Playing characteristics of shaft wood

Patrick Johnson said:
As you say, changing the amount of force applied changes both the CB's spin and its speed - and it's this combination of spin and speed (the spin/speed ratio) that matters in pool - not the RPMs alone, but the revolutions per distance of travel. That spin/speed ratio only changes with tip distance from centerball.

pj
chgo
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Only if how hard you hit and the force going to cueball is the same, that is the variable here we are talking about not how far off center you hit. In order to measure the affect the material of the shaft has on the hit we need to use a constant tip placement of course, so that won't change.

The post asked if wood type changed how the cue or shaft played and how one would know. The answer would be that if the wood happened to transfer more force to the cueball you would get more action out of the shot at the same speed, but I don't see how you can find out if that is the case till after the shaft is built with any sort of accuracy. We are not talking about how hard exactly the player hits the ball, but how much of that energy reaches the ball, that difference is the equipment. Unless we assume that the exact same measure of newtons reaches the cueball as the muscles put out, which I'm sure no-one would agree with since there is energy lost in the swing needed to move the cuestick and energy lost at impact. It's that lost energy at impact we need to look at to see how the shaft material affects the cueball.

One of the biggest things is physics is "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction". When we hit the cueball, the cueball hits us. If that hit back is absorbed more, the force into the cueball is less. If the material does not absorb the impact as much, more force goes to the cueball. That is the variable of the shaft and cue material, that amount of energy that is lost from muscle to the ball. I know there is more than one engineer / scientist on here, I'm sure they can put out the math that will show this. If it's meaningful or not in a game, maybe, maybe not, but all that affect the hit feel and why some shafts feel deader than others.
 
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hang-the-9 said:
...if the wood happened to transfer more force to the cueball you would get more action out of the shot at the same speed
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You'd get more spin and more CB speed, in the same proportions as before. "More action" = a higher proportion of spin to speed - only available by hitting farther from center, not by just increasing force (as others have also said here).

pj
chgo
 
One of the catches with wood is you don't know what was right beside it but cut away. That nice pretty straight grain might be close to a limb that had a lot of weight and leverage hanging off of that wood. Take that limb away and you are going to get warpage from stress relief. The bad news, that shaft will always tend to warp. A shaft that warps from being propped in a corner warped due to stress and many can be straightened.

When looking at a shaft blank the first thing to look at is number of growth rings. Those soft paler lines are made in the spring and summer, periods of fast growth. The dark and harder wood is made in the late fall and winter when growth has slowed.

Now we need to look at the pattern of the growth rings, they are often closer together on one side of a shaft blank than another. fifteen to twenty growth rings is a nice count, over twenty is gold. However, if the rings are wider on one side of the blank than the other this is less desirable. If the rings run off of the edge of the blank, less desirable too. My own shafts or shaft profiles I was just playing around testing might have eight to twelve growth rings showing.

When all else is considered the shaft blank still has to pass the most important hurdle, the ping test. I had an inch and three-sixteenth thick plywood floor in my shop and I had floor joists twelve inches apart. I would bounce the blanks off of the floor end first. If I didn't like the way the blank bounced or I didn't like the sound it made, it wasn't going in a customer's cue.

Twelve growth rings nicely spread across the blank and a nice ping was pretty much my minimum for a customer's cue or a replacement shaft. Starting with a decent bundle of blanks, 144 of them, I might get 30-35 shafts. Some more fine for the much shorter cores for butts. I can tell you that hard maple makes excellent kindling and survey stakes. Shaft blanks are a little short for tomato stakes but they can come in handy for young and spindly plants that need some support.

After six or eight turnings spaced out over a year or two or three you start getting something resembling cue shafts. There is enough time and work into them at this point as well as the careful drying on end with air flowing around the blanks that it is a little painful to introduce one to the bandsaw.

Many years ago I needed a replacement shaft for my Meucci. I went to a store with a nice sporting goods department that stocked several hundred cues including some two piece Dufferins in display racks that had them standing on end. I selected three I liked the shafts of and quickly pulled the shafts and gave them a ping test before an employee could come running over and ask me what the hell I was doing. Bought the forty dollar cue and put my tip of choice on it. Diameter was almost perfect at the joint and it made a fine shaft for years.

