Understanding Cue Shaft Flexibility
- Thread starter Brother Ron
- Start date
Who me? Just saying scale is everything.
Impossible to tell without audio.
billiards_watch
Well-known member
I've also seen cheap carbon cues vibrate like this after contact too. The one they call rhino does it and Mezz's carbon doesn't do this. I digress but just wanted to point out that carbon shafts' do this so it isn't perfect either.
I don't mind it since I call it feedback. You can feel where you hit the ball and the direction its possibly going.
I don't mind it since I call it feedback. You can feel where you hit the ball and the direction its possibly going.
Back in the 70s the boing was real popular. People said you need that for good draw so I took my shafts down to a longer taper. Sand paper and elbow grease and was happy with how good my draw was.
billiards_watch
Well-known member
If you search this site you will see many, many users that have the same experience with a flexible shaft and Meucci being the most famous one. I currently have a shaft from China that is super flexible too. It sucks LOL.
I was about to write the same thing. I'm having a hard time figuring out what pool fan would discover the internet today and not understand that maybe, just maybe, these topics aren't new.
Now... does swiping create more spin? Does a specific chalk create more spin? Does forward balance create more spin? And why are we concerned with more spin?
Freddie <~~~ let's talk about throw next
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Rumor had it that Bob used soft maple rather than the hard maple commonly used. Nothing of close to the same profile played as much like a noodle as my early eighties moochie! For the first six months I owned it I would be in the middle of a gambling session and throw the moochie in a corner and grab the first cue I saw on the wall. Most people howled with laughter, except my opponent! If he laughed he didn't laugh long. That was over forty years ago. I finally learned to play with that noodle but obviously it didn't make strides in the industry.
I alternate CF or wooden shaft, medium to soft tips. Nobody has proven anything is better than a wood shaft and soft tip where the rubber meets the road, on the table.
Hu
billiards_watch
Well-known member
I believe playing with a regular hard maple shaft is still the best. You can feel where the ball is going after contact. This a key aspect to some players. Besides that I like to focus on my follow through. I will always imagine my follow through with every shot because it helps with my tempo and pace.
Once you can play a good 80 to 100 speed, I'm old, so bare with me for those that don't know what speeds are, with a wood shaft than you have truly mastered the game. Learning how to aim with deflection in mind is a skill. This is what sort of separates the good players from the rest. It is also a tool to your advantage. I use to masse quite a bit to get out of jams but no longer.
The harder you hit the more deflection. The more spin you put on the rock the more deflection. Somewhere during a game you have to put that perfect combination together. I think it sharpens up your game.
I play with a LD shaft now and my shot making is incredible. Shape is same. The problem is the cue doing most of the work. there is less input on my part and no more backhand english. Just aim and fire
This is just how I feel and play at the moment. I'm sure others have better opinions towards LD or Carbon.
Once you can play a good 80 to 100 speed, I'm old, so bare with me for those that don't know what speeds are, with a wood shaft than you have truly mastered the game. Learning how to aim with deflection in mind is a skill. This is what sort of separates the good players from the rest. It is also a tool to your advantage. I use to masse quite a bit to get out of jams but no longer.
The harder you hit the more deflection. The more spin you put on the rock the more deflection. Somewhere during a game you have to put that perfect combination together. I think it sharpens up your game.
I play with a LD shaft now and my shot making is incredible. Shape is same. The problem is the cue doing most of the work. there is less input on my part and no more backhand english. Just aim and fire
This is just how I feel and play at the moment. I'm sure others have better opinions towards LD or Carbon.
If the contact time of tip and CB is so short, when does the release energy comes into play?
I think there might be an analogy with ski jumping-if you jump to late, most of the energy transfer will go into air.
Can you explain more about the timing?
Maybe a slowmo ?
BR
I used to have a Meucci power piston cue with a black dot shaft...It vibrated like crazy, even the butt was flexible! I was never able to play well with it, it felt weird and didn't live up to Meuccis promises of low deflection. Later put a Z shaft on that butt and played with that for some time, then the butt fell completely apart. The Z shaft was much stiffer than the Black dot, yet the deflection was lower. It certainly didn't get less spin, though!
It was popular in the 80's and 90's to sand the shaft down, many of the older players still had those shafts in the early 2000's when I started playing seriously. Personally, I played with a lot of those shafts, and some weren't half bad. Most of the old timers switched to Predators and similar and never looked back. Most of them claimed to get more spin with the stiffer pred. shafts, but IMO there is no difference in amount of spin. It's weird that none of those veteran players have gone back to the whippy shafts, don't you think, if whippyness gives more spin?
It was popular in the 80's and 90's to sand the shaft down, many of the older players still had those shafts in the early 2000's when I started playing seriously. Personally, I played with a lot of those shafts, and some weren't half bad. Most of the old timers switched to Predators and similar and never looked back. Most of them claimed to get more spin with the stiffer pred. shafts, but IMO there is no difference in amount of spin. It's weird that none of those veteran players have gone back to the whippy shafts, don't you think, if whippyness gives more spin?
Can it grow tall enuf to make a shaft from??
Smaller tip allowed more offset thus more juice. I hit a 3c cue once and it was like a railroad tie. Way to stiff for pool weight/size balls. Guess it would be necessary for hitting the big 3c boulders.
Flex has NADA to do with spin generation. Its all about the amount of tip offset you can get without miscuing.
This is where you are W R O N G.
When the flexible shaft bends it takes longer to release the energy than the cue-tip is in contact with the CB;
and thus, cannot deliver that energy to CB.
Tip is in contact with CB for only 1-2 milliseconds
Yet, your eye can see the bending and unbending--and your eye has a response time of 1/10th of a second. 50-100 times slower.
It seems like that could be true, but all tip sizes are limited by the same thing: the surface of the ball at the point of contact being tilted away by more than 30 degrees (halfway from center to edge, regardless of tip size).
This is also confirmed by the test I described.
pj
chgo
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One possibility is that the player aligns the tip according to the outside edge of the tip/ferrule. In that case a smaller diameter tip (with the same crown curvature) is going to hit the cue ball farther from center. This will cause a smaller tip to feel like it is getting more spin.
And if the larger tip is hitting at maximum offset, then the smaller tip will miscue - it can't really get more spin.
pj
chgo
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