WOW #3 Bocote

DawgAndy said:
I have a piece of bocote that I want to make into a one piece butt. Is bocote and an ivory joint as good as a combo as some of the other popular woods?


Andy
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As long as you season the wood, It's a pretty good combo, