rhncue said:
The longer spears look pretty sharp but it could probably be done with CNC if you don't mind spending the money. Most cuemakers only go as fine as 1/16 or a 1/32" cutter but if they want to draw up the program you can hog the pocket with a 1/32 and then drop down to a 1/64 for clean up or for that matter end mills go down to .005ths. which is finer than an exacta knife. Lots of money though as they run around thirty dollars a pop and you may break 20 or 30 of them getting your depth and speed right.
Drexler does good work and charges accordingly. I, myself, don't have the patience nor the inclination for that tedious of work henceforth I use 1/32 end-mills and I charge accordingly. Paul has his clientel and I have mine. As long as cue-makers don't get a big head and over charge for their work then you get what you pay for.
Dick
Thanks for the info. Well, if those paticular inlays were done with no hand work then call Me impressed. 1/16 I can use all day long manually myself, heck I have even gone into aluminum with those, and can go quite a bit smaller then that for other materials, I'm still honing My skills with the styluses, but have been able to work them down pretty far for a manual machine i suppose. The first ones I did were alittle larger though. When I started doing inlay inside of inlay, I had to really start focusing on getting the cutter size down, then cleaning up the pocket with a smaller cutter after hogging it out. In my case this also required Me to figure out and cut seperate stylus for each, and altough smaller, not razor sharp at all without more work. I have noticed that some make cutters are better then others in the same size, but yes they cost alot more money, and don't want to break too many if at all posible.
I understand that the tool path on a cnc can be set to use even smaller cutters, and I even understand why, but I still find it hard to swallow that people are getting them that sharp. unless using a special profile cutter of some sort, or indexing of the work piece in the program to catch the edges of the cutter. I'm guessing that the amount of cutters you mentioned breaking would be during the initial setup, to get the depth, and feed rate ajusted,and once locked in there would'nt be as much waste.
Thanks again, It definatly interests me, and they don't make them for nothing, so I know some very small endmills are used in many other fields, and I'm not thinking it's imposible or anything like that, guess It's possible that I am just more intrigued by It then anything, especially where some materials are concerned that may be harder to work with.
Either way If that's how it was done, then My hats off, but actually either way it was done, I would still feel that way.
I aggree with you, and will try to do both Myself, and as you mentioned, they would have to be priced accordinally in My mind for the amount of work that goes into them, but Even using the safer size cutters is alot of work, and very time consuming the way I am doing them now, so I'll still have more into It, then what I get for the cue in the end. I do plan to get away from it one day though, because i can already tell there is no way I could keep up without upgrading at some point. Just not enough time in the day, and doing them manually, well, it's very slow going to say the least. Atleast for Me It is, with everything else I'm trying to shuffle at the same time.
BTW, was on the brain so thought I'd pass it on- Was it You that mentioned that house work back sometime before? I recently had some start doing that to me also. I think It's the fibre ferrules shrinking and expanding, because I noticed on some, that the edges of the tip lifted on the fibre first, and the middle held for a while before breaking loose. Now I never had any major problem getting glue to stick to the fibre, so that's the only explaination I can come up with. It's like the fibre shrinks. but the tenon does'nt, so the edges are ripped loose, leaving the tip attatched to the tenon until it finally gives out. The only thing I know do, is ever so slightly under cut the the face of the tenon only, but then that does'nt sound like such a bright idea either. I tried It on a couple just to see if it helps though.
Greg
