"Why" is a LD shaft LD? Special wood?
- Thread starter Pangit
- Start date
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Not a trade secret, you need to understand why wood deflects first. Has to do with the grain pattern and mass close to the tip. After that, it is easy to understand different designs of the LD shafts.
Wood deflection and grain pattern have little to do with squirt (cue ball deflection). That's pretty much all about the weight (mass) of the first 6-8 inches of the shaft near the tip. Some shafts with high deflection (whippy) produce more squirt than some with low deflection (stiff).
pj
chgo
Agreed. A low-squirt (AKA LD) shaft has small endmass. A shaft can be made LD by reducing the shaft's diameter, drilling out the core of the end of the shaft, and/or using a lighter (or no) ferrule.
Regards,
Dave
Glueing pieces of wood together results in a "laminated shaft," and some LD shafts are "laminated;" but that isn't what makes the shaft low-squirt (AKA "low cue ball deflection" or "LD").
Regards,
Dave
No. The most common way to make a low-squirt shaft is to remove wood from the tip end (by turning down the diameter or drilling out the center, or both). Another way is to reduce the size of the ferrule (because it's heavier material than the shaft wood).
Laminating has nothing to do with it - that's just a way to use lower grade maple without warpage.
pj
chgo
There have been quite a few Predator owners that would beg to differ on the warpage issue.
And quite a few who wouldnt. I have 3 predator shafts all more than 3 years old some more than 10 years old and none warped all straight so i would attribute the warpage to how they are kept stored and maintained.
That may also be due to how the wood for the splices were selected. I have an original 314 that is straight, and have seen 3 other Predator shafts, which I know where stored properly by the owners, with bad bends. Those people have several other shafts in the same case that the Predators were stored, and all of those regular shafts were fine.
I think the selling point of a multi-part shaft was that the wood would have equal strength no matter which way you oriented the shaft. I remember reading that people would line up the grain on the shaft the same way to make sure it hit the same way, which I believe was also how Meucci started with the dots, they would place the dot on the shaft and you would shoot with the dot up, that way you have a consistent hit.
I think that's marketing hype by both Predator and Meucci. For Predator it's a positive spin on a cost cutting move that was too obvious to ignore; for Meucci it's a way to "add value" by simply painting a dot on their shafts. In both cases it's clever marketing.
pj
chgo
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Don't know, both methods seem to be valid at least logically. Same way that a laminated board stays straighter than a one-piece one.
I don't see them using plywood on the shafts, it may not be AAA or even AA maple but the wood grain on the splices seems nice in the shafts I have seen.
Except that I never heard anybody complain about "radial inconsistency" before (or after) Predator and Meucci "solved the problem".
Solving a nonexistent problem seems to be working for Kamui chalk too.
pj
chgo
Patrick i usually find what you have to say insightful but in this instance im not so sure. I find it hard to believe that even in China with very cheap labor you save enough on the wood to justify the extra cost in cutting shaping and then gluing all that wood together in the pie wedge configuration which would also increase manufacturing time to be an effective way to save money.
Well, I could be wrong about their motives (I was wrong once in '79, I think), but I don't think they've actually improved playability. So it's either hype by design or merely in fact.
pj
chgo
LD shafts are poorly named. They should be called Low Squirt shafts. Having said that, LD shafts are LS because they remove mass from the tip end of the cue.
However, one should ask, "Is it possible for a shaft squirt to be too low?"
I argue that it would be advantageous to have the cue's natural pivot point fall at a common and natural bridge distance. Most LD shafts I have tested have pivot points much longer than a natural bridge distance.
On the topic of laminations and marketing....
Every piece of solid wood is unique, with its own grain density, grain orientation, internal stresses, etc. No two solid wood shafts can be the same. Plus, solid wood is dimensionally unstable. This instability is minimized by aging the solid blanks as long as possible before final turning, but the instability is possibly still there.
Laminated shafts have the POTENTIAL to remove some of the performance variability between shafts (I would like to see robot testing to confirm this), and laminations greatly improve dimensional stability. Ask any woodworker.
Yes, there is the benefit of being able to use "inferior" cuts of wood, but that does not mean the laminated shaft is an "inferior" shaft. No, not at all.
However, one should ask, "Is it possible for a shaft squirt to be too low?"
I argue that it would be advantageous to have the cue's natural pivot point fall at a common and natural bridge distance. Most LD shafts I have tested have pivot points much longer than a natural bridge distance.
On the topic of laminations and marketing....
Every piece of solid wood is unique, with its own grain density, grain orientation, internal stresses, etc. No two solid wood shafts can be the same. Plus, solid wood is dimensionally unstable. This instability is minimized by aging the solid blanks as long as possible before final turning, but the instability is possibly still there.
Laminated shafts have the POTENTIAL to remove some of the performance variability between shafts (I would like to see robot testing to confirm this), and laminations greatly improve dimensional stability. Ask any woodworker.
Yes, there is the benefit of being able to use "inferior" cuts of wood, but that does not mean the laminated shaft is an "inferior" shaft. No, not at all.
Don't think it was a horrible thing that caused issues for people, but I have read several times where players on hard shots would make sure the grain on the shaft was pointing up and down.
The chalk is a totally different thing here, the LD shafts were shown to have improvements. The chalk is "meh". I have had one person around me buy a piece, he hated it. Broke apart easy, was pasty, felt like crap when chalking. Plus most people like to sit there and chalk up while thinking over a shot, you do that with Kamui chalk and each shot costs you a buck.
A friend and I did some tests on a few shafts and tips with a certain draw plus spin shot. The lowest action we got was a standard shaft with a regular tip. Then was my standard shaft with a layered tip, an LD shaft with a standard tip was a bit better than the layered tip with a standard shaft but was just about equal maybe by 1/4 a diamond, the most action we got from a LD shaft with a layered tip. This was done with each of us using each shaft 3-4 times on the same shot, we all had the same results. Difference with a standard shaft with a one piece tip to the LD shaft with a layered tip was like 2 diamonds up further on the table that we could get with draw+spin.