The Obsolescence of Wood for Pool Cues

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AtLarge

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A thread in the "Ask The Cuemaker" forum has me wondering (again) about the future of wood as a material for pool cues. A member thinks he may want to start making cues about 20 years from now. So he is asking for advice on collecting wood between now and then.

Twenty years ago, I thought that high-tech materials of some sort might, some day, replace wood as the primary pool-cue material. And I thought that day might not be more than a couple of decades away (from back then!). But I was wrong. Wood remains supreme. No one seems to have found a material that "feels" as good or "plays" as well as wood. A number of attempts have been made with other materials for the whole cue, or for just the shaft, or for just part of the shaft. But wood still reigns supreme.

But how about as we now look forward? Will our wood collector's efforts be in vain? Will wood still be supreme 20 years from now? How about 50 years or 100 years? Will wooden cues be relegated to collectors' items by then? Will anyone alive today ever walk into a pro pool tournament where no one is using a wood cue?

Your thoughts?
 
AtLarge said:
A thread in the "Ask The Cuemaker" forum has me wondering (again) about the future of wood as a material for pool cues. A member thinks he may want to start making cues about 20 years from now. So he is asking for advice on collecting wood between now and then.

Twenty years ago, I thought that high-tech materials of some sort might, some day, replace wood as the primary pool-cue material. And I thought that day might not be more than a couple of decades away (from back then!). But I was wrong. Wood remains supreme. No one seems to have found a material that "feels" as good or "plays" as well as wood. A number of attempts have been made with other materials for the whole cue, or for just the shaft, or for just part of the shaft. But wood still reigns supreme.

But how about as we now look forward? Will our wood collector's efforts be in vain? Will wood still be supreme 20 years from now? How about 50 years or 100 years? Will wooden cues be relegated to collectors' items by then? Will anyone alive today ever walk into a pro pool tournament where no one is using a wood cue?

Your thoughts?
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Yes.

Kelly
 
Wood does reign supreme. In the far future wood my be regarded like ivory is today. Look at one species...Brazilian rosewood. On endangered species list. In your lifetime we'll still be playing with wood cues, as we have for over 100 years.
 
I had the privilege of getting to try a composite cue that was made my Steve Titus. It was an amazing performing cue and the shaft even better in my opinion. The problem that I see is that composites just don't resonate like wood does. So you give up a lot in terms of sound and feel.
 
an interesting question would be what if you started playing with a composite cue from the very beginning? those of us who have been playing with wood cues get used to the sound and feel and want a composite cue to imitate that, which is probably not possible. to us, wood feels 'right'. but what if the new generation started playing with composites from day one. they might form a different idea of what a good hit/feel is?
 
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Depends.

Wood tennis racquets had far better feel than the metal/composites that replaced them, but the fake stuff could build a racquet that was far more forgiving and had more power.

My guess is that any major shift to a "material" cue might also be accompanied by a design paradigm shift that makes the cue more robust, especiall for hack players.
 
From an engineering point of view, composites are much more suited as a cue material than wood. Wood is subject to environmental conditions, such as temperature and humidity, which may cause warpage. Composites are much more stable and a cue made from composites would be easier to maintain. From a manufacturing point of view, composites would be so much easier to process than wood. A composite butt would be no problem. A good plastics engineer could probably come up with a shaft material that could satisfy most players as to hit and feel. It's all in the cost and demand. Would some company be interested in investing development funding? Don't know but who knows what will happen in the next few decades.
 
Dead Crab said:
Wood tennis racquets had far better feel than the metal/composites that replaced them, but the fake stuff could build a racquet that was far more forgiving and had more power.
Click to expand...

You've hit in a very important point here - Tennis rackets (and the materials used for most other sporting equipment) have moved from wood to plastics/graphite/metal composites in order to gain better physical performance characteristics, almost always related to being able to hit something harder/faster without the material failing.

There is absolutely no reason for a billiards cue to need to hit the cue ball any harder now than they did 100 years ago. The only exception to this is speciality shots like break and jump shots which have only become an important part of the professional game in the past 20 years. In response cue building technology has indeed changed in this one specialized aspect, although generally only in the tip/shaft area, which is pretty much the only part worth changing.

