Maple wood

C

cue-healer

Banned
Where does everyone go to find good hard rock maple wood for making shafts. I want to purchase good 5/4 boards approx. 6-10 inches wide. I think $8-10 bucks for a blank is too much $$. When conserding maple at extream is only $6 per board foot. a blank is only .21% board foot. That means you could make 6 from a board that is only 6 inches wide for only $6. What a savings.
 
John Burton said:
Where does everyone go to find good hard rock maple wood for making shafts. I want to purchase good 5/4 boards approx. 6-10 inches wide. I think $8-10 bucks for a blank is too much $$. When conserding maple at extream is only $6 per board foot. a blank is only .21% board foot. That means you could make 6 from a board that is only 6 inches wide for only $6. What a savings.
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Good Luck with this one. Do a search on shaft wood, and you will find several post on it.
 
billiardbum said:
Good Luck with this one. Do a search on shaft wood, and you will find several post on it.
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You mean you're not going to reveal your sources?
Greedy bahstahd.:D :eek: :)
8-10 per blank is expensive? Obviously John hasn't been hit with cold reality yet. :eek: :D
 
John Burton said:
Where does everyone go to find good hard rock maple wood for making shafts. I want to purchase good 5/4 boards approx. 6-10 inches wide. I think $8-10 bucks for a blank is too much $$. When conserding maple at extream is only $6 per board foot. a blank is only .21% board foot. That means you could make 6 from a board that is only 6 inches wide for only $6. What a savings.
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When you consider the fact that you can buy a blank for $10 add a joint, ferrule & tip do a little sanding & charge $100 for a shaft you have a very good profit margin. I pay $6-$7 for 1"x 30" rounds & if I could meet this guy, I'd give him a big kiss. I'm very pleased to get GOOD wood, at a decent price. I'll turn it into a good profit & we'll both be happy...JER
 
John. You will find that there is no cheap shaftwood. I know several people who are in the wood buisness who gave up on selling shaftwood due to the high ammount of waste in processing. Shaftwood is a very specialized area of wood processing. Most people are using vaccum kiln dried wood, Finding someone who dries wood that way is hard enough much less finding logs that are white and have extremely straight grain.
I bought lumber and cut my own for a while and I can tell you $8 per shaft is a good price. If you are not pickey about mineral streaks and darker color you can cut it for less. I bet you will find unless you are building hundreds of cues per year it is worth it to buy from a supplier that knows shaftwood.
Chris Byrne CB Custom Cues.
 
I have bought planks to make shafts

And I find the savings are minimal to nonexistent. How lucky do you feel? most wood has to many irregularities that you will not find until you invest a lot of your valuable time, then you get nice hard maple firewood! if you want savings, you buy lumber in the rough, you will not see the grain, or defects until you cut it, then it is too late. Most find it is better to leave that chore to someone that has the eye for it and many years of knowledge. I feel your pain though, one would think it should be cheaper, until you do all the millwork and count up your savings!
 
Shaft wood

I suppose if I were really going to sell custom cue than $10 per blank wouldnt be so bad. Yes, I am familure with milling price and time that it takes associated with proper drying and sofoth and so on. I dont have a shop yet. All I have is a shop Companion repair lathe by 'UNIQUE PRODUCTS". I trying to learn all I can before investing so much. I have been to 8 Lumber places In Indiana. Completely went through all of there 4/4 5/4 8/4 racks and found very few boards, or parts of boards that were usable. I am very picky about wood. I had a guy that would sell be B quality Blanks to practice with. My question is this Why practice with second rate meterial if you expect 1st class results. The only way to perfection is to have perfect practice!!.

Now let me rephrase my question. Does anybody want to give up the referral source for purchasing Blanks?
 
John Burton said:
I suppose if I were really going to sell custom cue than $10 per blank wouldnt be so bad. Yes, I am familure with milling price and time that it takes associated with proper drying and sofoth and so on. I dont have a shop yet. All I have is a shop Companion repair lathe by 'UNIQUE PRODUCTS". I trying to learn all I can before investing so much. I have been to 8 Lumber places In Indiana. Completely went through all of there 4/4 5/4 8/4 racks and found very few boards, or parts of boards that were usable. I am very picky about wood. I had a guy that would sell be B quality Blanks to practice with. My question is this Why practice with second rate meterial if you expect 1st class results. The only way to perfection is to have perfect practice!!.

Now let me rephrase my question. Does anybody want to give up the referral source for purchasing Blanks?
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Here ya go.
http://bellforestproducts.com/hotitem.html
 
Bellforest is not selling shaftwood anymore. I was hanging out with boone and eric at the march expo and they said it wasen't worth doing for wahr blanks sell for. It sounded like they were not going to do shafts anymore, maybe they changed their minds.
As far as practice goes, looser grain wood is fine to practice on. It won't matter if there is alot of sugar in the wood either. All you need is fairly straight grain.
 
John Burton said:
Where does everyone go to find good hard rock maple wood for making shafts. I want to purchase good 5/4 boards approx. 6-10 inches wide. I think $8-10 bucks for a blank is too much $$. When conserding maple at extream is only $6 per board foot. a blank is only .21% board foot. That means you could make 6 from a board that is only 6 inches wide for only $6. What a savings.
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John here is a link for you, I have purchased many items from this guy.
I have never had a problem, things I have purchased, but I have never purchased shaft wood.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120012969136&ssPageName=ADME:B:EF:US:11

Craig
 
If you take the time to search the forum, you'll uncover a few worthwhile shaftwood sources. The way I understand it, shaft quality maple pricing is, for the most part, market driven. Top quality maple dowels are seldom available for less than $10 each plus shipping (unless you buy 500 or 1000).

