joint pin material
- Thread starter bbb
- Start date
Not a builder (more a tinkerer/OCD perfectionist) but for what it's worth, my experience is that nothing past the first 8-10 inches back from the tip will have any direct effect on your shooting except your personal comfort level. Every cue builder has their idea of what is good for 'playability' but the players themselves may have very different ideas, which is why you can see two high level experienced players have vastly different opinions on a particular cue.
One word of caution, if you're looking at steel and G10 radial-type pins, those are typically flat-faced joints and particularly if you're going with a non-collared shaft, be very careful about the cue falling over or getting smacked on the table. It doesn't matter how strong or stiff the pin is, the wood around the joint is still prone to damage and flat-faced joints in my experience are easier to damage.
'Playability' really depends on what you're playing! If you tend to play games where you routinely get very creative like balkline and 3-cushion, you're going to be playing with more variables in your stance and stroke from shot to shot so the quality of tactile feedback can be a big help to feel how the balls are reacting. The 3-cushion carom/billiard cues employ everything from thick wood pins to fancy conical joints. For most pocket-billiard rotation games, hit feel is more a personal preference rather than playability concern, and your tip, shaft construction, and taper are more important than the joint you use.
Indirectly? How a joint affects 'playbility' depends on your stroke. Where the mass is located in your cue (e.g. a heavy brass collared joint vs a light wood-wood no-collar joint with a G10 pin) can affect cue delivery and thus 'playability' depending on your stroke style. If you tend to stand wide and low, bridging long with a stiffer wrist with a big lifting backswing, an overly back-heavy cue may cause your tip to wander and hurt your ability to consistently stroke the CB clean on certain shots or when at a high cuing angle. The low weight of a G10 pin going straight into wood may not be good for your cue's balance depending on your stroke so I'd definitely try before you buy.
As far as how the pin will affect hit feel, more important than the pin material is the materials meeting at the joint (wood-wood, wood-steel, phenolic-phenolicl collar etc), and how they meet, flat-faced vs. piloted.
I have a few very old brass-collar brass-pin jointed cues and I do think ( subjectively) it feels like the brass limits high-frequency vibration reaching the back of the cue, so I think it's easier to feel the lower-frequency vibrations of the shaft's wood, although I doubt it has any effect on what's actually happening up at the tip.
It also depends on your cuing angle how a pin/joint affects feel. The Mezz United joint is a phenomenally tight piloted joint and if you are striking down on a ball, giving it masse, or slapping it, there's so little play in that joint you can feel exactly how the contact went, however the touch with soft shots can be a little harder to gauge, feeling a little beefy. A flat-faced wood-wood joint with a radial pin also gives tons of tactile feed back as long as you're cuing close to level but on masse shots there's enough sideways play in the joint just because of the inherent softness of wood that you lose some feedback.
I haven't shot with a G-10 pin, only a G-10 collared breaking cue so I can't really pass judgment on that, but my perspective is that keeping the joint stiff and centered and giving the cue a forward balance will reap a bigger benefit than having slightly more hit feel because you wanted a particular pin material. So now when I buy a cue I look for a nice thick steel collar with a brass pilot, because for my particular stroke having more a slightly heavier joint gives a good forward balance that allows me to keep the cue's overall weight lower while retaining full control, and I dig the performance benefits of a lighter cue such as a higher possible ratio of spin to forward speed. And with a lighter cue with the weight towards the front, it's much easier to jump balls, and there are plenty of times I'll use my full playing cue to take a longer jump over half a ball rather than break out my jump cue. For these reasons, I prefer a thick uni-loc steel-collared joint, as steel is plenty heavy to make the cue more front-weighted, resists damage, and has very little play at the joint. Yes I give up a little hit feel over a brand-new radial pin going directly into wood but I'll know the joint will remain centered and fit the same even through temperature changes, if the cue gets knocked over, or if I spend 100 hours practicing jumps and masse. Radial pins always make me nervous when I'm shooting down into the table, I don't know if that's rational at all.
One word of caution, if you're looking at steel and G10 radial-type pins, those are typically flat-faced joints and particularly if you're going with a non-collared shaft, be very careful about the cue falling over or getting smacked on the table. It doesn't matter how strong or stiff the pin is, the wood around the joint is still prone to damage and flat-faced joints in my experience are easier to damage.
'Playability' really depends on what you're playing! If you tend to play games where you routinely get very creative like balkline and 3-cushion, you're going to be playing with more variables in your stance and stroke from shot to shot so the quality of tactile feedback can be a big help to feel how the balls are reacting. The 3-cushion carom/billiard cues employ everything from thick wood pins to fancy conical joints. For most pocket-billiard rotation games, hit feel is more a personal preference rather than playability concern, and your tip, shaft construction, and taper are more important than the joint you use.
