shaft wood question
- Thread starter Xcalibur
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Xcalibur said:Hi, i would like to ask all cue makers a few questions regarding shaft.
Are the number of growth rings on a shaft suppose to make a shaft heavier, if so why when i contacted a shaft wood supplier he told me that if i wanted a heavy shaft it would have less growth rings?
I took data from 99 vacuum dried shafts. I broke them up into roughly 3 even classes according to growth rings per inch to get a mean weight by class. I DID find that mean weight of each class decreased slightly as growth rings increased in these 99 shafts. I did not do a test for significant (statistically speaking) difference, but I suspect the top and bottom classes are significantly different from each other, but neither different from the middle class.
Kelly
weight............
The only way to find a heavy shaft in put it on a scale. I don't mean this too sound like smart A, but I have found the weight in relation to number of rings varies across the board. If the stick is straight grained and has a good number of rings(10 or more) and is relatively clean from spots and blems, has a good tone, should be a keeper.
Dave
The only way to find a heavy shaft in put it on a scale. I don't mean this too sound like smart A, but I have found the weight in relation to number of rings varies across the board. If the stick is straight grained and has a good number of rings(10 or more) and is relatively clean from spots and blems, has a good tone, should be a keeper.
Dave
tap,tap, tapBarenbruggeCues said:
Xcalibur said:Hi, i would like to ask all cue makers a few questions regarding shaft.
Are the number of growth rings on a shaft suppose to make a shaft heavier, if so why when i contacted a shaft wood supplier he told me that if i wanted a heavy shaft it would have less growth rings?
Hi,
Wood cells are heavier than fluids. By fluids, I mean water and sap.
When you asked for heavy wood, the supplier gave you the right information; the less rings you have (a cummulation of sap), the more wood cells you end up with (and thus a heavy piece of maple. You'll recognize Ebony and True Rosewood species which have no growth rings, to be much heavier than maple, ash, pine woods...etc.
The number of rings says something about the weather and environmental conditions which influence the growth speed of the tree. When the wood is being dried, the water is being evaporated and the sap is being hardened out. This determines how flexible a longer piece of wood will be. Therefore, a slow growth wood is much stiffer than a quick growth wood.
For example, compare the stiffness between a slow growth wood (ebony, snakewood, rosewoods...) and a quick growth woods (plantation teak, balsa, ramin, firewood, all the pine woods).
Personally, I like real stiff and heavy wood for my shafts as I don't use weight screws and love the hit. This means I only use slow growth and properly dried maple with (preferably) 15 rings or more. This provides the perfect combination for me between weight and stiffness.
The downside of this is the number of shaftblanks I never use for making shafts. I only use between 25% and 40% of the blanks I buy on my cues...
Hope this information is a little helpfull and gives an answer to your question.
Best regards,
Tom Penrose
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Hmmm mr Penrose, that is deep. But make sense!