Hu
 
ShootingArts said:
One of the catches with wood is you don't know what was right beside it but cut away. That nice pretty straight grain might be close to a limb that had a lot of weight and leverage hanging off of that wood. Take that limb away and you are going to get warpage from stress relief. The bad news, that shaft will always tend to warp. A shaft that warps from being propped in a corner warped due to stress and many can be straightened.

When looking at a shaft blank the first thing to look at is number of growth rings. Those soft paler lines are made in the spring and summer, periods of fast growth. The dark and harder wood is made in the late fall and winter when growth has slowed.

Now we need to look at the pattern of the growth rings, they are often closer together on one side of a shaft blank than another. fifteen to twenty growth rings is a nice count, over twenty is gold. However, if the rings are wider on one side of the blank than the other this is less desirable. If the rings run off of the edge of the blank, less desirable too. My own shafts or shaft profiles I was just playing around testing might have eight to twelve growth rings showing.

When all else is considered the shaft blank still has to pass the most important hurdle, the ping test. I had an inch and three-sixteenth thick plywood floor in my shop and I had floor joists twelve inches apart. I would bounce the blanks off of the floor end first. If I didn't like the way the blank bounced or I didn't like the sound it made, it wasn't going in a customer's cue.

Twelve growth rings nicely spread across the blank and a nice ping was pretty much my minimum for a customer's cue or a replacement shaft. Starting with a decent bundle of blanks, 144 of them, I might get 30-35 shafts. Some more fine for the much shorter cores for butts. I can tell you that hard maple makes excellent kindling and survey stakes. Shaft blanks are a little short for tomato stakes but they can come in handy for young and spindly plants that need some support.

After six or eight turnings spaced out over a year or two or three you start getting something resembling cue shafts. There is enough time and work into them at this point as well as the careful drying on end with air flowing around the blanks that it is a little painful to introduce one to the bandsaw.

Many years ago I needed a replacement shaft for my Meucci. I went to a store with a nice sporting goods department that stocked several hundred cues including some two piece Dufferins in display racks that had them standing on end. I selected three I liked the shafts of and quickly pulled the shafts and gave them a ping test before an employee could come running over and ask me what the hell I was doing. Bought the forty dollar cue and put my tip of choice on it. Diameter was almost perfect at the joint and it made a fine shaft for years.

Hu
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This well written post highlights exactly why CF will be THE shaft material as time goes on. No need to worry about any of this. You can make the same shaft over and over with no concern for growth rings, aging, turning etc. Also with cf you can make small diameter tubes that still have the stiffness/backbone that you can only get with thicker wood shafts. As for spin? I've yet to hit a shaft that produced more spin than another. That's because they don't.
 
I'd say that I have noticed some maple isn't as hard as other maple. The cheaper shafts seem to pick up nicks really easy. Wood quality does make a difference.

Build two identical wooden carts one from nothing but the cheapest lumber u can find. Another from the absolute best lumber. Give them both the same work load. Wich one do you think will last longer?
 
Just go get a carbon fiber shaft then never worry about wood grain, how many rings it’s got, if it is slow growth, ever got wet, grew on the south side of a hill or any other thing one can think of… jmo lol
 
There are ideal maple shaft wood characteristics, many already mentioned here. Shaft taper and tip are a huge variables. There is no universal agreement on what a good playing shaft (or cue) is. A lot of this is personal preference. A poor cue or cue shaft can burden an otherwise excellent player. A great cue and shaft will not contribute much to someone lacking in cueing skills.
 
An even longer tome for those interested, focusing mainly on CF shafts.

Meucci which I never learned to spell was the weapon of choice when I got one in the early eighties. The shaft was a noodle that took me six months to learn to play with. Many years later I heard he used soft maple for his shafts. Beautiful shafts, played like crap in my opinion.

A wooden shaft has to have a slight taper on the outside to have desired flex characteristics. A spliced shaft might avoid this but I don't know if any did. I turned a wooden shaft with a true zero taper for sixteen inches from the ferrule. Took it to the pool hall to try. The primary flex was behind my bridge where the shaft went from zero taper to a slight conical taper. It died with a loud snap before going in the garbage can. I didn't want anyone digging it out and having my name attached to it, it played that bad!