When visiting a Midwestern mill this summer, I learned that a long-time supplier of shaft maple is soon retiring. I also heard, not long ago, that another shaft wood dealer was thinking of getting out of it. If you have room to store them, you can't have too many excellent shaft dowels--they're like money in the bank!

Martin


John Burton said:
I suppose if I were really going to sell custom cue than $10 per blank wouldnt be so bad. Yes, I am familure with milling price and time that it takes associated with proper drying and sofoth and so on. I dont have a shop yet. All I have is a shop Companion repair lathe by 'UNIQUE PRODUCTS". I trying to learn all I can before investing so much. I have been to 8 Lumber places In Indiana. Completely went through all of there 4/4 5/4 8/4 racks and found very few boards, or parts of boards that were usable. I am very picky about wood. I had a guy that would sell be B quality Blanks to practice with. My question is this Why practice with second rate meterial if you expect 1st class results. The only way to perfection is to have perfect practice!!.

Now let me rephrase my question. Does anybody want to give up the referral source for purchasing Blanks?
Click to expand...
 
Chris Byrne said:
Bellforest is not selling shaftwood anymore. I was hanging out with boone and eric at the march expo and they said it wasen't worth doing for wahr blanks sell for. It sounded like they were not going to do shafts anymore, maybe they changed their minds.
As far as practice goes, looser grain wood is fine to practice on. It won't matter if there is alot of sugar in the wood either. All you need is fairly straight grain.
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I think Joey new that :)
 
billiardbum said:
I think Joey new that :)
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I bought some of their last coring dowels and shaft dowels.
I had to cull almost 66% of the coring dowels.:confused: :eek:
I've culled around 25% of the shaft dowels so far.:eek:
But a lot of them have tight grains and have great tone, so they'd be good coring dowels once cut to lengths.
Sadly, Bell doesn't know how to make shaft dowels right and will not start doing them anytime soon as ( I suspect ) their good boards were all pre-ordered by rich cuemakers.
Sooner or later, we're all going to use flat lams.:eek: :rolleyes: :D
 
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JoeyInCali said:
I bought some of their last coring dowels and shaft dowels.
I had to cull almost 66% of the coring dowels.:confused: :eek:
I've culled around 25% of the shaft dowels so far.:eek:
But a lot of them have tight grains and have great tone, so they'd be good coring dowels once cut to lengths.
Sadly, Bell doesn't know how to make shaft dowels right and will not start doing them anytime soon as ( I suspect ) their good boards were all pre-ordered by rich cuemakers.
Sooner or later, we're all going to use flat lams.:eek: :rolleyes: :D
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I got 50 from Bell about 6 or 8 months or so ago, maybe not that long. Any way, I culled 28 out of the 50 before the first cut and have culled 10 or 12 more after the first and second cuts. I'll be happy if I end up with 10 useable out of the 50. They've got great fiqured wood for cues but their shaft wood really sucks.

Dick
 
rhncue said:
I got 50 from Bell about 6 or 8 months or so ago, maybe not that long. Any way, I culled 28 out of the 50 before the first cut and have culled 10 or 12 more after the first and second cuts. I'll be happy if I end up with 10 useable out of the 50. They've got great fiqured wood for cues but their shaft wood really sucks.

Dick
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Yeah...Booney knows that now, and says he will not sell anymore of it. Sorry Dick to hear that. His BE, Curly and Exotics are great.
Jim
 
Over the last 10 years or so I've been paying some attention to maple quality. In all the flooring samples I've seen, none of the maple is up to the straight-grained quality that I see in my shafts (all production cues). This includes the top grades. I installed about 500 sq ft of maple flooring, 2.25" strips, and NONE of these boards would have straight enough grain for a shaft. There was some lovely birdseye pieces, and a few nice tiger-maple pieces, but no shaft quality pieces. I certainly get the impression that shaft quality maple is not at all common in the general maple market.

jmo

Dave
 
DaveK said:
Over the last 10 years or so I've been paying some attention to maple quality. In all the flooring samples I've seen, none of the maple is up to the straight-grained quality that I see in my shafts (all production cues). This includes the top grades. I installed about 500 sq ft of maple flooring, 2.25" strips, and NONE of these boards would have straight enough grain for a shaft. There was some lovely birdseye pieces, and a few nice tiger-maple pieces, but no shaft quality pieces. I certainly get the impression that shaft quality maple is not at all common in the general maple market.

jmo

Dave
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Yeah you are correct, and that is very disappointing information since you are from Canada
 
rhncue said:
I got 50 from Bell about 6 or 8 months or so ago, maybe not that long. Any way, I culled 28 out of the 50 before the first cut and have culled 10 or 12 more after the first and second cuts. I'll be happy if I end up with 10 useable out of the 50. They've got great fiqured wood for cues but their shaft wood really sucks.

Dick
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If you bought their $6.00 shaft wood you should expect that...good quality shaft wood is out there if you know where to look....;)
________
 
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