Why are linen wraps so slick?
- Thread starter Mitchxout
- Start date
They aren't all slick. It all depends on how they are finished. They can be simply an unfinished wrap or they can be pressed or they can be pressed and shaved and or polished. Some cue makers (MOOOCHIE) even clear-coated over them. If you don't like what you have you can have it changed. There are lost of options.
wrap
If you don't like a slick wrap just run a wet towel over it. It should be rough eneough for you then.
If you don't like a slick wrap just run a wet towel over it. It should be rough eneough for you then.
Are you serious? Won't it dry and go back to it's original slickness?
Nope..sure won't return to slick easily. It'll look like it needs a little shave..
First, I'm not a cue maker but I do know how to make a wrap feel like you want when you can't get to a cue maker easily. I do recommend for the best feel as well as the fastest time to completion to find a cue maker and tell them what you want done but if you have no one anywhere near you you can do the following.
I usually wet my wraps a little with a damp paper towel like stratshutr suggests and burnish them once they are almost dry by hand with a white piece of folded up double bond printer paper. I only use a small amount of water while burnishing. To burnish the wrap I take the paper and wrap it around the handle and while holding the paper tight with my hand spin the cue in my hand in the direction the string was wrapped on. You can tell the direction by looking for the start of the wrap at the top of the handle as on most cues it's pretty easy to find. Now burnish to desired feel! What I'm suggesting gives the wrap a slightly more grippy suede feel and look then the original slippery as well as shiny double pressed linen has. I think it feels much better and way more like linen then the nylon like feel of double pressed and starched linen. Now this process can take multiple hand pressings to really get it where you want it and each time can take from what I've found from 10 to 20 minutes. This is done much quicker with a lathe so if you can find a cue maker or qualified repair guy to help it would definitely save a lot of effort.
Hope that helps!
Kevin
The slick ones get that way by way of pressing them.
I picked up a wrap-less Schmelke a while back and used it for my bar cue / truck cue.. I discovered during this time that I really liked how grippe it was without a wrap. When I went back to my usual bar cue I realized how very slick linen tends to be. I tried water to swell it a bit which only helped for a couple of minutes until it dried. I decided I could not live with it any longer and if I didn't find a cure I would simply put a soft leather wrap on it. What I did worked so well I just love it now. I masked off the cue, got it spinning and worked epoxy into the wrap. It only took ten minutes and looks great and feels great. Basically I made it into a sprayed wrap.