How to make your own chalk?

[highsea]

I heard that chalk is composed of silica and mixed with a colorant.
This is suspended in a fixative.
Then it is baked in an oven.

Billiard chalk may have silica added for abrasiveness, I don't know. But chalk is Calcium Carbonate. (CaCO3, aka Calcite or Limestone)

Silica is Silicon Dioxide (SiO2). They are very different. Silica is mostly found in clay, quartz, and sand. Limestone often has trace amounts of quartz mixed in.

Calcium Carbonate, when heated, decomposes to lime (calcium oxide). So don't use a very hot oven!

The two, when mixed with aluminum are the primary ingredients of portland cement.

Wear a respirator when handling silica, as breathing the dust causes silicosis. Fine silica can be purchased from West Marine. It is sold as a thickener for epoxy. IIRC, the West System product number is #404 Colloidial Silica. Also known as Cabosil.

Good luck with your experiment.

-CM

 

[Colin Colenso]

Tip Shape, Hardness and Thickness

Aloxite it is then. Just wouldn't be acceptable to the pool/bar room owner if I increased it's content.

Let's talk about item 5 and I apologize as this is getting off topic.
5. Tip shape and hardness affects deflection.

Please explain in detail why you listed this down. Aside from unnoticable "little miscues" that happen due to inadequate contact patch, what else am I missing here?

Edwin,
Sorry I forgot to address your question before.

I'm having a battle with the slowness of this site and sometimes the replies don't load and I lose them. This time I'll remember to copy before sending...just in case

Those slight miscues is what I am refering to with the tip shape. Miscues are usually misunderstood. There is some degree of miscue on every shot, though it doesn't cause the vibration strongly enough for us to feel or hear it.

Regarding the tip hardness, this is a different matter. I should also add to that list tip thickness, as this also plays a role in Surface Property Induced Deflection (SPID), I believe.

eg. Soft thick tips deform to the side with strong english shots and then spring back, essentially pushing the cue ball back and offline.

The shaft, on the other hand deflects further and springs back more slowly meaning that it rarely springsback into the ball, and when it does, it is actually a clear double hit. (See miscues in super slow motion video here: http://www.engr.colostate.edu/~dga/pool/high_speed_videos/ )

Soft tips also allow the tip surface to compress into a larger contact area on the cue ball assisting the chalk to obtain grip. So these two contrary effects may work best when the tip is thinner, not so hard and there is a soft ferrule that can compress slightly to allow the chalk more time to lock into the cue ball surface.

Perhaps with a very grippy chalk with higher amounts of corrundum dust needles could allow very good grip with hard tips and rigid ferrules and so reduce deflection considerably.

There is a lot going on at the collision interface and so more good experimentation is needed, but if I had to guess, I would say that the best lower deflection cue in the future will have very low endmass, very stiff, hard thin tip, hard ferrule and require a new super chalk.

This new chalk would wear out tips pretty fast giving another good reason for hard tips.

Note: While stiff shafts will slightly increase Rotation Induced Deflection (RID) they should reduce (SPID) by allowing greater grip and more force pushing down the line and entire weight of the cue.

 

[Colin Colenso]

Billiard chalk may have silica added for abrasiveness, I don't know. But chalk is Calcium Carbonate. (CaCO3, aka Calcite or Limestone)

Silica is Silicon Dioxide (SiO2). They are very different. Silica is mostly found in clay, quartz, and sand. Limestone often has trace amounts of quartz mixed in.

Calcium Carbonate, when heated, decomposes to lime (calcium oxide). So don't use a very hot oven!

The two, when mixed with aluminum are the primary ingredients of portland cement.

Wear a respirator when handling silica, as breathing the dust causes silicosis. Fine silica can be purchased from West Marine. It is sold as a thickener for epoxy. IIRC, the West System product number is #404 Colloidial Silica. Also known as Cabosil.

Good luck with your experiment.

-CM

Highsea,

The ealiest chalks were in fact Calcium Carbonate from Limestone, but were discontinued for 2 reasons. Firstly, microcrystalling silica is a better abrasive and secondly, lime powder rots the cloth.

I don't think there is any significant amounts of calcium carbonate in today's cue chalk, so it is not really chalk, but the name is here to stay. The binder, I believe is a fine kaolin clay which is mostly silicon dioxide too, as is about 70% of the earth. Even higher for crustal rocks.

Besides silicosis, experimenters should be wary of lead poisoning as this report suggests cue chalk powder contains dangerous levels of lead.
http://www.leadsafe.org/Parents/Sources/Pool_Chalk.html

There may be some lead free chalk out there now....anyone know?

 

[Colin Colenso]

Other low deflection ideas.

Magnetic tip with magnetic abrasive needles that will draw the crystals into the tip surface and allign them parallel to the cue so they will grip better into the tip and ball.

Uni-directional compressive ferrule, perhaps spring loaded on a sleeve for one way compression of around one mm in line with the cue. This may allow more time for better interlocking of the chalk abrasives especially on hard shots. It would also avoid springing to the sides which adds to deflection.

These ideas may be a few years away as would need a bit of R&D. Investors for this project can contact me