Donovan said:
I always thought the lighter the easier too. I figured it was the contact and snap to get out of the way quickly that caused the high jumping of jump cues. I would think the lead would trap the ball more often and make it tougher to get anything airborn. Hmmmm?
I think it would depend on the overall weight of the shaft with butt.
Having tinkered with making jump cues for quite a while, what I can tell you I've observed with the ones I use is that two of the most important things in getting a ball to jump are the overall weight of the cue, and the tip being used.
I have a shaft with a phenolic tip on it that one day I managed to get a cue ball to jump over an intervening ball that was a mere 5 mm away. Put a regular jump cue butt on it and I'd need 1 1/2 ball's distance at least to do that regularly. So, I set out to find out how light I could make a jump cue that would still meet the 40 inch minimum. I went to a hobby shop and found a 1 inch thick square piece of balsa wood. I cut the wood so the overall length of the cue with the hard rock maple shaft plus the balsa wood butt would be about 41 inches, and then whittled down the butt to make it reasonably cylindrical, and drilled out the butt and installed a 5/16 X 18 screw in bolt with epoxy, that I got at Home Depot.
The balsa weighs next to nothing.
That cue jumps just great, although it's mostly good for quite short jumps, no more than 18 inches or so. And the cue ball doesn't easily get away and bounce off the table. Very good for lots of close up jumping.
Enterprising minds can come up with ways to make such a cue similar to the Stinger jump cues, and find it will jump even better.
Perhaps a lot of lead won't help, but some of it at the end of the shaft under the tip would probably make it easier for some shots.
Flex
