Am I wrong? or do they cut away existing maple that is perfectly contiguous material I.E. one solid piece, then add a relatively thin walled maple ferule where the maple used to be? I ask this because I have heard the main repair issue with O.B. shafts is that the ferules crack. if so, why cut away the original material? Aesthetics over durability?
More thoughts..I can see the fiber pad protecting against lateral movement of a compressing tip from blowing out the side of the ferule, but not from the force of compression between the pad and the shoulder that the ferule is sitting on the shaft. I would think given the grain alignment of the ferule it would be very subject to spreading apart under compression.
Jayman
Maybe I can answer some of your questions.
First, keep in mind that our construction is a special formation of flat laminated maple pieces (6), and not from a solid maple shaft blank.
Although we do see ferrules cracking, most of those issues can be traced back to one of a couple of easily preventable causes. The vast majority of ferrule issues we see come from someone re-tipping the cue shaft and removing the Carbon Fiber Pad. Either they don't use any pad at all, or they replace the pad with a vulcanized paper pad. In either case, the ferrule will fail at some point if they play it that way long enough. The other common reason we see for ferrule failures is letting the tip get too thin. We have literally seen shafts where the tip was so thin, the edge of the carbon fiber pad was being shaped along with the tip. We recommend to keep 2 layers of tip on the sidewall.
We've seen many shafts out there for years with no issues with ferrules at all. We even warranty the ferrules for the life of the cue shaft. See our website,
www.obcues.com for complete warranty details. As a matter of fact, we use them on our break shafts with great success. I don't think we've ever had to replace one on a break shaft. The main reason for this is that the tips don't wear out, so they don't get too thin or replaced without the carbon fiber pad.
Now, the reason for the maple ferrule in the first place. Obviously, we use maple to reduce the tip end mass, which contributes to our very low cue ball deflection, or squirt. Plastics are much heavier than maple, so it seemed like a natural choice to us. We designed it in such a way that the long grain of the maple wraps around the cue shaft, giving it strength. I can't say we came up with it completely on our own though. We used a laminated wood bolt and nut design that used to be found in the electrical power industry for inspiration. These fasteners were very strong, and still provided the electrical insulation that is needed in some applications.
I hope that helps, and wasn't too long winded.
