Question For the defection guru's

Johnnyt

Johnnyt

Burn all jump cues
Silver Member
Wouldn't a very thin tip and a light ferel or short ferel help cut down on deflection? The reason I ask this is because I use to see a lot of the pro players have cues set-up like that. Corey's tip is the thinest I've ever seen. I would miss-cue a lot with it. Johnnyt

PS:I see I miss spelled the title...wow that's a first...not.
 
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Actually it would increase cue stick deflection and decrease cue ball squirt....SPF=randyg
 
Anything and everything you do to the first 5 inches of the shaft to get rid of weight help in cue-ball deflection.

Thin Tip: check
Light weight Ferrule material: Check
Short Ferrule: check
Short tennon: check
Hole in shaft: check
Thin shaft (11mm): check

The only balancing point is that the tip-ferrule-shaft combination has to survive the big hits without breaking.
 
I will take a descending opinion on this. Note, this is only an opinion, and not based on any experimentation or measurement.

Assumption: a leather tip has less density than both the maple used in shafts, and the common ferrule materials.

If above assumption is true, then I will hypothesize that the larger the tip, the less cue ball deflection. The overall first 5 or 6 inches of the stick will be lighter with a larger tip. Additionally, IMMEDIATELY closest to the cue ball, the stick will be even lighter, as a ratio. What I mean by this last sentence is with a large leather tip, the first 1/2 inch of cue stick length will benefit even more than the first 5 inches of cuestick length.

Thoughts?
 
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low deflection

Johnnyt said:
Wouldn't a very thin tip and a light ferel or short ferel help cut down on deflection? The reason I ask this is because I use to see a lot of the pro players have cues set-up like that. Corey's tip is the thinest I've ever seen. I would miss-cue a lot with it. Johnnyt

PS:I see I miss spelled the title...wow that's a first...not.
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Johnny,

I discovered low deflection shafts back in the eighties when I played pool with a 12 ounce snooker stick with a light cheap plastic ferule and a small diameter tip. I had never even heard the terms squirt and deflection but this cue put me in a whole 'nuther world than a house cue or even my Meucci. Had to relearn my aim points, they were a lot different.

The mass of the last four to six inches of cue shaft seems to be what matters or to put it more accurately, the effective mass. It is a lot easier to lighten a shaft by taking meat off the outside than any other way. Area of a cylinder is figured as 3.14159 times (radius squared) times length. Run the math on a 13mm shaft and a 11mm shaft and you see you are removing a bunch of material. That translates into roughly the same reduction in weight. Roughly speaking the less weight in the front of the shaft the less squirt of the cue ball.

Hu
 
Johnny

While you are correct, that with all else being equal, a thin tip will reduce cue ball squirt, it isn't as dramatic as you might think.

The current really low squirt shafts on the market drastically reduce the tip end mass with more advanced technology. You just can't get that low by simply making it smaller or using a thin tip. Hu is correct in his math, but when take take into account Predators hole, and our core (along with other things), there is a tremendous amount of mass removed.

Remember though, most of this technology is patent protected! I know Predator's patents are here in the US, but we are currently pending in several other countries including Europe and Asia.

Royce Bunnell
www.obcues.com
 
Royce,

1. Any idea why my reasoning above did not show up in your experimentation?

2. Predator's first patents will be expiring in the next couple of years. I look for other manufacturers to legally use their exact design soon.
 
iusedtoberich said:
Royce,

1. Any idea why my reasoning above did not show up in your experimentation?

2. Predator's first patents will be expiring in the next couple of years. I look for other manufacturers to legally use their exact design soon.
Click to expand...



Well, it would be true that if you could replace shaft or ferrule with tip, that would reduce mass because the tip has less mass than the corresponding amount of shaft or ferrule. However, that isn't how it would happen. The shaft and ferrule would be the same whether you had a thick tip or a thin one. Given that the shaft and ferrule are constant, then a smaller or thinner tip would have less mass than a thick one and therefore squirt the cue ball less. Also, the difference in mass between the tip and ferrule or shaft is not really that great. Tips typically have a specific gravity of right around 1, while maple is about .75, lighter than the tip, and plastic is usually 1.3 to 1.7. So the difference is not that much of a savings in mass.

