and Augustine, Jr; three daughters, Sharon Kruas, Ann and Elizabeth; three grandchildren, and a brother.

 

[JG-in-KY]

I remember when I was stationed in the Air Force down in Homestead, Florida (just south of Miami) when I first heard and saw a Szamboti cue. A local had one that once belonged to Danny DiLiberto. I decided I had to have one of the "Holy Grail" of cues. I finally summoned up the courage to call Mr. Szamboti and try to order one. This would have been around 1985 or 1986. He was very nice to me (I was no player) but stated due to heath problems he didn't know how much longer he would be making cues. He said he didn't want to put anyone on the list and have them wait (his list was 2 years at the time). But as the conversation went on, he saw how bad I wanted one and told me to call him back at the first of the year and he would see what he could do. I never did call him as I bought one sight unseen from Ray Martin. I kept it a little over a year and sold it (I had to didn't I? I made $150- sold it for $850!):thud:
Heres what I always think about when I hear of him. He never bad mouthed other cuemakers or their work.

'Let every man do his own thing and stand on his own merit. That's what life's about to me!'
Gus Szamboti, 1986

 

[eddieindetroit]

A friend here in Detroit has a Gus Szamboti cue that he's owned since purchased new around 1973 or 74'.
He is feeling like it might be time to let it go.
Louie doesn't have either of the original shafts that came with the cue. Says he gave em away a long time ago. I have agree to help Louie sell the stick but what do you think would be the best coarse of action?
Sould he contact Barry by phone and try to have at least one matching shaft built? Does it even matter?
I felt that since the cue was customized for him when built that it would/should be somewhat easier to authenticate if that is even possible. When it comes to a collectable like this I'm sure that there are as many fakes to be found on the market as the genuine article.
I have owned and sold a few one of a kind cues in the 2K price range but never something as collectable as this. I would welcome any advice from the collectors here. There is no time pressure.

Here are pictures of the cue.

http://home.comcast.net/~olderiron/gscue.html

If anyone cares to make an offer - send me a PM.


Eddie

 

[SSach]

to eddieindetroit

Eddie I would recommend contacting Barry to see if he could authenticate the cue as well as make at least two new matching shafts for it if it is indeed one of his dad's cue.

Please send me a PM w/ asking price for Butt only if verified by Barry Szamboti

 

[TX Poolnut]

If you're looking for an old newspaper, you can try the large library in Philly and search the microfiche.

Some of the larger libraries also microfiche magazines.