How can you tell if a tip is bad?

PROG8R

PROG8R

Gator Nation
Silver Member
I was told some time ago that sometimes when you get a box of tips that some of them are no good.
I had a triangle put on my cue the other day and now I hate the way it plays! I have had them on in the past and I liked it a lot! This tip looks weird on the sides like it is dry rotted and it is taller than I like and if you look closely when you apply pressure on the sides of the tip it moves around a bit. I played 1/2 my matches last night with my break cue.
 
Sure there are bad tips, but from what you described, I am picturing a bad install. It sounds as if the tip was left full size and just trimmed to center and not burnished.

JMO....
Craig
 
The cuemakers on here should be able to help out here, they usually know alot about how to pick out tips.

Alot of the tips nowadays are punched out from the whole hide and not selectively. You get tips where one part of the tip is soft and can be pushed in easily with your thumbnail. Dennis Searing was the first one to show me this with a box of Le Pros. From the box he showed me, it seemed like a huge percentage of the tips in the box were poor to mediocre. Maybe one or two were excellent.

I'm playing with a Le Pro right now that Ted Harris squeezed the bejesus out of with some sort of vise. It hasnt mushroomed at all hardly and it plays really well.
 
PROG8R, I think you can salvage that tip. Just take a razor/box knife and slice about 1/3 to 1/2 of that tip off. Then give it a good shaping and burnish the sides. I bet it'll play better after that. I have a batch of triangles that also are too thick for my liking. I always soak them and press them in a vise until they are dry before installing them. I've read on this website that if you drop them in a glass of water, the ones that sink are the good ones. Good luck.

BTW, I really like the Triangle tip. It's on my short list of favorite tips.

Maniac
 
When dealing with le pros triangels or elkmasters I always try to find the tips with the smootheset bottoms. No perforations or dimples. Smooth back tips just usually turn out better.
 
PROG8R said:
.... This tip looks weird on the sides like it is dry rotted and it is taller than I like and if you look closely when you apply pressure on the sides of the tip it moves around a bit. I played 1/2 my matches last night with my break cue.
Click to expand...
Sounds like you got a bad tip there. Unfortunately with Triangle tips, there are a lot of defective tips within a box. The best solution when getting a box is using the milk dud technique or something equivalent to it. It's something that whoever installed the tip for you should know. Either that or they don't want to bother doing it at all because Triangles are pretty cheap to begin with. I'll bet anything that your Triangle tip feels spongy when you shoot with it. You should be able to return it to whoever installed the tip for you and ask them to re-tip it because it is defective. It should also be done for free; if they charge you, I suggest finding another cue repair guy.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top