> I recently made a post about the Spider Web cue I bought,and said it had a nice,tight wrap. Oh,man was I WRONG! I have only played with it for about an hour,and only hit 3 balls with it before buying it and didn't see anything obviously wrong. Last night after work I went home and got it,and went to just hit some balls with it before I changed tips and slicked the wrap up like I wanted. I broke several racks with it,and it felt great other than the tip sucked. The last rack I broke something strange happened. I felt something shift in my grip hand. Perplexed,I started taking a much closer look at it. When it happened,it felt like something twisted,like the A joint had failed or maybe the butt sleeve. It felt solid upon inspection. I grabbed the wrap in the same place I normally grip it when breaking,and placed my other hand just above the wrap and tried to unscrew it,and poof,it happened again,so I left right then and went home to really take a look at it. Under a bright light,I found that the twisting was a 4" wide section of the wrap was moving as a singular unit,the glue under the wrap had failed,but that glue broke loose from the wood even though it was still holding the linen together as a solid tube,it also looked and felt like some kind of sealer or sprayed finish had been applied,helping it stay together. I carefully injected some wood glue under the linen with a printer cartridge ink syringe,and twisted it back in place as best I could. There were 2 single strands that broke free from the twisting,one on each end,so I took a small block of wood and eventually got them worked down pretty flat again. I let this dry for over an hour,while I retipped and cleaned both shafts,and ate. When I came back to it,I spun the butt and lightly sprayed it with water,and wiped as much of the excess glue as I could off the wrap. I then lightly repressed it with 2 slick maple boards I ran across by accident,they are about 3/16 thick and 1 1/4 wide by about 10 inches long. I have used these on the wrap on my Schon and a couple other cues,never had a lick of trouble,and the boards have no sharp edges or burrs on them. It even left a really nice shine in most cases. I continued by sanding the entire wrap with 400 until I couldn't feel the strands any more,polished with 600, and got ready to repress it again after spraying with starch. I started as close to the top of the wrap as possible without risking finish damage,and started to move backwards down the cue. I got about 2 inches to my right of the starting point,but well before I got to the previous repair,and the damndest thing happened. The board must have developed a splinter or sharp edge somehow,because a single strand broke loose,snapped,hung up in the board and unraveled the first 3 inches of wrap,all the way to the end. This gave me a fishing reel type snarl,only spinning at 1500 RPM. It looked like the cue grew an Afro. I was amazed at this,because I wasn't really squashing the boards into the wrap,just enough to burnish it back to a nice healthy shine,and I looked at the boards with a jewelers loupe and felt around on it and found nothing that could have snagged it,so help me out here. Once I got the rest of the wrap off,I saw that there was very little glue residue left on the wood from the original wrap installation,most of it was from the repair I did earlier. I'm guessing there wasn't a whole lot of glue there to start with,or the section in the middle wouldn't have shifted. Now,before I can play with this cue more to decide if I like it well enough to keep or even sell it,it will have to be re-wrapped. I have a single spool of white with black spot Blue Mountain,but have yet to do a linen wrap,because I don't have a wrapping motor. The slowest speed on my lathe without serious experimentation is 800 RPM,at that speed I can see the cord being pulled right through my finger,bone and all. Even though I am not the original owner of this cue,would this be covered as faulty workmanship and replaced,and would I even be right in asking Bill Webb about it? The only thing positive about this is I now know how he assembles his cues. Under the wrap,there is a very large (1 1/2 long) black phenolic ring that is partially used as the C trim ring right above the wrap,and turned down to a shoulder for the wrap groove,and a shorter but similar ring at the bottom of the wrap,partially used as the D ring. The wood grip section is 6 ply radial laminated maple or birch. I can't tell if the forearm is cored or not,or what type of internal connection screw was used. Anyone? Tommy D.
