I have been playing pool for a year now and i own a 97-6 Meucci. Seeing everyone's really nice cues makes me want to attempt to make my own. I'm an aspiring woodworker but my tools are limited to normal craftsman stuff. I have a drill press and a bajillion types of saws but no lathe of any kind. I have just a few questions about cues mainly there internal anatomy that i jsut can't find on the internet. I was thinking of ways to make my butt and i came up with this idea. have the handle have a male screw part on one end and a female on the other. The forearm should have a female part that holds the male part of the handle and the butt sleeve should have a male part to match the handle's females. And mill out the butt to adjust weight. One question is if i have a wood such as hickory burl for the handle should i have the inside of it filled with a maple dowel? I have the same question for the forearm. Like lets say the entire inner part of the butt is maple with more decorative wood sleeves on the outside? another question is with inlays, is there a problem with not having a cnc router? I have wood chisels but i want to know my facts before i work on a pricey piece of wood. My third and final question has to do with tapering. What is it and how is it accomplished without a lathe. I'm not opposed to hard, long work. Thanks for the answers!
Homemade cues
- Thread starter DirtyDog
- Start date
DirtyDog welcome to the forums. Making cues that will play well is not something that is easily learned from a forum. But there is a lot of cue makers here and many will share info with a beginner.
If you click on the AZ logo at the top of the page you will get a drop down menu of the many sub forums that are here. Click on the cue makers section and hang out their for awhile and see how the forum works and maybe get to know a few of the guys there.
You will see many different ways of cue building and some of the guys will help you understand the basics.
If you are going to get serious about cue building then it would be my
suggestion to start looking at cue lathes.
Good luck.
If you click on the AZ logo at the top of the page you will get a drop down menu of the many sub forums that are here. Click on the cue makers section and hang out their for awhile and see how the forum works and maybe get to know a few of the guys there.
You will see many different ways of cue building and some of the guys will help you understand the basics.
If you are going to get serious about cue building then it would be my
suggestion to start looking at cue lathes.
Good luck.
I don't think there is any possible way to build something of any reasonable precision with out a quality lathe. It would be difficult even on a 'wood' lathe. You could more easily forgo all the other wood related hand tools in place of a metal/machine lathe.
So I suggest you start there. Practice some basic turnings and joinery. Understand centers, boring and tapers.
So I suggest you start there. Practice some basic turnings and joinery. Understand centers, boring and tapers.
First advice is to get a cue lathe. If that advice cannot be followed then heavily modifying your drill press into a lathe is the only option you have with your current machinery. It has been done before, but you will be on your own inventing all the jigs, fixtures and such to make it do the job.
It all depends on what the final cue should look and be like. Cues are generally made on metal lathes for the precision tapers and tolerances required. However if you can make a table leg that is straight between centers then you can make a passable pool cue for yourself on wood working equipment.
You have the answer in your hands. You can see by looking at the Meucci pretty much how it's put together.
Essentially a pool cue is a series of connected parts with a fat end that is about 1.25" that tapers down to about .5" at the tip. Start out by trying to make two parts that resemble the shape of your Meucci and keep them centered.
A well-respected and famous cue maker once told me that the biggest secret to making cues is finding the center of the wood and staying there throughout the build. Maybe that sounds simplistic but his cues go for thousands and have for the past 30 years.
Now, with that said I am not a cue maker. I just feel that if I were in your position then I'd work with the tools I have before running out to buy more just to make one cue. I would think though that a wood lathe would be very helpful at least.
Wecome- friend
Do yourself a great favor - First visit a good cuemaker. He can help with many ideas and show you a wealth of knowledge- Please use the cuemakers section in the back- they are all so helpful. Read Dennis Dieckmans bk - the river of wood- ch Dennis's sight out. pm sent. mark
Do yourself a great favor - First visit a good cuemaker. He can help with many ideas and show you a wealth of knowledge- Please use the cuemakers section in the back- they are all so helpful. Read Dennis Dieckmans bk - the river of wood- ch Dennis's sight out. pm sent. mark
Wecome- friend
Do yourself a great favor - First visit a good cuemaker. He can help with many ideas and show you a wealth of knowledge- Please use the cuemakers section in the back- they are all so helpful. Read Dennis Dieckmans bk - the river of wood- ch Dennis's sight out. pm sent. mark
Do yourself a great favor - First visit a good cuemaker. He can help with many ideas and show you a wealth of knowledge- Please use the cuemakers section in the back- they are all so helpful. Read Dennis Dieckmans bk - the river of wood- ch Dennis's sight out. pm sent. mark
Actually there are several cuemakers in the UK that make cues by hand, with planes,,,,,I'm sure it's not the easiest way to do it but it is frequently done. I have one, made by Mike Wooldridge,,,,,,I'd challenge anybody to tell the difference between it and a machine made cue. Depends on how good you are with your hands,,,,,,I've done precision machining forever,,,seems like anyway, 37 years and counting,,,,and I never cut anything until I can basically picture the part in the material, so to speak, then it's just a matter of getting to it.
And Hollywood is correct, Chris' book is essential if you wanna do most anything to a cue.
And Hollywood is correct, Chris' book is essential if you wanna do most anything to a cue.
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I read and article about cue making and part of the article mentioned equipment needed. The author said all that basiclly all that is required is a pocket knife.
Often wondered how the Huns or any ancients made arrows.
I had a team mate that was a die maker. He made a cue using all hand tools and a lot of patience. He liked it and played with it. Looked like a cue but it was nothing fancy. Give him a lot of credit for the skill he had.