Something I don't know if has been exploited yet, a tube shaft or one that we can choose the weave and layup of the reinforcing fiber can have different flex characteristics designed into the shaft while having a zero taper outside diameter sliding through your bridge. I see tremendous potential in carbon fiber shafts that isn't possible with wooden shafts.

I do think carbon fiber will take over the vast majority of the shaft market because it offers a lot that wood doesn't. It also has some issues, mostly playability. I don't think that anyone would have touched carbon fiber with a ten foot pole if the shafts would have came out at a price point under wood. As a premium shaft they were snapped up. The early ones I hit with sounded like crap and hit like the junk aluminum and fiberglass shafts. Players were willing to ignore this because of other advantages. The best wood only has 3% difference in flex depending on how it is turned from testing I read about long ago. The spliced shafts have even less difference. However the difference in CF depending on how it is turned approaches zero.

A major advantage of carbon fiber is that it does seem to break in and change a little sometime during the first 50-100 hours of play. After that it stays consistent. My one piece wooden shaft warps slightly every summer and straightens every winter. Talking a tiny amount and I don't notice it except when checking the shaft for trueness. The CF shafts I have shot with are straight, regardless of season.

I don't jump on fads but after hitting with a handful of CF shafts belonging to other people I had to acknowledge they are a better mousetrap. I also believe that there is huge potential in shafts and the mandrel they are wrapped around when cue builders like predator build the blank from scratch. One time the big production builders have an advantage over small shops, they can spend time and money on R&D. I think being able to move some or all of the taper of the CF shafts to the inside or just altering the weave of the reinforcing fiber will be huge in coming years. CF shafts are in their infancy. Really great times ahead I believe.

Little advantage to CF for the pro who has used one shaft for thousands of hours and uses it for dozens of hours a week. For the dedicated amateur, CF offers a shaft that is consistent every time they pick it up. I played off the wall usually seven nights a week for over a decade. Indexing the cue, turning it to find the sweet spot, was automatic. Even with my later custom cues, I indexed my one piece or spliced cues to a consistent "sweet spot" to play with. I turned the CF shaft in my hands for months when I first bought one looking for the sweet spot that didn't exist and out of almost lifelong habit. The CF shaft looks and feels the same no matter how I turn it.

This post rambled a long ways from shaft wood to shaft material. Those playing many hours with wood may never go to carbon fiber. If they are playing dozens of hours a week CF may offer little or no advantage. I think new players will use CF shafts once the pricing stabilizes. A better mousetrap that is much easier for the player that shoots a dozen or so hours a week to learn how to use.

Wood is good, CF is better in my opinion. CF will only continue to improve too. Part of the secret of spliced wooden shafts is that the glue lines become a major factor in the playing characteristics and lower grade shaft wood could be used. None of the search for top quality blanks that many cue builders engage in. CF is much easier to get consistently great quality blanks with. That doesn't mean crap CF blanks don't exist. However, if you play with one CF shaft from a manufacturer chances are you can order another of the same model and it will be equally pleasing. Wood is a little more of a crap shoot and the more equipment sensitive you are the more that matters.

Once I played with the crookedest sticks in the house because they usually had a good tip or one that could be worked. Bridge areas that didn't put splinters in your hand too. Now with far fewer hours playing I have became a hothouse player that is far more equipment sensitive. I want to walk into a nice cool building with Diamond tables and pull out equipment that is the same every time I play with it. For me, a CF shaft is part of that equation.

Hu
 
One thing cf can't do for some folks. Yesterday was a bucket list moment. I walked into my pool room, saw a guy I have played once or twice shooting by himself. We decided to play 1 hole, I saw his cue and said that it was a nice looking Southwest style cue. He said "no. It's the real deal". He let me shoot with it for a minute. The first ball I hit with it was like having sex for the first time or driving a Rolls Royce. I've never felt anything that pure. Best feeling cue I've ever held or shot with. Incredible. I guess that is what good shaft wood can do.
 
I play with carbon, but part of the beauty I think of wood is each piece will have its own characteristic's. Two piece's can come from the same tree, have the same taper, same ferrule, same tip, same diameter but can have different weight, density, balance point and hit. Some people like that about wood some people cant stand that about wood.
 
