all this over 2 layers of pigskin ......
i hope you get all this out of your system before you come to houston
i hope you get all this out of your system before you come to houston
I Wish Tip Makers Would...
- Thread starter lfigueroa
- Start date
A cue smith buys most of the tips he carries in bulk. The tips might be a few months old, a few years old, or a few decades old. They have been stored where air doesn't circulate and when the typical fourteen mm tip goes on it is sanded on bottom, trimmed on the sides, and shaped on top. With leather cut from everywhere it is the same quality it was when new.
It is a bitch to put an exactly the same diameter tip on a shaft. Unless it is perfectly centered you can hang a fingernail on the ferrule. Off comes the tip for a second try! Given just a gnat's ass to play with and the tip is quickly trimmed to size. Much over .001" to the side is unacceptable if the tip and shaft are the same size. With a little margin for error you still want the tip centered but .005" isn't the end of the world. Trim and the tip still plays perfectly.
I like fresh leather on all surfaces. Then I don't have to wonder how long it has sat on the supplier's shelf either. I buy all 14mm tips. While I have seen 14mm shafts I have never put a tip on one.
While on the subject of tips, there are few manufacturers I have used that don't send out the occasional bad tip. leather can be tanned many different ways and there is the matter of how the hide has been handled from the time it was on a live animal. When I am turning a layered tip and it comes apart due to a bad layer, if I supplied it, I eat it. If the customer supplied it, they eat it. Something to think about, some of those tips taste pretty nasty!
A final tip to those installing their own tips: Align the angle of the bevel of the blade with the ferrule, not the flat of the blade otherwise you are cutting at a negative angle. Never use a heavy duty blade to shape a tip. They are much duller than standard blades. Premium blades, cobalt, bi-metal, any premium blade I have tried, are sharper than standard blades. I hold the blades in a fixed nonretractable handle and make sure it is tight. If not, snapping an old blade off short makes a fine shim. I use a new premium blade to shape three tips, marking it before each install. Then I throw them in the general shop use pile. Premium blades could be used longer but blades are cheap and how long is too long?
I wrote an article for a cue builder's magazine about blades. Unfortunately neither the article or the magazine survived!
Hu
It is a bitch to put an exactly the same diameter tip on a shaft. Unless it is perfectly centered you can hang a fingernail on the ferrule. Off comes the tip for a second try! Given just a gnat's ass to play with and the tip is quickly trimmed to size. Much over .001" to the side is unacceptable if the tip and shaft are the same size. With a little margin for error you still want the tip centered but .005" isn't the end of the world. Trim and the tip still plays perfectly.
I like fresh leather on all surfaces. Then I don't have to wonder how long it has sat on the supplier's shelf either. I buy all 14mm tips. While I have seen 14mm shafts I have never put a tip on one.
While on the subject of tips, there are few manufacturers I have used that don't send out the occasional bad tip. leather can be tanned many different ways and there is the matter of how the hide has been handled from the time it was on a live animal. When I am turning a layered tip and it comes apart due to a bad layer, if I supplied it, I eat it. If the customer supplied it, they eat it. Something to think about, some of those tips taste pretty nasty!
A final tip to those installing their own tips: Align the angle of the bevel of the blade with the ferrule, not the flat of the blade otherwise you are cutting at a negative angle. Never use a heavy duty blade to shape a tip. They are much duller than standard blades. Premium blades, cobalt, bi-metal, any premium blade I have tried, are sharper than standard blades. I hold the blades in a fixed nonretractable handle and make sure it is tight. If not, snapping an old blade off short makes a fine shim. I use a new premium blade to shape three tips, marking it before each install. Then I throw them in the general shop use pile. Premium blades could be used longer but blades are cheap and how long is too long?
I wrote an article for a cue builder's magazine about blades. Unfortunately neither the article or the magazine survived!
Hu
Yes it is a mind thing for me with the watch, just like the height of the tip is for you--LOL. -
I own a few shafts that are 13.1-13.25 mm.
Biloxi Boy
Man With A Golden Arm
This thread reminds me of a certain genre of retirees who love to opine about everything -- forget that everyone's needs are being met, and few (especially the mechanics) are complaining, I know what's best for everyone, so do it my way. Interesting not one of them ever has been or ever will be in the, or a, business.
I do my tips by hand with a razor knife then abrasive paper starting coarse and finishing with the fine paper that touches the ferrule and tip. Then a spit shine using the cloth of the rail.
Ugh. Join the year 1995
ZERO! I did cue repair for 10 years, stopping in about 2010. I never once had a customer that wanted a tall ass tip. They all wanted them cut down. Was just more work for me, and probably raises the manufacturing cost of the tips.
I also agree the “wear indicator” strip is moronic. Pool players are particular about their tips. That strip is right where a lot of players actually want their tips.
In today's world with shafts that has super short ferrules, that black layer might save a ferrule or two. Some players play down to the last two layers and beyond, meaning that the tip pad or the ferrule actuallyacts as the adge of the tip and gets worn. I've changed quite a few ferrules where this has been the case.
Man like what man like:
"...what we find pleasing to the touch and pleasing to the eye is seldom the same."
marcus aurelius over here
Paul_#_
Well-known member
I have a 10.5mm Cynergy and figure I miscue too much if not shaped regularly. Also, its shaped to the more-wearing, higher-slope dime circumference required of the smaller-diameter shafts. I want all that tall tip given the frequent shaping.
I replace my tips myself and don't mind the 14mm-wide tips to be placed on a 10.5mm shaft.
Talk about a black layer being too much, how about the five layers on this tip (a Caiden tip on a RJH Hsunami shaft)?
I replace my tips myself and don't mind the 14mm-wide tips to be placed on a 10.5mm shaft.
Talk about a black layer being too much, how about the five layers on this tip (a Caiden tip on a RJH Hsunami shaft)?
Paul_#_
Well-known member
On the Caiden instagram site, Caiden instructed a customer not to cut that tall tip down. I think it suggested that, although that layer was important in playing, play past the dark layer anyway because its leather not a tip pad (I think the customer's "black pad" was Caiden's "dark brown layer" four layers below surface).
boogieman
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that ping.
When you want to stop worrying about tips and hit the sweet spot right out of the gate, get a milk dud. They play like that perfect tip that you remember that you never wanted to cut off. But they do it at full height rather than the thickness of a dime.
I know people don't like when I say this, but layered tips are so silly. If anything they introduce more places for errors to occur. A pressed dud can't de-laminate or get glue spots on a CB, contribute to a miscue when a glue layer doesn't take chalk etc. They are also consistent. Not super soft one week and a medium the next. Multiple layers are not any kind of advantage.
I have tried the Duds.
In fact I have a couple ordered off of here still in my tip bag -- not for me.
Lou Figueroa
You should see how my older friend (70+) likes his 14mm elk master tip with factory height and diameter on his 12.5mm carbon shaft. Looks like an oversized nipple!