Remove the bumper?

more on harmonics

hunger strike said:
Good rifle info. As far as "slowing down" a harmonic frequency, I don't know if you mean the velocity through the cue, but that should be a constant. The variable components should be the dynamic range of frequencies due to dampening and the energy amplitude of those frequencies. I will have to think about this some. Here is how I look at energy from these waves going back into the cueball from a vibrating cue: remember the old test to find a cue balance point? Hold up the cue level with two index fingers spaced apart toward the ends. Then slowly slide your index fingers toward each other. The frictional forces (static, kinetic or both depending on how fast you slide your fingers) alternate from the left finger to the right and back again as the forces temporarily overcome each other. Eventually the fingers should end up touching close to the balance point. I theorize that because of "equal and opposite reactions" the cuetip pushes the cueball, the cueball pushes back, the cuetip pushes again, etc., depending on the elasticity of the tip, and eventually the two separate. A frenchman centuries ago found an equation proving that increased contact time increases energy transfer and I think these alternating forces affect that depending on longitudinal vibration.
If the harmonics you are talking about are longitudinal waves it seems like the shorter the wavelength the more of these interactions occur during contact time, so more energy is transferred (pressure waves?) However, if the waves have a transverse component (and it seems like any off-center hit would cause some transverse component) then the contact time and possibly location could be altered. If you bang your hand on your shaft and feel the vibration on the side of the cue you instinctively know that there are some transverse waves going on. I wish Bob Jewett would weigh in on this issue. It fascinates me- sorry for the long posts.
Click to expand...

Probably best to take it to PM's or e-mail if you want to talk much about rifle barrels but with them we definitely change the speed of the harmonic traveling through the barrel sometimes. We can do that by varying the weight of the bullet or amount of powder used or by making fairly tiny changes in the position of a weight on the end of the barrel. A friend had a highly effective and accurate tuner when he hung a cheap micrometer under the bottom of the barrel and rotated the mike drum a little at a time and locked it in place.

My guess is that anything that dampens the harmonics would have to dampen both velocity and amplitude to some degree but no idea in what proportions of each. Harmonics actually radiate out in an infinite number of directions I believe but for simplicity we generally just address the harmonics that most affect whatever we are dealing with at the moment. Years ago a friend had stress analysis software. Running that on a cue stick could be very interesting. I think we could find the optimum taper profile for maximum transfer while still maintaining an acceptable feel sliding through a player's fingers.

These are the kind of things that once we get very far from the real hit and subjective feel of a cue really don't matter. Anyone can black box all of this and just say a cue hits or feels good and play just fine. Interesting to puzzle over these things though, wish we could break down and replicate the things that make a great cue or a great musical instrument. Even rifle barrels have dozens of good ones cut from the steel but every once in awhile there will be a great one. Like a musical instrument, nobody can tell until it is in actual use.

Hu
 
Not trying to be an ass, but I'm a little skeptical if someone says they could pass a blindfold "pepsi challenge" where they hit some balls with a buttcap, some without, and they can tell which is which every time. I'll have to try that one myself.
 
measureman said:
I saw a post saying that if you remove the bumper from the cue it changes something. So not being able to play for a few days to try this, exactly what will change?
Is it the sound or the feel?
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I was told a long time ago,that if you remove the rubber, you would be able to spin the cue ball with more ease,i dont know if its true are not,but spinning the ball is the best part of my game as i grew older with this cue,i would think the must truest thing, that it would do to your cue,is make it just a tad lighter.
 
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Harmonics are a key element in how I build cues. Balance being second, but not unequal. Every component in a cue makes a difference and should be given equal consideration. Taking the bumper out of a cue is an easy way to see just how much difference every component makes. Lots of people preach that only the shaft of a cue matters & the parts closest to the tip matter most, with tip being most important. That's simply not true. The bumper test easily dismisses those claims.

Getting in to whether the harmonics have a chance to travel each direction before the ball leaves the tip is going to be tough to prove. But my feeling is that it has to happen at least once. Logically, in a physics point of view, the ball cannot leave the tip until the energy flows into the cue and then returns to the tip to cause the ball to rebound. Given that notion, it's not a stretch of imagination to say a player can feel that hit & energy transfer. If it's audible then it's vibration. If it's vibration then it can be felt. Just my thoughts. I can't claim absolute truth without proper & thorough testing, but my logic tells me this is how things work.
 
