old growth shafts ????

[RD3P]

this is a little different but tangent subject.

back in the day Arrow makers figured out that by tapering slightly and "pressing" there cedar shafts with a die they ended up with a very consistant strait shaft....due to the compressing from the die. as well as the slight taper...

its probably never been done with cue shaft wood but i wonder what compressing wood with a die woould do for a cue shaft?????

 

[greyghost]

this is a little different but tangent subject.

back in the day Arrow makers figured out that by tapering slightly and "pressing" there cedar shafts with a die they ended up with a very consistant strait shaft....due to the compressing from the die. as well as the slight taper...

its probably never been done with cue shaft wood but i wonder what compressing wood with a die woould do for a cue shaft?????

don't know how hard that would be, but i figure you could do something similar with the shaft spinning and a linen press.

 

[RD3P]

i dont know from what i understand these were pretty big heavy dies that the raw wood for shafting was put into and pounded(compressed) the size of the wood changed quite noticably after pressing. then was cut into dowels and finished.

here i found the link i neeed to read to refresh my memory as im going by what ive been told.

http://www.stickbow.com/FEATURES/HISTORY/sweetland.CFM

 

[Cue Guru]

I have been able to get some nice shaft wood from old one piece cues. Reusing wood from the points forward will allow for an oversized shaft, ready for a turning schedule. A good percentage have higher growth ring counts but don't expect a high yield from a pile of old cues. Most are warped beyond use, others may move when turned. Even so, I have come up with some very nice wood that has more than passed the test of some snooker players wanting 31" shafts.

I recently recycled a couple tru-balance cues to get shafts.

Due to diameter, I actually have tiny points just avove the ring work on one of the shafts...

Great color on these shafts, and one of them had a very high groth ring concentration. They seem like they will work OK although one of them will have what appears to be a slight taper roll due to the way the wood cleaned up turning it... Not perfect, but not bad for the age!

 

[Ken_4fun]

I have been able to get some nice shaft wood from old one piece cues. Reusing wood from the points forward will allow for an oversized shaft, ready for a turning schedule. A good percentage have higher growth ring counts but don't expect a high yield from a pile of old cues. Most are warped beyond use, others may move when turned. Even so, I have come up with some very nice wood that has more than passed the test of some snooker players wanting 31" shafts.

I had thought about this many times and wondered if this would be the case.

I guess I am surprized that the it would move after being turned after all of these years. That was one of the reasons why I thought this would be a good idea.

Ken

 

[dave sutton]

i have done about 10 shafts from house cues. in those 10 i only got a few great ones. most were dark with run off but played good. also none were 13mm. all came in around 12.75mm

 

[Cue Guru]

I like 13.25 which is why I ended up with tiny points on one shaft...

In order to get at least 13.25 at the base of the ferrule, I had to cut it pretty far back and then trim the 'skinny' end off as well...

 

[bob_bushka]

yes people grade the quality of woods....but i do believe certain things are overrated like Grains per inch and white color or the absense of sugar marks

what makes a shaft good or not good is the preparation of the wood before working and the work involved in turning
i dont care if you have a super white shaft with 25 grain lines per inch if its not prepped or made right its not gonna be worth a damn ...
the best Truest straitest shaft i have is my schon shaft and it only has 3or four grain lines running throu it...but they are dead strait.

i have a old growth lake salvage shaft ....
not sure if the fact that its old growth makes it stiffer than a normal maple shaft.

my schon shaft is much stiffer than this shaft....
its stiffer because
1.. the diameter
2.. the taper

i would think that if i had the same taper/diameter shaft one made with old growth, one made with regular hard rock maple, the difference would be probably basically unnoticable... or very very minimal

i doo love the color of my salvage shaft....its got a reddish brown hue to it
and the taper and diameter makes the shaft play very different than my others

I cleaned an old growth shaft in Minnesota this weekend. It was probably the whippiest shaft I have ever worked on. Had about an inch and a half movement to it! I also handled a 80 growth ring count shaft(THATS RIGHT 80 PER INCH) which was very stiff. I guess I was floored by the whippy one but the guy said it shot great with little or no deflection. But the shaft had basically no spline to it.

 

[Cue Guru]

Since it's Christmas time, here's another hors d'oeuvre to chew on...

I was showing Mark K. (from Classic Cues) my first cue, and he had some interesting insight into shafts in general that I found interesting and useful as an "aspiring cue maker" (cue maker may be stretching it a bit)- wood worker for sure.

He said that a lot of focus is placed on the ferrule end of the shaft for deflection/stiffness/spine etc, what ever terms you want to use.

But, and this is the interesting part, since I make a 59" cue, I told him how I run with no taper at all for several inches from the joint of the shaft toward the ferrule, to simulate the deflection/stiffness/spine etc. of a 57" cue shaft (or as closely as I could) and he said this area (the rear) is often overlooked and it is critically important for the overall playability of the cue. He said I should go even further with this straight section, which I have done on the Titlist cue shafts to see how they play.

