In case any of you are wondering if we're going to reply; stay tuned!
It's going to be a doozie; a civil doozie of course. :grin:
It's going to be a doozie; a civil doozie of course. :grin:
Old Growth shaft
- Thread starter twal
- Start date
The problem here is we are discussing two different products. I am discussing quality maple shaft wood and you are discussing maple lumber. Wisconsin has great maple lumber for furniture, table legs, poles and broom handles which is what most of their maple is dried for. They do not produce quality maple for shaft wood. They produce lumber for the masses. With all the mills we have dealt with in Wisconsin we were never able to find one who would accommodate us with quality shaft wood. In fact, not one mill ever heard of the term 'stress relieving'. Now, that was 9 or 10 years ago but I don't think their manufacturing philosophy of producing quantities of maple lumber has changed. Like I said, if I needed maple for furniture, Wisconsin is the place.
Wisconsin unlike Michigan, Canada and Maine who have actual mills and dealers who actually professionally pick, professionally produce and professionally dry their maple for the shaft wood trade. That’s the difference. If you want lumber, Wisconsin and Ohio may be great but when you need a quality produced product, you go to the sources and New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin are not where we would go. However, if we needed broom handles, sanded poles for chairs or lumber for furniture we’d certainly would use lumber from Wisconsin, New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
In many cases with some “cue makers” it’s all about cost. Some would rather hopscotch around constantly in search of the holy grail but are so busy hopscotching that the holy grail is right under their noses. The purpose is to find the source for the least expensive product to save a few bucks and maximize their profit in the end result. Some say it’s to control every piece of wood they use. Poppycock! There comes a point that you have to decide if you want to be a “cue maker”, a lumber hunter or if you want to go back to school because cue making isn’t for you. Cue makers make cues, they don’t play hopscotch across the country looking for what is readily available. Successful cue makers don't hopscoth; they play pick up the phone and call Joe or any other specialized shaft wood supplier.
Let me provide an example. If we were to buy lumber and process it, our cost per shaft would be about 60 cents each. You then have to take into consideration the loss of about 40% to 60% due to warping or just not being any good. So now your costs have doubled and many of those warped shafts will not be discovered until after you do considerable processing. Therefore you have valuable man hours involved in this equation as well. By the time it's all said and done, the only savings is monetary assuming your time is worth nothing which many cue maker fail to take into consideration. We would rather purchase a finely produced product which is produced in a specific manner for a specific use. The cost is higher but the savings are greater in virtually no loss due to warping and man hours processing bad lumber.
If you’re hopscotching across the country picking wood here and wood there and wood elsewhere in search of the ‘fountain of shafts’ this is hardly a valid comparison for growth ring differences.
As far as growth rings playing no part in the way a shaft hits or feels -- poppycock! We bring in and sell 20,000 shafts annually which equates to about 400 shaft sales each and every week. I seriously doubt that any posting cue maker on AZ has that many in inventory or even uses that many in a single year. Regardless whether they do or not, we have the inventory to pull from and do tests within a controlled inventory. We can pull all the high growth shafts and pull lower growth shafts from the same batches all from a specific area and all dried by the same mill. The end result is that high growth shafts will weigh at least 1 ounce more than its low growth counterpart. That is not an opinion; that is fact. That weight difference equates to a stiffer and more solid hitting shaft.
My experiences have pretty much been the same as yours. I think the average weight difference when I have checked growth ring count shafts has been a little over 1/2 ounce. That is in a once inch dowel and not in a square. I guess my conclusion is that you can get lucky and find some good shaft maple from most places in the northeast USA that grows maple. But if you want any kind of decent yield for shaft wood, Michigan and Canada are the main two sources with Maine being a lessor player. I have found maple coming from various regions to vary in weight as a general rule. Michigan produced the heaviest overall, with Canada second and Maine third. New York for instance years ago provided me some of the prettiest wood ever, but it was also about an ounce lighter on the average in one inch dowels. New Hampshire provided decent weight wood, about the same as Maine, but I hardly got any clean shafts. So for appearance it was some of the worse.
