Your points are valid. I would only disagree with you about CNC, as CNC has definitely contributed to price dropping. It has also given an illusion of building quality cues too early in a cuemakers career, by being able to make them fancy to soon. In the early to mid 90's there were only a handfull of us that actually had been paid thousands of dollars for a single cue. Most of us were using pantographs. Almost all who had built cues fancy enough to achieve that price range, were building quality cues as well as fancy. Now many fancy cues are not high quality. I hate to have to say this, but it is a fact. There are people who glue almost their entire cue together with super glue, yet build fancy cues. They can buy a pre-programmed ready to fly CNC Inlay Machine and be doing tight, fancy inlay work off the bat.
I have definitely created a lot of competition among cuemakers by helping so many get into it. I plead guilty to that charge. Not only with my Book and DVD's, but with my equipment also. I once sold a lathe to a guy in Birmingham and he came over and locked up the tournaments in Atlanta, by knowing a tour director. I used to work 95% of all big amateur and Pro events in Atlanta. So I know what creating competition feels like.
Don't think you are the only cuemaker to complain about me selling this info. I have been told by two very top cuemakers they didn't like it. One even told me he felt I was not qualified to write the book. Other top cuemakers applauded me for doing it. Even though the information was already in my book, I still got emails criticizing or questioning my motive for putting out the two new Advanced DVD's.
So I am going to make public here my main reasons for doing so:
#1) I felt my 12 year old Advanced Cue Building video was too out dated to continue to be a sellable product. It only showed non veneer v-points and inlays on my out dated original model inlay machine. So I felt the info was not best and the machine was not my latest model, and my methods had improved.
#2) Something else had come to bug me lately about our market. V-Points with veneers, Full Splice and Butterflies points are all old-school cue building. Yet recently with the CNC craze they have started being presented as the cutting edge thing. Why should something so basic that almost every cuemaker of 20 years ago mastered, become considered cutting edge? So I wanted to prove to world it takes very little equipment to do and I sell the equipment.
Just as your challenge earlier about making metal parts on my lighter cue lathes, caused me to produce a thread milling attachment for my lathe. I can now make some metal parts on my lathe.
#3) With the death of my wife suddenly from cancer last year, I looked at my Book and Videos and said to myself, Would I be leaving behind a sellable product behind for my son and daughter if something happened to me? I felt it needed redone. Death has a way of making you think about things you normally don't and get some things done you have procrastinated on so long.
I have long planned to re-do the Advanced DVD and that is what I started doing, but decided to go ahead and make it better than planned and do multiple volumes. Putting 90% of the book on DVD is my end goal. So hopefully I am not done yet.
#4) I also saw much of the info being given away on here so why not? If someone wants the info and is willing to pay for it, why not put it out there for a fair price so they can get it all at once, since it will all eventually be put out there for free on this forum anyway?
Those are my main four reasons.