HueblerHustler7 said:
I play with carbon, but part of the beauty I think of wood is each piece will have its own characteristic's. Two piece's can come from the same tree, have the same taper, same ferrule, same tip, same diameter but can have different weight, density, balance point and hit. Some people like that about wood some people cant stand that about wood.
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I had real nice R. Black cue yrs ago. It had two shafts and i bet i didn't put 2hrs of play on the second shaft the entire time i owned it. TOTALLY different hit/feel from the main shaft. That's wood for you.
 
FunChamp said:
One thing cf can't do for some folks. Yesterday was a bucket list moment. I walked into my pool room, saw a guy I have played once or twice shooting by himself. We decided to play 1 hole, I saw his cue and said that it was a nice looking Southwest style cue. He said "no. It's the real deal". He let me shoot with it for a minute. The first ball I hit with it was like having sex for the first time or driving a Rolls Royce. I've never felt anything that pure. Best feeling cue I've ever held or shot with. Incredible. I guess that is what good shaft wood can do.
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While good shaft wood is one of the more important things, everything matters all the way back to and including the bumper! I have held pistols, shotguns, pool cues, that I just knew I would perform great with. We can get used to anything but sometimes something is perfect with no adjustments or break in period.

I have shot with great cues that took close to a hundred hours to get in tune with, maybe even longer. A very very few I picked up and knew in that moment that they were a magic wand for me. Unfortunately the ones that were perfect when I picked them up will never be for sale. Heirlooms.

Hu
 
garczar said:
This well written post highlights exactly why CF will be THE shaft material as time goes on. No need to worry about any of this. You can make the same shaft over and over with no concern for growth rings, aging, turning etc. Also with cf you can make small diameter tubes that still have the stiffness/backbone that you can only get with thicker wood shafts. As for spin? I've yet to hit a shaft that produced more spin than another. That's because they don't
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FunChamp said:
One thing cf can't do for some folks. Yesterday was a bucket list moment. I walked into my pool room, saw a guy I have played once or twice shooting by himself. We decided to play 1 hole, I saw his cue and said that it was a nice looking Southwest style cue. He said "no. It's the real deal". He let me shoot with it for a minute. The first ball I hit with it was like having sex for the first time or driving a Rolls Royce. I've never felt anything that pure. Best feeling cue I've ever held or shot with. Incredible. I guess that is what good shaft wood can do.
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FunChamp gives us another example of why carbon fiber will dominate the market, and probably sooner than we might think. If that wood shaft was so good, why aren’t all shafts just like it? Well, because there is enough variability in the wood that they can’t all be like that. With carbon fiber, they can be essentially the same, and engineered with characteristics not possible with wood. So far as price is concerned, it will come down, and come down a lot. Nobody is going to convince me that a cylindrical, radially symmetric cue shaft costs as much as a bike frame, pair of skis and twice as much as a top of the line tennis racquet, all of which are far more complicated to produce.
 
I very much want a high quality Birdseye shaft. Maybe even curly maple.

Can anybody give me a realistic lead on that?
 
I have a good friend back in Chicago that owns an old Joss. Might be a late 70’s or early 80’s cue. Only has one shaft but that shaft has magic in it. So much so I offered him two grand for it, just the shaft. He declined my offer.

A day or two after he declined my offer I called. Dan Janes. We had a great chat and as he told me. God made the wood and once in a while it all comes together in something very special. In his words there is no rhyme or reason to it it just happens..

So there is perfect wood shafts but they happen out of nowhere and no one has ever been able to build them consistently that I know of at least. Perhaps with time and lots of experiments carbon fiber will make repeatable ‘perfect’ shafts. I do believe that is likely till then I will enjoy my Mezz Ex shaft which has both carbon fiber and wood..
 
Texas Carom Club said:
what is a poor shaft though?
no such thing unless its not actual solid hard wood right?
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Poor shaft can be low density, low tone, too whippy or too stiff taper, extreme grain runout, warped, defective ferrule install, too heavy of a ferrule or any combination, etc.
 
Black-Balled said:
I very much want a high quality Birdseye shaft. Maybe even curly maple.

Can anybody give me a realistic lead on that?
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Pat Diveney...Diveney cues. He will make whatever u ask. Prices for a shaft are on par with everyone else. I've never seen a shaft loaded with Birdseye
I have seen some of his figured curly and torrified. Looks great on a curly maple nose specially if the shaft and nose colors match perfect
 
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