A butt of the same weight and balance can be made out of wood, graphite or titanium and still deliver far more power than a human arm can generate without failing. The thing that will change will be the vibrational characteristics, which affect the "feel" to the human hand.

Although there are issues with the availability of exotic hardwoods, in general wood as an engineering material remains cheap because it literally grows on trees and for the relatively small size of the cue market the supply is adequate. In addition it can be worked with the simplest of cutting tools, even by hand; whereas composite materials require processes like casting, moulding and extrusion which require expensive up-front tooling.

Agreed there may get to be a point in the future when even a few board feet of Maple is prohibitively expensive, but I don't believe it will ever disappear altogether. After all you can always grow your own, so perhaps if you are a custom cue builder who really wants to cover your bases now's the time to start planting some Maple and Cocobolo trees in your back yard. Personally I suspect we are still more than a generation away from that point, if it ever comes about.
 
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I was watching a show on Discovery and we may have a new material to build cues with. It's called a smart polymer. Imagine walking into a pool room with nothing in your hand. You reach into your pocket and pull out a cylinder about the size of a pen. You begin to rub it as your rub faster and faster, the little piece of plastic you had forms into a pool cue. When you are done, just drop it into a cup of ice water and it shrivels..er..shrinks back to it's original size.
 
i think wood will always reign supreme for cues. i just dont think there is enough demand for any company to put in the money for R&D and then marketing a product like a new composite cue.

brian
 
NewStroke said:
I was watching a show on Discovery and we may have a new material to build cues with. It's called a smart polymer. Imagine walking into a pool room with nothing in your hand. You reach into your pocket and pull out a cylinder about the size of a pen. You begin to rub it as your rub faster and faster, the little piece of plastic you had forms into a pool cue. When you are done, just drop it into a cup of ice water and it shrivels..er..shrinks back to it's original size.
Click to expand...

Dude, you need to get a girl friend. :D




Just kidding. ;)
 
If every cue maker started to only use FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) approved wood they would never run out. There are plenty of species of hardword, including Northern Hard Maple, that can be grown and harvested in a responsible manner and can continue to be harvested for generations to come.

Brian
 
Wood is an amazing material: a matrix of microscopic hollow boxes, glued together, creating a strong but light (for its strength) material.

The drawbacks of wood are variability within a shaft, variablity between shafts, and dimensional instability (warpage). Laminated shafts address the first two problems to some degree.

For wood to be replaced we would have to engineer a material with a similar internal structure. I think it is possible.

The advantages of an engineered material are consistancy within a shaft, consistancy and predictability between shafts, and dimensional stability.

Will a synthetic shaft ever be more popular than wood? Hard to tell. If players believe the feel of a WOOD cue is the definition of the RIGHT feel for any cue anywhere, it could take a very long time.
 
NewStroke said:
I was watching a show on Discovery and we may have a new material to build cues with. It's called a smart polymer. Imagine walking into a pool room with nothing in your hand. You reach into your pocket and pull out a cylinder about the size of a pen. You begin to rub it as your rub faster and faster, the little piece of plastic you had forms into a pool cue. When you are done, just drop it into a cup of ice water and it shrivels..er..shrinks back to it's original size.
Click to expand...

So it grows when you rub it, and shrinks when you put it in ice water.
Hey... Wait a minute !?! :rotflmao1:
 
I and many other golfers certainly don't miss laminated or persimmon woods for golf clubs!! What's funny though is better golfers still prefer forged carbon steel heads for their irons (even when many higher tech, and forgiving materials are available)...??? :sorry: Apparently that's a "feel" thing too. So, I equate the Drivers/woods the same as super hard tips for breaking. Feel still required for regular play where finesse may be needed (irons/playing cue), and high tech stuff when you wanna BOMB it!! :thumbup:
 
Snapshot9 said:
We will always have wood for cues ...
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Please clarify, as I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean that, in your opinion:

- wood cues will never be surpassed for playability/performance; or

- high-tech materials will never completely replace wood for cues (for any of several reasons); or

- we'll never run out of enough wood to make cues if we still want wood cues; or

- something else.​
 
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