classiccues said:
Anyone paying 1200-1500 for plain wood forearm style cues by over-hyped-unproven cuemakers needs to put down the pipe.
JV (---JMHO
Not to be arguing, but I find this post somewhat offensive. Cuemakers are not making what they deserve, not even the unknowns.
One plain-jane cue with nice rings costs more than one might imagine to build. First you have the bare woods, which in a nicely figured cue would be say $15 dollars for the forearm/butt & a nice wrapless birdseye handle another $15. It takes roughly 10 minutes to make each of the 10 cuts it will have before it's to assembly size, then another 3 cuts after assembly. That's 2hrs of labor. Now figure in your rings, making the billets & cutting all of the rings off for each ring pack. Making a set of three billets takes me roughly two hours, and to cut the rings for an entire cue is another hour. That's three more labor hours. Plus the cost of the materials for the rings, which mirrors the cost of the woods used in the cue, another $30. If phenolic is used for collars & caps, it's roughly $75 per 3ft. section of phenolic & it has to be bought if it's gonna be used, so another $225 divided by 20 cues, which is about how many cues can be made with a 3ft. section of phenolic, $11. The epoxy & glues used to assemble the cue will be roughly $10 worth. The joint pin is average $7, some are cheaper & some are more expensive. Can't forget the $.25 bumper. Then there's the joining screw most builders use in the "A"joint, another $7, plus the weight bolt, $3. So for the butt material cost, you have around $70.
Now figure the time it takes to order & buy all of these materials plus research. Logistics can be time consuming, but we'll say it took an hour to research & order, pay for, & inspect upon arrival all of the materials. One more labor hour.
Time for shafts. Each shaft dowel costs roughly $15 if fair quality. Assuming two shafts is $30 for raw material. Now figure the 15 cuts it takes to get a shaft to size, at 10 minutes per cut, another 2.5 labor hrs. Ferrules are roughly $3 each for most linen base materials, and a good layered tip is $10. Final assembly, cut & sand the cue for finish prep is another 2hrs of labor, and can't forget the $10 worth of sandpaper which is not cheap.
Now the cue is ready for a finish. My cues use $8 worth of finish for each cue. It takes around 2 labor hours. Polishing shafts is another hour each, so 2 more hours of labor.
This brings the total material cost to estimated $120. Labor hours are 14.5hrs.
Now begin figuring in shop utilities per month, $200.
Shop rent or mortgage per month, $500.
Equipment maintenance, filters, trash bags, paper towels, etc. per month, $100
Personal protective equipment & upkeep per month, $50 (filters for a mask are dang expensive plus rubber gloves)
That's $10,200 per year, and most builders make 40 cues per year. That's $255 per cue to build, which is more than the actual material cost of the cue.
So now we have material cost at $120, plus $255 shop costs & 14.5hrs. of labor. That's $56 per hour on a $1200 cue at $825 in the good, not bad money, huh? Ok, now figure in that there's 40 of these cues per year. That's $33,000 per year, friggin poverty. This is not even figuring in how much he has invested in his machinery & tooling, which in most cases averages well over $50,000. Now how much is his name worth? How about his knowledge, experience and expertise? Isn't paying $1200 already too cheap, so cheap that he can't feed a family of four without welfare? Now you gonna say he's unproven & unknown, so it should be even cheaper.
I'm sorry for the rant. I just really hate seeing so many cuemakers struggle to make ends meet, then to have people gripe & moan because their cue's are too expensive. The truth is that so many cuemakers are fools for selling cheap. They are giving a false sense of cost to the buyers, which makes the square builders look like they are over charging. It's not the market's fault, nor the buyers'. It's cuemakers trying to undersell until they get a name, which only works out for a select few. But in the end, it's cuemakers fighting & fussing, underselling & starving each other out to make a sale. It's rediculous. Again, I apologize for the rant. Maybe i'm far wrong but I call it like I see it.
