Valentine Cue Progress Pic

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scdiveteam

Rick Geschrey
Silver Member
Valentine Cue Progress Pics

Hi,

Here is progress pics "The Valentine Cue" for Alex's wife. It is about halfway home now and I will be installing the Heart Inlays in a few days.

It has a Purple heart forearm with 4 ebony points, with a matching ebony butt sleeve and a wrap.

Rick

Dead straight seasoned 3/4" maple core running at 2500 rpms.
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Coring the Purple Heart Fore Arm and Handle stock.

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Basic Cue stock prepared for your custom cue. The dowel and the tapered shaft stock has been seasoning at these dimensions since 2008.
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I will be gluing up the fore arm to the dowel later today and I will be cutting the point grooves and preparing the ebony point stock on Sat.
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Cutting the ebony point stock on the bandsaw. I tapered the forearm down this morning and started cutting the point groves.

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Points being glued and clamped into the forearm.
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Alex,

Here is your inlay part ready to be installed. I glue up you handle last night and will take pics of your blank tomorrow.

Rick

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Handle and butt sleeve glue up with rings
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Turning down the taper on the handle and butt
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Butt cap to be installed and taper cut for inlay pockets
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Alex,

I forgot that I talked to you last week about me replacing the Juma Hoppe ring with the Box Veneer Style at the butt for you. So here it is. The butt cap is still oversize and looks a bit big here. It will only be .600 when we are done.

Inlay pockets and glue up in the AM.

Rick

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looking good!!!!

i forgot what we had talked about for the handle wrap.. now that i see the color i am thinking maybe a white lizard wrap.. i will have to look at some wraps on google. suggestions will be more than welcome.
 
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Ebony into Purpleheart is a sensational combination! And the playability is wonderful.

this will be for sure a wonderful present for a lifetime :-)

keep up with the good work,

lg from overseas,

Ingo
 
Ratta said:
Ebony into Purpleheart is a sensational combination! And the playability is wonderful.

this will be for sure a wonderful present for a lifetime :-)

keep up with the good work,

lg from overseas,

Ingo
Click to expand...

Thank you Ingo,

That combo is very good I agree but in the case of my cues the playability is basically formed by the 3/4" inner straight maple dowel. So basically all of my cue have the feel of straight grain maple for a hit. The cored woods only add their flavor to the hit.

I am sure Alex's wife will like his present and she it is my hope that she will recieve joy from it's ownership and use for many years to come.

I can't wait to do her inlays in the cue tonight!

Again, thank you,

Rick

Here are 4 short butts on the dowel before the points are cue. The yellow heart, ebony, tulipwood and cocobolo will play and all have a similar hit to with an influence of the straight grained. Because the 3/4" maple dowel is use the wall thickness of the forearm wood is only .054, hence the rod's aspect ratio between the forearm wood and the core is dominated by the maple by design.

As you travel back on the cue and it gets thicker the outer wood species has more influence over this ratio. The cues I build that have wraps are even closer to the same feel because the second 12" of the cue is solid maple throughout the diameter.

Everyone has their own bend to the brim. That's mine.
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i am very glad on the choices for the rings and the but and joint areas. this is looking way better then i could have hoped for. cant wait to see some inlays in there. looking great and glad others like the design. just hope the wife likes it as much as i do.
 
Alex,

Here is the pics of pocket cutting and inlay installation gluing.

I will taper turn to final Friday night. Then we will let the PH color.

We have to nail down a wrap choice because I have to cut the wrap. I need to have the thickness of the wrap for this cue if you choose leather. If we go with linen I can cut the groove right away. Because this cue would be very dark with a dark wrap a lighter wrap may be the ticket.

Rick


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looks good as for a wrap. i am gong to go on google right now and we will look at some for the gf. i will get back to you on this in a bit
 
What a great thread. I genuinely appreciate being able to see the process as it moves forward. Your work is phenomenal and the choices of woods remarkable. Would you mind if I asked how many hours go into completing a cue like this?
 
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GearHead_1 said:
What a great thread. I genuinely appreciate being able to see the process as it moves forward. Your work is phenomenal and the choices of woods remarkable. Would you mind if I asked how many hours go into completing a cue like this?
Click to expand...

Hi GH,

Alex the owner designed this cue, I did not choose the wood combos.

On a cue like this with one shaft, points and 8 inlays - about 20 man hours, give or take. I have some machines that bring my time on task down on some fundamental jobs like doweling a square. I can put a 1.5 x 1.5 square piece of turning stock into the Doweling machine and it will round it in 10 seconds. Some years back I had to cut the corners on a band saw and then take multiple router passes. My shaft processing & tapering and butt tapering are performed on separate saw machines also that have auto stop when a task is over. So if I take 13 passes on a shaft that takes 6 minutes each, I only spend about 20 second of my attention time per pass. Thats 4 minutes of my time compared to 72 minutes I spent per tapered item when I did them on a lathe with a taper bar.

I also save time because I have dedicated work stations or machine set ups that are used for one thing only and this saves me a lot of set up time. Because these assets are pre set to one task I, have found that I achieve a higher degree of repeatability now with my process control procedures.


Rick
 
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Rick,

Thanks for the info. It sure looks good and kudos to the owner and his choice of woods. I'll be interested in seeing his pick on on wraps. It's going to be a very pretty cue.
 
Alex,

Your cue blank is finished and it is at final dimension with the inlays flush.

We will wait now for the purple to get brighter.

At this point you need to make a final decision concerning the wrap because I have to cut the groove and if you want leather I need to measure the exact piece I am to install. If you go with a linen it is just a matter of the color and specs.

Rick

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I know this in unrelated to the cue in this thread but I wanted to show Rick this photo of a Nitti cue because of the veneer work, sorry for the hijack post.
 

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