If I have misunderstood your reasoning I apologize, but that is how I understood it.

Royce Bunnell
www.obcues.com
 
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Those are words that meant NOTHING to me as a young guy (deflection and squirt). They may have been real factors in my amateurish evaluation of a stick, but nothing I was conscious of...

One factor for me has always been the diameter of a shaft. If a shaft is needle thin it will not fit my bridge hand properly and there is no way I could ever play well with a cue like that. The same is true for a shaft that is too thick. There is a natural fit of a cue shaft in each player's hands and bridging position. Beyond that, a stick could feel spongy (Meucci cues often feel spongy to me) or it could feel too stiff with a hit like an oak board. Tips are certainly a factor but the shaft/cue itself will have a certain hit that appeals to the individual player (or not).

Deflection and squirt are nice descriptive phrases and I suppose are quantifiable units of measure (maybe) but my experience has been that a shaft either fits and feels correct for me or it does not. Whether the maker claims low deflection, low squirt, great accuracy or whatever. Forcing yourself to use an acclaimed shaft that doesn't have that "feels right to you" quality is surely a mistake.

Just my two cents. And I'm probably wrong. :grin:
 
As i understand this ,if you cut the tip down in heighth you actually increase the mass of the first 5 inches because you would be eliminating light leather and have more heavy material in the 5 inches that remain.

I really don't understand the science,but is it correct to say that all other things being equal a 12mm shaft would produce less than would a 13mm?

What is the reason that Effren is playing a !2,2 and many others are playing under 12,5mm and less?
 
deanoc said:
As i understand this ,if you cut the tip down in heighth you actually increase the mass of the first 5 inches because you would be eliminating light leather and have more heavy material in the 5 inches that remain.

I really don't understand the science,but is it correct to say that all other things being equal a 12mm shaft would produce less than would a 13mm?

What is the reason that Effren is playing a !2,2 and many others are playing under 12,5mm and less?
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Dean,

I see what you are saying, and it does make sense. However, as I showed earlier, the difference in mass between the materials is very small. I know that I don't see a recognizable difference in squirt with a new tip as opposed to a thin one.

The science basically says more mass more squirt. So, a 13mm shaft will squirt the cue ball more than a 12mm shaft constructed the same way with the same materials.

I believe that the top players gravitate to smaller shafts for a number of reasons, most of which they don't realize are happening.

The smaller shafts do squirt the cue ball less, but the adjust to it very slowly because they wear down the shaft very slowly. Basically, they don't know they are adjusting to less squirt. Then, when they put a new 13mm shaft on their cue, they can't make a ball! I have seen numerous pro level players who have a "tourney shaft". They won't play with it unless they are in competition. All other times they play with other or backup shafts even though they don't play as well. The reason for this is they don't want that special shaft to have to be replaced. They like it and don't want to lose it.

These smaller shafts are less deflection or squirt than their full size counterparts, but they still squirt more than modern day LD shafts.

Squirt or deflection has been a part of this game, and the equipment used to play it since Mingaud first put leather on the wrong end of a Mase! We were totally unaware of it until the advent of LD shafts. Now that we know about it, some are convinced that they can't adjust. Even though they have been doing it for years. It's all good though, as we all should play with equipment that we feel comfortable with. Me, I am most comfortable with an OB-2 on one of our new wrapless cues.

Royce Bunnell
www.obcues.com
 
iusedtoberich said:
I will take a descending opinion on this. Note, this is only an opinion, and not based on any experimentation or measurement.

Assumption: a leather tip has less density than both the maple used in shafts, and the common ferrule materials.

If above assumption is true, then I will hypothesize that the larger the tip, the less cue ball deflection. The overall first 5 or 6 inches of the stick will be lighter with a larger tip. Additionally, IMMEDIATELY closest to the cue ball, the stick will be even lighter, as a ratio. What I mean by this last sentence is with a large leather tip, the first 1/2 inch of cue stick length will benefit even more than the first 5 inches of cuestick length.

Thoughts?
Click to expand...
The best theory is (in layman's terms), the mass of the cuestick in sideways (lateral) play during contact with the cueball with a shot using english determines how much length of cue mass affects the "cueball squirt."

