Treatment to avoid glue lines at ferrules

To pay about 50 dollars to your cue maker- so that everything is done with the correct tolerances, the ferrule and tip instillation is something you want done correctly. This is where your solid feel comes from. Pay him for perfection. And you will have yrs of playing without any problems!! take out the Bausch & Lomb handheld viewer and see just how good the joint and glue line really is. Gunsmiths use optical lenses to do everything! mark

and thats why every cue maker worth his salt should own a pair of these....unless you want to go spend some dollars on a nice medical grade magnifying eyeglass (those are the BOMB)
 

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and thats why every cue maker worth his salt should own a pair of these....unless you want to go spend some dollars on a nice medical grade magnifying eyeglass (those are the BOMB)
That's nice.
A few months ago, I started using saw blade on cutting the faces of woods.
Those are da nuts in clean faces. The faces are so clean, I even used them on shaft dowels so I can see the grains at the ends.
 
I put my ferrule blank in the lathe and while it's there I face, drill, drill a receiver, thread, then finally reface lightly with a razor held flat against both edges so that face is dead nuts flat. I have used epoxy, yellow glue, white glue, & poly glue all with the same results & that is no glue line. I also crank the ferrule on with pliers so it's seated with absolute contact. One thing that I find is the major difference in glue lines is the sharpness of the bit used to face off the wood at the base of the tenon. If it's not absolutely razor sharp, it'll tear the wood instead of cutting smooth clean and the torn/shredded wood will absorb much more adhesive and therefore leave a glue line because the adhesive discolors the surface of the wood face by saturation.


That pretty much covers the same things I was gonna mention, especially the part about using a sharp tool at the tenon face and getting a clean cut. The faces can Be square, but If It's a porous cut, Then It's much more likely to show a line if no other attempts to cover it up are not used, such as using dyes. I too face the ferrule, drill, Bore, and tap all at the same time with the ferrule positioned in the same location of the jaws. That insures that the face Is square to the bore. The glue, I agree with what some said in that epoxy shows everything, titebond not so bad, and I have tried the white gorilla glue, that wasn't too bad either.

A side note in reference to the clean facing at the shoulder, sharp tooling aside, some shaft wood faces much cleaner then others.
 
A side note in reference to the clean facing at the shoulder, sharp tooling aside, some shaft wood faces much cleaner then others.

That's the kind of thing I speak of when I talk of choosing shaft wood. The way a shaft cuts determines if it becomes a finished shaft. If it doesn't cut like wax, then i'm afraid it'll never be stable enough to stay straight as a finished shaft. My experience has shown me this. But yeah, I know exactly what you are talking about & it is a huge factor beyond just glue lines at the ferrule. There's a lot more to shaft maple than straightness of grain & color. Learning how to choose it in raw form can save a lot of headaches in all aspects of the build process, even finish work like ferrules.
 
That's the kind of thing I speak of when I talk of choosing shaft wood. The way a shaft cuts determines if it becomes a finished shaft. If it doesn't cut like wax, then i'm afraid it'll never be stable enough to stay straight as a finished shaft. My experience has shown me this. But yeah, I know exactly what you are talking about & it is a huge factor beyond just glue lines at the ferrule. There's a lot more to shaft maple than straightness of grain & color. Learning how to choose it in raw form can save a lot of headaches in all aspects of the build process, even finish work like ferrules.

Yep, Your spot on with My experiences as well. I was actually picturing a joint facing when I had that in mind right before mentioning It. I have much better luck with the waxy looking facing, so whenever I first face a dowel before center drilling, that tells me a lot about the shaft wood. If the facing is really clean and I can easily count the end grain, then I'm usually more confident in that batch of wood. It's nice to see that before the first facing, but I've found that sometimes a rough look is just a result of a rough cross cut, and that when I first face It may or may not change, and I could still end up with the good stuff. I guess when You see that good surface in raw form before the facing, that the odds are much better though. When It doesn't have that surface, I'm concerned about It being stable same as You, But also how easily the wood will machine, stay on center during drilling operations, and so on.
 
Yep, Your spot on with My experiences as well. I was actually picturing a joint facing when I had that in mind right before mentioning It. I have much better luck with the waxy looking facing, so whenever I first face a dowel before center drilling, that tells me a lot about the shaft wood. If the facing is really clean and I can easily count the end grain, then I'm usually more confident in that batch of wood. It's nice to see that before the first facing, but I've found that sometimes a rough look is just a result of a rough cross cut, and that when I first face It may or may not change, and I could still end up with the good stuff. I guess when You see that good surface in raw form before the facing, that the odds are much better though. When It doesn't have that surface, I'm concerned about It being stable same as You, But also how easily the wood will machine, stay on center during drilling operations, and so on.

The most notable difference I can see is the openness of grain. There seems to be a lot of void space in the grain of the shafts that cut fuzzy. The waxy cutting stuff seems more dense. Weight isn't really relevant, either. But I will say I notice the fuzzy stuff much more often in less than 4oz shafts. It's not quite as stiff, nor does it seem to be as resilient as the denser wood. Dents easier, too, as finished shafts.

I'm not sure really how to spot the difference in rough cut wood without making some type of fresh cut to see. But if you are buying shaft dowels & squares, you can't really do that because once you begin cutting, you own them. It's easy to see the difference with a cut because the dust tells you everything. If it peels of in little shiny curls, then it's awesome wood. If it dusts off or shaves off in strands & fuzzy flakes, then it's not so great. Of course the cutter makes a difference but the builder should be tuned in to his blades & know what's right & what's not.....if he's paying attention.
 
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