Tip Shape- Nickel? Dime? Can I get a Penny Please?

[galipeau]

just a quick thing to the OP...

instead of baging your tip on the ground after installing it on the shaft, you can simply compress it in a vice before installing it... just a tip ha!

it would be interesting to try out two identical cues with different tip curvatures...

 

[ChopStick]

i think i may have something.

the diameter of a nickel is 21.21mm; a dime is 17.91mm.

here in the Philippines, there's no access to a dime or a nickel. i have a couple here though. so one day, i was trying to compare these coins and i noticed that our local 25-centavo coin was in between the size of a dime and a nickel. after a quick google search, i found out that its diameter is 20.0mm.

i had an idea. I took a 3/4 PVC pipe ( the regular 3/4 PVC has 20.9mm inner diameter), and i cut it lengthwise, in half. this is what it looks like compared to the 25-centavo coin:

so i put strips of 220 grit sandpaper and double sided adhesive to the PVC, and i can estimate that the shape of the tip, using this "tip shaper" is close to (if not exact) the shape of a Philippine 25-centavo coin. here's a photo of the tool:

I've been using this tool for years now. i've made a lot of these and have given my friends this tool for free. try it.

A friend of mine has been making PVC shapers for me for years. We have them in all sizes, nickel, dime and penny. I used a penny size for many years. Just take a handful of change down the Home Depot and pick out the size PVC pipe you need. Cut it in half, put some sticky backed sandpaper in it and you're done. They work great.

 

[KOINNKID]

I preffer the 8-1/2 cents shape.

 

[TwoRailDave]

Referring to the penny was a joke. I don't put coins up to my tip to gauge them. That's just how everyone knows the shapes. I already have a trimmer and realize I can make it any shape I want. I install a lot of tips by hand for others and myself just experimenting. A dome shaper requires no eye-balling; its fast easy and the exact same every singe time. There are advantages to both tip shapes and I can play just fine with either one. In between is best for me.

 

[conetip]

Talk to Joel, he makes a great product.
I am noticing that more are making the tip shape a blend of different radii.
The very front being something like that of a 1/4, then the very out side is like of a dime.
Most are doing this just with a piece of sand paper under the deformation of the thumb.

 

[9Ballr]

I like a nice flat surface at the front and a shape a quarter coming back towards the edges.

 

[arps]

A friend of mine has been making PVC shapers for me for years. We have them in all sizes, nickel, dime and penny. I used a penny size for many years. Just take a handful of change down the Home Depot and pick out the size PVC pipe you need. Cut it in half, put some sticky backed sandpaper in it and you're done. They work great.

that's nice. i have a question though: what PVC size does your friend use for dime shape? 1/2 PVC has an inner diameter of 15.79mm (too small), while a dime's is 17.91mm.

 

[Donny Lutz]

Hmm, I always felt that if you had around a 12mm or larger tip, if you shaped it to a dime size you did it wrong. I don't know how you can get a pointier tip with a larger mm without beveling the sides of the tip too much.

You have the principle correct, but the measurements wrong.

Actually, you can achieve a dime curvature on a tip up to about 17 mm in diameter, because that is the diameter of a dime, and the curve of the dime cannot increase beyond its diameter.

I've owned several very old cues with the original tips that used the maximum curvature for the diameter of the tip. They were over 13 mm in diameter. The curvature was less than a dime. You can visualize this by cutting a circle in half and making the shaped (curved) part of the cue tip have the same appearance as the half circle. In other words, when the curved part of your tip is a perfect half circle, viewed from the side, that's the most curvature you can have for the diameter of the tip.

Still another way to look at this is to take a ball that is the same diameter as a dime, and cut it in half. Now place this half a ball on the flat edge of your new tip. You'll see that you could put that half ball on a larger diameter tip and still achieve the dime curvature.

When the shaped part of your finished tip represents one half of a circle, you have achieved maximum curvature (what most mistakenly call radius) for the diameter of the tip.