Thanx to Measureman for this thread

Hunger Strike and Hu have put 'harmonics' into my pool vocabulary.
I'll be re-reading this thread a few times.
I've had a cue maker tell me that even some woods are not compatible...
..gotta be harmonics.I find my cues by feel...WTH, even Byron Nelson
found his golf clubs like that..

And Blue Hog Rider and Catscradle make me glad I hide behind an avatar.
If they don't like me sticking rubber on the end of a Hoppe..they're really
gonna freak when they find out I've cut off the ivory ferrules on every good
cue I've owned...dowel and all.
They become 57 inches with a soft ferrule and pointed (euro-taper)to
12 mm....yeah, that's Ginas, early Josses, Tads, and Gus Szambotis.
Golf was my first game and I'm into tweaking....I want performance,
not collectibility.

regards
pt..<..who hasn't missed a ball since 1982
 
I have heard a few cue makers say they match harmonics and that balance is secondary and doesn't make all that much difference to the playability of their cue.
It is interesting that most players will not see much difference when comes to harmonics.
Yet, almost all players will have a preference when comes to the balance point, weight and thickness.
Not sure how one can argue with a cue maker when he says the cue is harmonically perfect and therefore the cue came out great.
Yet, it feels like crap because the balance and weight are wrong.
It seems like one way for the cue maker to explain why the custom cue came out a couple of inches and ounces off desired specification.
 
Wolven said:
I have heard a few cue makers say they match harmonics and that balance is secondary and doesn't make all that much difference to the playability of their cue.
It is interesting that most players will not see much difference when comes to harmonics.
Yet, almost all players will have a preference when comes to the balance point, weight and thickness.
Not sure how one can argue with a cue maker when he says the cue is harmonically perfect and therefore the cue came out great.
Yet, it feels like crap because the balance and weight are wrong.
It seems like one way for the cue maker to explain why the custom cue came out a couple of inches and ounces off desired specification.
Click to expand...
Not real sure, but I think I'm a harmonics guy.
Had an old Joss, 18.5 oz, used it for fast cloth and 1-hole.
My Szamboti was 20.25 oz.To be able to aim the same way with english
I had to grip it 2 inches shorter.I tend to hold a cue where it hits the
best for me...think I can adjust for balance..but I gotta have that
magic...whatever that is.
Gotta a feeling it's harmonics.

Had to get rid of a cue with a 'radio' pin....
...couldn't find a good station on it....:groucho:
 
pt109,

I tend to grip the cue at different places depending on power and distance.
Nothing pisses me off more than when you grab a cue a little more forward and you can feel the cue pulling at the back end.
I like a cue in between lively and dead hit, sort of neutral. As for feedback, big part is sound and I don’t like loud cues.
I have and/or played with cues worth thousands of dollars that were supposed to be all that and they could not come anywhere close to some of the cheap no name cues when came to playability.
 
the secret is now out

if you remove the bumper from your cue, you now will be able to run rack after rack.
 
Wolven said:
pt109,

I tend to grip the cue at different places depending on power and distance.
Nothing pisses me off more than when you grab a cue a little more forward and you can feel the cue pulling at the back end.
I like a cue in between lively and dead hit, sort of neutral. As for feedback, big part is sound and I don’t like loud cues.
I have and/or played with cues worth thousands of dollars that were supposed to be all that and they could not come anywhere close to some of the cheap no name cues when came to playability.
Click to expand...

Don't let Measureman hear you talking about neutral hits...
..sounds kinda 'vague' to me...:)

And yeah, I move my hand a lot...long dead ball hits I go long, right off
the wrap.
Charlie Bryant was watching a match in the 2006 US open...he said the
player is going to have trouble on this shot....it was a long shot on a 7-ball
requiring a 'dead ball' hit.He said this guy tends to hold the cue too short
for this hit...it should be held long with a tighter grip.....
..sure enough the shot was missed, resulting in a hill-hill loss.
The Hill-billy knows a few things.:cool:
 
Harmonics

Harvey Martin, the legendary cue maker, used to tap the ends of his shaft blanks on the floor and listen for just the right 'tone'. It is said he would use less than 1 percent of what he bought for his cues. I guess a Stradivarius violin is worth $1,000,000 because no one can make one that sounds the same-supposedly because of the wood quality. There's a lot to harmonics, but that doesn't mean everyone is going to like the sound Harvey Martin liked.
 
