I purchased a bulletproof recoil tip (red medium) tip and...

[boogieman]

I just installed a Techno Dud the other day for a customer at my shop and it was made from a bad elkmaster (90% of Elks are bad these days) and when I was done, it looked like Marge Simpsons hair! If the tip you start with is bad, you cannot press or chemically treat the bad out of it. If you'd like to try a Medium or Hard DM and I'll send you one to test.

Did you use a fresh blade and keep the tip cool while cutting? Techno duds are pretty susceptible to expanding if they get heated up. They are quite cut resistant and you basically need a new blade. Also you have to let the blade do the work and not force it. You can also try to cool them, I forget the instructions (they come on a sheet with a tip, water maybe?). I'm not arguing with your experience but in my experience "floaters" and "sinkers" really don't mean anything when milkdudding tips. A "bad" tip becomes a good tip once it is soaked and compressed. A "bad" tip may not be exactly as good as a "good" tip but the difference once dudded is minuscule.

Basically I'd venture to say 95% of expanding milkduds are due to installation error. The instructions that come with the tips are not just a suggestion, they should be followed closely. I've ruined one myself and it was because I wasn't using a fresh blade.

This would be the equivalent of someone complaining a recoil tip didn't have shiny sides because a customer shaped it with 120 grit sandpaper instead of using a blade as suggested.

 

[Mensabum]

Did you use a fresh blade and keep the tip cool while cutting? Techno duds are pretty susceptible to expanding if they get heated up. They are quite cut resistant and you basically need a new blade. Also you have to let the blade do the work and not force it. You can also try to cool them, I forget the instructions (they come on a sheet with a tip, water maybe?). I'm not arguing with your experience but in my experience "floaters" and "sinkers" really don't mean anything when milkdudding tips. A "bad" tip becomes a good tip once it is soaked and compressed. A "bad" tip may not be exactly as good as a "good" tip but the difference once dudded is minuscule.

Basically I'd venture to say 95% of expanding milkduds are due to installation error. The instructions that come with the tips are not just a suggestion, they should be followed closely. I've ruined one myself and it was because I wasn't using a fresh blade.

This would be the equivalent of someone complaining a recoil tip didn't have shiny sides because a customer shaped it with 120 grit sandpaper instead of using a blade as suggested.

Talked my grandson into changing to bulletproof tips. He's obsessive about working the tip and leather disappears fast. Put these on by hand like all my tips.

 

[ShootingArts]

That was a good scale --- four of them weigh about 0.1 ounces.

Just saw this. Precision scales to weigh tiny amounts are cheap now. I have found some I paid about twenty bucks for ten or fifteen years ago to be very repeatable and accurate according to test weights. I have had one set go bad since the nineties. Paid Dillon a hundred bucks for those. I was weighing in grains. 7000 grains to the pound, two decimal places to the right of zero on the readout. 1/700,000 of a pound. Not more than plus or minus one unit on the readout. Weights were consistent over repeated weighings. Weighed each batch of tips kept sealed together several times over years and they all remained identical to each other in weight.

Hu

 

[or1pkt]

Does anyone know if there are any "pros" using these tips? I am just curious as I know the likes of SVB and Fedor are not but say maybe any recognized pros in the "top 100" or so ? I know the break tips are out there at a pro level but I was curious if anyone has head of any pros using the playing tips as of late? Thanks

 

[Mensabum]

Does anyone know if there are any "pros" using these tips? I am just curious as I know the likes of SVB and Fedor are not but say maybe any recognized pros in the "top 100" or so ? I know the break tips are out there at a pro level but I was curious if anyone has head of any pros using the playing tips as of late? Thanks

Just listen for that unique sound on contact. That'll tell ya real quick.

 

[SSP]

The soft tip I got is interesting but going back to leather. I had the tip on my travel setup and was using it for about 4 weeks. The hit feel varied based on the speed, if you hit it harder, it seemed to absorb the hit feel, almost causing a delay in feed-back, sort of like a badly dubbed movie where the sound is a tiny bit off the motions. Soft and medium hits felt more normal. The biggest issue is when you use spin, at anything approaching 1/2 to edge, say if you are jacked up over a ball, trying to masse, or shooting off the rail, the tip does not grab well and slides off the cueball. I tapped and scuffed it a few times, but that did not seem to help with this. I lost quite a few games where I fouled or missed because the cueball squirted off the tip in some odd direction, it felt almost like I was hitting with a phenolic break tip. There needs to be some more abrasive/stick on the tip, maybe using a microgel design like a magic eraser, where the outside edges are not so slick. When this happened, there was a large sticking chalk mark on the cueball also, like when it gets compressed in on a break shot, I had to scrape it off it with a fingernail because it was so stuck on the ball.

I've been using the Hard Recoil tip since March 3rd of this year, the best "scuffer" I have found is the Sandman shaper, all you need to do is use only the weight of the tool and drag it across the tip while spinning the shaft for 30 to 45 seconds, I put pictures of the tip 7 months later on another post and there is almost no visible wear, holds chalk as good as any tip I have ever owned and I have no problem using extreme English with a hard tip, my favorite thing about these tips is the consistency in the way they play, they don't get harder or softer as they get older, just like any piece of billiard equipment one size doesn't fit all, the only real way to know is try it for yourself, I cut off many tips before settling on the Bulletproof Recoil tip.

 

[Mensabum]

I've been using the Hard Recoil tip since March 3rd of this year, the best "scuffer" I have found is the Sandman shaper, all you need to do is use only the weight of the tool and drag it across the tip while spinning the shaft for 30 to 45 seconds, I put pictures of the tip 7 months later on another post and there is almost no visible wear, holds chalk as good as any tip I have ever owned and I have no problem using extreme English with a hard tip, my favorite thing about these tips is the consistency in the way they play, they don't get harder or softer as they get older, just like any piece of billiard equipment one size doesn't fit all, the only real way to know is try it for yourself, I cut off many tips before settling on the Bulletproof Recoil tip.

Ditto.