On a side note the Upper Peninsula in Michigan has proven over and over to produce better Birdseye than anywhere else I have found. But my Michigan suppliers say the better shaft wood is not up there.
Chris....
Thank you for participating and agreeing by dispelling some of the misinformation others try to put forth on here for their own enlightened self interest. I concur with you wholeheartedly. Michigan does indeed produce the finest BE maple. They can and do produce some fine shaft wood as well. I guess that's just a matter of suppliers.
And Maple from Maine now that you mentioned it, was a little what I like to term as 'dirty'. I do agree that New York does produce some clean wood but it is much lighter than the more northern areas. In fact considerably lighter.
I think it is totally irresponsible for any "cue Maker" to state that growth rings are nothing more than rings on a shaft that you can count. I guess some have never had the opportunity to examine large samplings from similar batches from professional shaft wood suppliers as opposed to lumber mills and playing hopscotch.
Well, it's time to get back to work now. Have a great weekend!
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I'm not a cue maker, but I've been a full-time woodworker for about 40 years. I have to be honest, I've never heard the term "old growth" used to describe wood harvested from a single plant, as in "It comes from an old tree".
An old growth forest is where old growth wood comes from. In forestry, old growth is defined as a forest that has not been catastrophically altered (by large-scale fire, disease, harvesting, etc.) throughout its estimated lifespan. It has particular and definable characteristics and biodiversity according to the type of trees that grow there and the growing conditions that are in that area.
A northern hardwoods old growth forest would have a mix of young and old trees, with an abundance of smaller trees living for decades under the canopy and growing very slowly, leading to high ring counts. In order to be classified as old growth, a northern hardwoods forest would have to have its oldest trees being at least 150 years old and up to 300-400 years old, but there will be plenty of younger trees waiting for an opening to occur in the canopy.
These younger trees would not only have high growth ring counts, they would also be pretty straight-grained because they spent their entire lives reaching straight up for light. I would imagine that the very best shaft trees would be found growing on flat land (growing on hillsides leads to internal stresses) and in areas with no large holes in the canopy (phototropism causing an elliptical distribution of growth rings within the bole leads to a greater propensity toward warp.).
New York has no harvestable old growth hardwood forests. The state's forests were practically razed during the latter part of the 19th century into the 20th century. What grew back is not yet "old growth forest", but since it is all within the "Forever Wild" portion on the Adirondack Park, the question of when it might become harvestable is moot.
There was one area of the western Adirondacks that had a large old growth stand of maple and white pine, with towering pines up to 400 years old. It was never harvested due to the great difficulty in removing the logs from the remote landscape. Then in the late 90s, a microburst storm developed in that area with straight-line winds estimated well in excess of 100 MPH. It leveled thousands of acres of pristine forest that had never seen a logger since the discovery of the continent, and left the Five Ponds Wilderness Area on the Oswegatchie River a tangle of gigantic matchsticks, leaving several hikers dead in their tents.
So, that is the reason why you can't ever get old growth maple from New York. There are simply no old growth forests left here.
An old growth forest is where old growth wood comes from. In forestry, old growth is defined as a forest that has not been catastrophically altered (by large-scale fire, disease, harvesting, etc.) throughout its estimated lifespan. It has particular and definable characteristics and biodiversity according to the type of trees that grow there and the growing conditions that are in that area.
A northern hardwoods old growth forest would have a mix of young and old trees, with an abundance of smaller trees living for decades under the canopy and growing very slowly, leading to high ring counts. In order to be classified as old growth, a northern hardwoods forest would have to have its oldest trees being at least 150 years old and up to 300-400 years old, but there will be plenty of younger trees waiting for an opening to occur in the canopy.