RackemBilliards said:
Harvey Martin, the legendary cue maker, used to tap the ends of his shaft blanks on the floor and listen for just the right 'tone'. It is said he would use less than 1 percent of what he bought for his cues. I guess a Stradivarius violin is worth $1,000,000 because no one can make one that sounds the same-supposedly because of the wood quality. There's a lot to harmonics, but that doesn't mean everyone is going to like the sound Harvey Martin liked.
Click to expand...


"Tone-pitching" wood is done by cuemakers today quite often, Southwest and Ariel Carmeli plus many others do it for sure but those two I know for a fact. It isn't restricted to shaft wood either they will bounce handle and forearm pieces, of course this all mattered WAY more before coring cues so I'm sure the core wood is the most important piece to have the harmonics you want in the cue.
 
pt109 said:
Don't let Measureman hear you talking about neutral hits...
..sounds kinda 'vague' to me...:)

And yeah, I move my hand a lot...long dead ball hits I go long, right off
the wrap.
Charlie Bryant was watching a match in the 2006 US open...he said the
player is going to have trouble on this shot....it was a long shot on a 7-ball
requiring a 'dead ball' hit.He said this guy tends to hold the cue too short
for this hit...it should be held long with a tighter grip.....
..sure enough the shot was missed, resulting in a hill-hill loss.
The Hill-billy knows a few things.:cool:
Click to expand...


:)
Definately words of wisdom.
A lot of instructors here advocate holding the cue in the same spot. I don't like that idea.
If a cue has a wrap I will tend to grab back of it, most of the time.
However, in a perfect world I'm much more foreward on short distance shots.
 
Wolven said:
I have heard a few cue makers say they match harmonics and that balance is secondary and doesn't make all that much difference to the playability of their cue.
It is interesting that most players will not see much difference when comes to harmonics.
Yet, almost all players will have a preference when comes to the balance point, weight and thickness.
Not sure how one can argue with a cue maker when he says the cue is harmonically perfect and therefore the cue came out great.
Yet, it feels like crap because the balance and weight are wrong.
It seems like one way for the cue maker to explain why the custom cue came out a couple of inches and ounces off desired specification.
Click to expand...

Harmonics & balance have zero to do with one another. Both are equally important, but utterly unrelated. IMO, the harmonics of a cue should be determined before it's ever even assembled, long before the balancing is considered.
 
Fuji-whopper said:
It isn't restricted to shaft wood either they will bounce handle and forearm pieces, of course this all mattered WAY more before coring cues so I'm sure the core wood is the most important piece to have the harmonics you want in the cue.
Click to expand...

Coring is a multi-faceted technique. It stabilizes the wood so that we can use woods we never could have before, such as high figured stuff or soft woods. It can also be used as a means to further control weight & balance. But it can also be used to give the wood a specific tonal quality. For example, put a solid ebony forearm on a solid cocobolo handle & you'll get a cue that likely is gonna feel like a piece of rebar when you hit the cue ball. Now core that ebony front with a piece of maple & it'll tame down the tone enough to feel quite a bit more mellow. Core the cocobolo handle and the ebony front with maple & it'll be even more mellow. On the flip side, take a birdseye maple front & core it with cocobolo to juice it up. It's a science. In order to meet the tone you want in the finished cue, you have to tone test every single piece of wood, even the cores, and match things up accordingly to reach your goal.
 
qbilder said:
Harmonics & balance have zero to do with one another. Both are equally important, but utterly unrelated. IMO, the harmonics of a cue should be determined before it's ever even assembled, long before the balancing is considered.
Click to expand...

Yes, clearly two different things. So, in your opinion what types of wood would agree harmonics wise and offer the most forward balance at the same time?
 
Wolven said:
Yes, clearly two different things. So, in your opinion what types of wood would agree harmonics wise and offer the most forward balance at the same time?
Click to expand...

If not cored, a dense rosewood such as cocobolo, tulip, kingwood, blackwood, etc or an ebony for the front would be great attached to a handle of something medium weight such as maple, koa, redheart, east Indian rosewood, etc. The possibilities are as endless as the different species of wood. Even the joint type will play a role in balance, so that must also be considered. It's hard to really say what would be best as anything can be best if done correctly. I built a cue once with kam-phi rosewood forearm/butt and koa handle. It had a brass 3/8-10 and no added weight. It was 19oz on the money with a 19.5" balance & it played as perfect as anything I have ever built.
 
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