On a shot with english, the cue is in contact with the cueball from .001 - .002 seconds (it's about .001 sec for a centerball hit, and increases as you use english). The speed of the slow lateral wave down the shaft due to the side hit (transverse wave propagation)travels about 3" per .001 second (not to be confused with the axial speed down the shaft which I believe is the speed of sound through the material).

So, from a side force, the cueball "sees" 3" to 6" of cuestick mass (.001 sec or .002 sec times 3"/millisecond). That's why only the first several inches matter, unless you do other things that decouple the stick mass from the cueball. I don't see using a bigger tip as doing this, unless you're suggesting to put on a tip that's about 5" long. Maybe that's what you're suggesting?

Fred
 
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RBC said:
... Squirt or deflection has been a part of this game, and the equipment used to play it since Mingaud first put leather on the wrong end of a Mace! We were totally unaware of it until the advent of LD shafts. ...
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Hi Royce. I mostly agree, but... While it seems that we had forgotten about it to a large extent, the "aim-and-pivot" technique of squirt compensation was diagrammed in 1839 by Edwin Kentfield (his diagram), where he also shows swerve not quite bringing the cue ball back on line over a long distance. I don't know when this fell out of billiard conscioiusness. I recall seeing a later book that also recommends aiming first without side spin, and then pivoting about the bridge hand to the required amount of english.

I think it is only since high-speed cameras showed what happens during the tip-ball collision that anyone has understood exactly why "effective end mass" is important, known how it can be reduced, and tried to quantify how much different sticks squirt. I think credit for this goes to Bob Meucci and Predator.
 
Cornerman said:
... So, from a side force, the cueball "sees" 3" to 6" of cuestick mass (.001 sec or .002 sec times 3"/millisecond). That's why only the first several inches matter, unless you do other things that decouple the stick mass from the cueball. ...
Click to expand...
I think this is true. This idea also leads to the conclusion that it makes little difference how you are gripping the golf club at the instant of ball-clubhead contact. (But of course your grip determines how hard and accurately you are going to hit the ball.)
 
RBC said:
.

Squirt or deflection has been a part of this game, and the equipment used to play it since Mingaud first put leather on the wrong end of a Mase! We were totally unaware of it until the advent of LD shafts.
Click to expand...
I didn't realize you wrote this Royce. I assure you, "we" knew about squirt/cueball deflection long before the advent of low deflection shafts. That might be one reason why some people don't find the advantage of low deflection shafts: because they consciously knew about squirt and did something about it in their game long before Predator and Steve Titus did their work.


Fred
 
This is so confusing I am thinking of giving up pool.After 50 years of playing I still can't understand.Here is my last question,when my cue is playing easy action and cheap pool I make lots of shots,but when I jack the bet and play tougher action then my cue starts miscueing and squirting,my question is How does that cue know I am playing higher?'
 
RBC said:
Johnny

While you are correct, that with all else being equal, a thin tip will reduce cue ball squirt, it isn't as dramatic as you might think.

The current really low squirt shafts on the market drastically reduce the tip end mass with more advanced technology. You just can't get that low by simply making it smaller or using a thin tip. Hu is correct in his math, but when take take into account Predators hole, and our core (along with other things), there is a tremendous amount of mass removed.

Remember though, most of this technology is patent protected! I know Predator's patents are here in the US, but we are currently pending in several other countries including Europe and Asia.

Royce Bunnell
www.obcues.com
Click to expand...


Royce is spot on here when he uses the word 'mass', and the other replys are equally correct. When you reduce the mass (cue shaft) you increase shaft deflection and decrease 'cue ball squirt', a name given to the cue ball when hit off center. Bob Byrnes, I believe coined the term.
An example of shaft deflection could be analogous to a dull drill bit chucked into a drill press, boring into very hard steel. The more the spindle pushes into the steel, the more the drill bit bends, or deflects.
So there you are, clear as mud. Damn, this eggnog is good!
 
... 'cue ball squirt', a name given to the cue ball when hit off center. Bob Byrne, I believe coined the term. ...
Click to expand...
Byrne credits Jack Leavitt, a strong player from this area in the 1970s, with the coinage.
 
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