These younger trees would not only have high growth ring counts, they would also be pretty straight-grained because they spent their entire lives reaching straight up for light. I would imagine that the very best shaft trees would be found growing on flat land (growing on hillsides leads to internal stresses) and in areas with no large holes in the canopy (phototropism causing an elliptical distribution of growth rings within the bole leads to a greater propensity toward warp.).
New York has no harvestable old growth hardwood forests. The state's forests were practically razed during the latter part of the 19th century into the 20th century. What grew back is not yet "old growth forest", but since it is all within the "Forever Wild" portion on the Adirondack Park, the question of when it might become harvestable is moot.
There was one area of the western Adirondacks that had a large old growth stand of maple and white pine, with towering pines up to 400 years old. It was never harvested due to the great difficulty in removing the logs from the remote landscape. Then in the late 90s, a microburst storm developed in that area with straight-line winds estimated well in excess of 100 MPH. It leveled thousands of acres of pristine forest that had never seen a logger since the discovery of the continent, and left the Five Ponds Wilderness Area on the Oswegatchie River a tangle of gigantic matchsticks, leaving several hikers dead in their tents.
So, that is the reason why you can't ever get old growth maple from New York. There are simply no old growth forests left here.
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As a US Forest Service employee of 20 years, part of that time working in growth and yield of southern pine stands as more or less a biometrician, I find your post regarding stand dynamics and the definition of "old growth" very refreshing.
Shafts are like a box of chocolate's, you never know what you're gonna get.:grin: What i mean by that is, just because a shaft is "old growth", or has a high ring count, and straight grain, does'nt neccesarily mean it's gonna be a great playing shaft. Will the yield of great shafts be higher? Sure, but there's some super playing shafts out there, that have a lower rpi, and some runoff. I have no doubt that the best shaft wood comes from MI, and canada.
http://www.rolaine.com/cues/
http://www.champeau.com/en/product_billiard.php
More reading if you haven't read enough.
http://www.champeau.com/en/product_billiard.php
More reading if you haven't read enough.
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You're very, very welcome and this is what can be accomplished when clear thinking and knowledgeable people get together for discussion. Of course it also goes to say that we need to especially thank the dunderheads for bowing out of the discussion with their snide comments and remarks. It was with their lack of participation that made this thread so wonderful.
And now to answer a post someone made about Rolaine.
The link provided is a good link with some useful information. However being that the link came from such an authoritative source comparable to a dictionary, I would have thought that he would have clarified several items of misinformation or potential issues on that page.
1) that Rolaine is selling Wisconsin lumber which we've pretty much discussed
2) that Rolaine is clueless and states: For a limited time, we are offering first-cut TAPERED cue shaft blanks. Tapered dimensions are shown below - 0.96" to 0.66" - with a 2" straight-section on the large end, for lathe chuck.
3) the fact that the centers appear to be so large and deep, can in itself present a problem if he uses the same hole on the business end.
4) and the fact that the authoritative source previously stated that he received:
"Some of the worst shafts I've seen came from them. Sugary, ugly and off-grain/runout/twists".
5) the rest of Rolaine's diatribe, I haven't digested so I won't comment.
We've all pretty much explained the issue with Wisconsin lumber. More egregious is Rolaine's statement about his first turned shafts. I don't know anyone, "cue maker", 'hack' or 'butcher' that would turn shafts down to .960 x .660 on a "first cut tapered" shaft! Additionally why any professional (Rolaine?) who knew what he was doing would provide a "2 inch straight section on the large end, for lathe chuck" shows he is clearly a neophyte. He believes we would chuck up on the actual shaft therefore the misnomer of providing a 2" straight section.
Now that we've extablished and explained some of the misinformation previously provided, we'd now like to bring your attention for those of you who would care to learn more about drying wood, kilns and the most ridiculous issue, cue makers who actually believe they can harmonically choose shafts based on tone.
For an eye-opening and enjoyable read, please click on over:
http://forums.azbilliards.com/showthread.php?t=285568&highlight=kiln+drying