shaft maintn

[center pocket]

Thanks Arizona Pete. Well I made a trip to Lowe's yesterday and bought everything and built my own lathe last night. Total cost 35 dollars. I tell you what, cleaning and conditioning the shaft was a breeze compared to doing it by hand. Absolutely worth every penny. I bought the Magic eraser from Mr. clean. I was so impressed how it got 85% of all the blue off the stick. Arizona Pete, when buying the Mr. Clean magic eraser last night I saw a cheaper brand that seemed the exact same. I stayed away just because i didn't want to mess something up by not getting the right product. I will try the no name brand next time.

Anyways, I changed my first tip too. Cutting the tip while its spinning is almost impossible due to the fact the a drill spins in a three lobbed circle, not a perfect circle. So the blade constantly wants to bounce off and around, if not careful the ferrule could be damaged. I just turned the lathe off and cut the tip off with out it spinning. Worked fine, then turned it back on to sand it down.

All in all best investment ever spent!

 

[grandpapkusky]

Tips are easy and don't require power drills, lathes or more than $35 in tools. What you need:

10-pack of razor blades
Flat board with sticky-back 180 grit sand paper
Nice, medium aggressive mill bastard file
600, 1000 grit sandpaper
High quality gel-type Cyanoacrylate glue (loctite).

Step 1: Carefully cut old tip off of ferrule.
Step 2: Use board/sandpaper to remove leather/glue residue (this is really the only hard part, you have to make sure that you don't roll over the edges of the ferrule).
Step 3: apply thin coat of glue to both ferrule and tip.
Step 4: press tip firmly onto ferrule, hold for 20sec. Set shaft in corner, tip down for one hour.
Step 5: Trim edges with razor blade, working with shaft vertical on tip, cutting down to a board.
Step 6: Using the edge of the file, work the tip completely flush with ferrule. Do not hit ferrule during this step.
Step 7: Using long, thin strips of 600 sandpaper, polish the edge of the tip. Use a bit of water at times and develop enough heat to evaporate water. Repeat with 1000 grit.

And that, my friends, is the low-tech way to replace a tip. Cost is less than some layered tips, after a couple of practices (your league opponents with cuetecs and player's), you'll never damage a ferrule and definitely won't damage the shaft. Should take 15-20min of actual work.

Thanks DoubleD! Great info.