Indirectly? How a joint affects 'playbility' depends on your stroke. Where the mass is located in your cue (e.g. a heavy brass collared joint vs a light wood-wood no-collar joint with a G10 pin) can affect cue delivery and thus 'playability' depending on your stroke style. If you tend to stand wide and low, bridging long with a stiffer wrist with a big lifting backswing, an overly back-heavy cue may cause your tip to wander and hurt your ability to consistently stroke the CB clean on certain shots or when at a high cuing angle. The low weight of a G10 pin going straight into wood may not be good for your cue's balance depending on your stroke so I'd definitely try before you buy.
As far as how the pin will affect hit feel, more important than the pin material is the materials meeting at the joint (wood-wood, wood-steel, phenolic-phenolicl collar etc), and how they meet, flat-faced vs. piloted.
I have a few very old brass-collar brass-pin jointed cues and I do think ( subjectively) it feels like the brass limits high-frequency vibration reaching the back of the cue, so I think it's easier to feel the lower-frequency vibrations of the shaft's wood, although I doubt it has any effect on what's actually happening up at the tip.
It also depends on your cuing angle how a pin/joint affects feel. The Mezz United joint is a phenomenally tight piloted joint and if you are striking down on a ball, giving it masse, or slapping it, there's so little play in that joint you can feel exactly how the contact went, however the touch with soft shots can be a little harder to gauge, feeling a little beefy. A flat-faced wood-wood joint with a radial pin also gives tons of tactile feed back as long as you're cuing close to level but on masse shots there's enough sideways play in the joint just because of the inherent softness of wood that you lose some feedback.
I haven't shot with a G-10 pin, only a G-10 collared breaking cue so I can't really pass judgment on that, but my perspective is that keeping the joint stiff and centered and giving the cue a forward balance will reap a bigger benefit than having slightly more hit feel because you wanted a particular pin material. So now when I buy a cue I look for a nice thick steel collar with a brass pilot, because for my particular stroke having more a slightly heavier joint gives a good forward balance that allows me to keep the cue's overall weight lower while retaining full control, and I dig the performance benefits of a lighter cue such as a higher possible ratio of spin to forward speed. And with a lighter cue with the weight towards the front, it's much easier to jump balls, and there are plenty of times I'll use my full playing cue to take a longer jump over half a ball rather than break out my jump cue. For these reasons, I prefer a thick uni-loc steel-collared joint, as steel is plenty heavy to make the cue more front-weighted, resists damage, and has very little play at the joint. Yes I give up a little hit feel over a brand-new radial pin going directly into wood but I'll know the joint will remain centered and fit the same even through temperature changes, if the cue gets knocked over, or if I spend 100 hours practicing jumps and masse. Radial pins always make me nervous when I'm shooting down into the table, I don't know if that's rational at all.
Last edited:
Just my personal opinion....
You can say all of your ideas as to which affects the hit and what does not. Many of these ideas have no real basis except what you think.
I had a p;layer with a brass 3/8-10 screw in a flat faced joint. He wanted to switch to a G10 pin of the same thread.
I shot a few racks with the brass pin. Changed the pin and shot a few more racks with the G10 pin.
The G10 pin absolutely gave a crisper hit with more feel to the hand.
Kim
You can say all of your ideas as to which affects the hit and what does not. Many of these ideas have no real basis except what you think.
I had a p;layer with a brass 3/8-10 screw in a flat faced joint. He wanted to switch to a G10 pin of the same thread.
I shot a few racks with the brass pin. Changed the pin and shot a few more racks with the G10 pin.
The G10 pin absolutely gave a crisper hit with more feel to the hand.
Kim
What material your 3/8-10M or Radial pin is made out of, will mostly affect the balance of the cue. Can you feel a difference in the hit? Hard to say, some people claim to, but then again, none of these experiments are done with100% identical cues...
I had a customer who wanted to change the McDermott quick release joint on his cue. After I had removed the old pin/SS joint, I put on a Juma joint and bored out the cue to accept a 3/8-10M pin. I brought the cue to the poolhall and all kinds of joint pins, so the customer could put in different pins, to find the right balance. After trying a bit, it came down to alu, ti or G10.
I have seen bent aluminum pins, so adviced against that one, so the customer chose the lightest pin, the G10, because he felt that gave the cue the best balance for his game, that's about as far as I think you can tell the difference.
I had a customer who wanted to change the McDermott quick release joint on his cue. After I had removed the old pin/SS joint, I put on a Juma joint and bored out the cue to accept a 3/8-10M pin. I brought the cue to the poolhall and all kinds of joint pins, so the customer could put in different pins, to find the right balance. After trying a bit, it came down to alu, ti or G10.
I have seen bent aluminum pins, so adviced against that one, so the customer chose the lightest pin, the G10, because he felt that gave the cue the best balance for his game, that's about as far as I think you can tell the difference.