Finally, he said that actually playing with a shaft also enhances the playability. He says a shaft needs to 'break-in' before it really plays it's best. And, that the brand new shaft that plays well now may be surpassed later by the new shaft that did not play as well new, if both shafts are played with and broken in. Part of the reason I guess that vintage cues play so damn well... Maybe less emphasis on the wood, and more on how much play it has received is the way to go?

Mark owns and has owned a LOT of cues as all the big collectors on here know. He is a pretty damn good player as well, so I respect his opinion quite a bit on these subjects and believe they have merit.

Grab another drink and have a Merry Christmas!:wink:

 

[ridewiththewind]

Since it's Christmas time, here's another hors d'oeuvre to chew on...

I was showing Mark K. (from Classic Cues) my first cue, and he had some interesting insight into shafts in general that I found interesting and useful as an "aspiring cue maker" (cue maker may be stretching it a bit)- wood worker for sure.

He said that a lot of focus is placed on the ferrule end of the shaft for deflection/stiffness/spine etc, what ever terms you want to use.

But, and this is the interesting part, since I make a 59" cue, I told him how I run with no taper at all for several inches from the joint of the shaft toward the ferrule, to simulate the deflection/stiffness/spine etc. of a 57" cue shaft (or as closely as I could) and he said this area (the rear) is often overlooked and it is critically important for the overall playability of the cue. He said I should go even further with this straight section, which I have done on the Titlist cue shafts to see how they play.

Finally, he said that actually playing with a shaft also enhances the playability. He says a shaft needs to 'break-in' before it really plays it's best. And, that the brand new shaft that plays well now may be surpassed later by the new shaft that did not play as well new, if both shafts are played with and broken in. Part of the reason I guess that vintage cues play so damn well... Maybe less emphasis on the wood, and more on how much play it has received is the way to go?

Mark owns and has owned a LOT of cues as all the big collectors on here know. He is a pretty damn good player as well, so I respect his opinion quite a bit on these subjects and believe they have merit.

Grab another drink and have a Merry Christmas!:wink:

I think with time...a well played cue, overall, will play better...not just the shafts.

It has long been known that when you purchase a new acoustic guitar, it will not sound nearly as nice as it will once it's been played a while and the tone woods have had a chance to 'open up'. It's the harmonic vibrations in the wood that allow for this to happen.

A while back I lucked into a an old Helmstetter 86-06 that had obviously seen a lot of play...the battle scars are there to prove it...LoL. I simply could not believe that this cue plays as well as it does...I mean, EVERYONE who has picked it up, and played with it has offered me money for it...or wants first dibs if I sell it...it's really quite bizarre. If it were the only cue I could have...I actually think I could live with that. Won a lot of games with that cue. Luckily, for me, I am not limited to just one cue!

So...I truly believe that a well played cue will have better feedback...not only just a well played shaft. :grin:

Lisa

 

[dave sutton]

i also believe with age a cue will play better. for more structural reasons tho. epoxies and finish curing ect

 

[desi2960]

old shaft

i buy old one piece cues 100 at a time, and this is where i get 90% of my shafts. i love the honey color high ring count pieces. out of the 100 i might get 8 or 9 really great shafts, and 15 really good shafts.

the darker more dense shafts seem to play more solid
.
when i first started cutting this 75 plus year old wood, i was surprised to learn that it will move almost as much as a newer shaft. so NO speed cutting, i have to let them hang just as long as any other shaft.

now that you have a old dense shaft, try one with no ferrule.

chuck starkey

 

[kasparovII]

old growth and deflection

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I noticed one reply to the original poster's question was that the old rowth shafts seemed denser and had less deflection. Most of the time "deflection" means cue ball deflection, as this is a performance trait that companies use to market their shafts. While reading about how the various companies attempt to minimize cue ball deflection, they inevitably say that their shafts use technology that allows their shafts to weigh less in the tip area, thereby a player has to compensate less for cue ball deflection, ultimately giving the player more margin for error because the shaft doesn't move the cue ball as much off line.
Whew! I hope this explanation makes sense. So my original point after all of this techno-talk is that it would seem to me that if an old growth shaft is more "dense", i.e., weighs more than a regular shaft, the old growth shaft should intrinsically have more cue ball deflection. Is this a correct assumption, if we are comparing an old growth shaft with the same tip diameter as a regular shaft?

 

[JoeyInCali]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I noticed one reply to the original poster's question was that the old rowth shafts seemed denser and had less deflection. Most of the time "deflection" means cue ball deflection, as this is a performance trait that companies use to market their shafts. While reading about how the various companies attempt to minimize cue ball deflection, they inevitably say that their shafts use technology that allows their shafts to weigh less in the tip area, thereby a player has to compensate less for cue ball deflection, ultimately giving the player more margin for error because the shaft doesn't move the cue ball as much off line.
Whew! I hope this explanation makes sense. So my original point after all of this techno-talk is that it would seem to me that if an old growth shaft is more "dense", i.e., weighs more than a regular shaft, the old growth shaft should intrinsically have more cue ball deflection. Is this a correct assumption, if we are comparing an old growth shaft with the same tip diameter as a regular shaft?

All things being equal, I agree with your assessment.
I think a 12MM tip would be much better than a 13MM tipped old growth heavy and dense shafts.