Need advice on lathe

cuedaddy

cuedaddy

Banned
Ok so I haven't mastered or attempted creating a cue from scratch.. My lathe is too inconvenient for the process, but I am toying with purchasing a lathe as my business grows the current lathe that I have is making my job too cumbersome to handle on the day to day.

What I do on a day to day:
I cut shafts , slowly but surely one cut at a time. I do about 15 cuts a day and the rest of my time is spent shipping them out. I also replace tips , standard or phenol/ phenol tip and ferrule. This leaves my customers with about 20 different types of shafts to choose from at the end of the night

I would love to be able to do cues as well, now I have heard that a (what I call a punch through chuck) with two tail stocks is almost a requirement.
I would also like to be able to do inlays, is cnc my only option?
I also need to be able to do shafts much more efficiently?
I use maintenance arbors for my shafts, is there a better way?
what other types of tooling would you suggest? (and whats required)
what kind of shipping charges can I expect?
And what specifically should I look for with the lathe?

Thanks a bunch,
Andy
 
Andy, you might start buy purchasing the videos from Cue Components (Joe Barringer) and the cue building manual from Cueman Billiards (Chris Hightower) the information contained in these sources will answer many if not all of the questions you have at this stage.
 
First do a search on things like 'cue lathe' and 'metal lathe'.

The short version is: many people think it is foolish to even
think about making cues without at least a 12 x 36 metalworking lathe.

Others feel the special purpose machines are all you will ever need.

The right answer for you should depend on exactly how much
you want to do with cue work/making - keeping in mind that your
goals probably will evolve over time.

IMHO - Chris's<cueman> BOOK should be step number one - he also offers videos,
as do others. If you read the book, you should be able to
make informed choices about equipment, training, etc

Dale
 
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