.
I read and article about cue making and part of the article mentioned equipment needed. The author said all that basiclly all that is required is a pocket knife.
Often wondered how the Huns or any ancients made arrows.
I had a team mate that was a die maker. He made a cue using all hand tools and a lot of patience. He liked it and played with it. Looked like a cue but it was nothing fancy. Give him a lot of credit for the skill he had.
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I am severely intrigued. Do you know what kind of planes they use or anything about the technique?
I've often toyed around with the idea of building a cue with only hand tools, and using some Japanese style joinery just for fun.
There are pics online somewhere.
They lay the wood in a groove and plane it....turn/plane/turn/plane/turn/plane/turn/plane
I read a bunch about it and saw pictures but don't remember where. Pretty cool really.
I never made a cue, but I'm a lifelong woodworker, and separately did cue repairs for several years (with dedicated cue and metalworking lathes). With that in mind:
If you have a router table, you can use it as a makeshift lathe. Just take your rough stock, and attach a round disk onto each end, that is of slightly larger diameter than the rough stock.
The disks will ride against the fence and the table. You make a pass, rotate the stock slightly, and make another pass. Continue until you have gone 360 degrees. You can even use this technique to make a tenon.
If you use disks of 2 different diameters on each end of the stock, you will be able to make a taper.
You will need to have a much longer than normal top or auxiliary top to your router table to make this work for the lengths you would need for a cue.
You can make the discs yourself, or they are even commercially available for this purpose.
If you go the by hand route, a long jack or joining plane could work for the straight sections of the cue (the butt), and a block plane could work for the curved shaft. A spokeshave could be very useful as well. Scrapers could hep you smooth out the wood further. You can even use a piece of glass as a scraper. Then finish with sandpaper.
If you have a router table, you can use it as a makeshift lathe. Just take your rough stock, and attach a round disk onto each end, that is of slightly larger diameter than the rough stock.
The disks will ride against the fence and the table. You make a pass, rotate the stock slightly, and make another pass. Continue until you have gone 360 degrees. You can even use this technique to make a tenon.
If you use disks of 2 different diameters on each end of the stock, you will be able to make a taper.
You will need to have a much longer than normal top or auxiliary top to your router table to make this work for the lengths you would need for a cue.
You can make the discs yourself, or they are even commercially available for this purpose.
If you go the by hand route, a long jack or joining plane could work for the straight sections of the cue (the butt), and a block plane could work for the curved shaft. A spokeshave could be very useful as well. Scrapers could hep you smooth out the wood further. You can even use a piece of glass as a scraper. Then finish with sandpaper.
Look for Snooker cue makers in the UK,,,,,,the good ones are Mike Wooldridge, Trevor White, and John Parris, in my opinion. I believe they all learned the hand techniques, though they may be becoming mechanized to varying degrees nowadays.
i think you can do most of everything by hand, lots of snooker cues were made by hand. but i'm not too sure about being able to pilot any joints accurately without a lathe. i destroyed a nice titleist a long time ago fooling around trying to turn it into a two piece.
As was pointed out to me by a very good cue maker recently it pays great dividends to cut your teeth on repair work. And in fact some of the very best cue makers were excellent cue doctors before going into complete cues.
I think though that if you have limited tools and desire you should definitely mess around with what ever you have. Why not? Until you start asking people to pay you for your work you don't really have any obligation to anyone but yourself.
So if you figure out how to build a credible cue with a pocketknife and a hacksaw then great! More power to you. Eventually if you really want to get into it then you will settle on whatever techniques suit you best. Then when you start taking money the market will let you know where you stand.
At the end of the day if you can make the cue ball dance then it doesn't matter what you are holding.
Some cue maker said once that he saw a guy from Alaska who did whittle himself a pool cue out of a tree branch.
So there you go. I guess the only thing that bugs me about some cue makers who don't use this or that "machine" is their claims that their cue is better than those who do use "machines" to assist them in cue making.
As Bill Schick said about Balabushka and Szamboti, it's all about the tolerances. He said that those two understood how to make parts fit with extremely tight tolerances and that's what most aspiring cue makers don't do. I'll take Bill's word on that since he has been there from then until now.
I think though that if you have limited tools and desire you should definitely mess around with what ever you have. Why not? Until you start asking people to pay you for your work you don't really have any obligation to anyone but yourself.
So if you figure out how to build a credible cue with a pocketknife and a hacksaw then great! More power to you. Eventually if you really want to get into it then you will settle on whatever techniques suit you best. Then when you start taking money the market will let you know where you stand.
At the end of the day if you can make the cue ball dance then it doesn't matter what you are holding.
Some cue maker said once that he saw a guy from Alaska who did whittle himself a pool cue out of a tree branch.
So there you go. I guess the only thing that bugs me about some cue makers who don't use this or that "machine" is their claims that their cue is better than those who do use "machines" to assist them in cue making.
As Bill Schick said about Balabushka and Szamboti, it's all about the tolerances. He said that those two understood how to make parts fit with extremely tight tolerances and that's what most aspiring cue makers don't do. I'll take Bill's word on that since he has been there from then until now.
You can do it with a drill as long as you build accurate jigs. It's all about the jigs in most good shops. Most people don't want to spend the time building the jigs and that leads to sloppy work.
When I first did the GTFs I drew up a jig for cutting the seam. The factory folks I was working with built the flimsiest looking thing you could imagine. I think if they had used toilet paper and water it would have been stronger.
So I had to go back to the their woodshop and build it for them. Once mine was built they did a thousand cases on it.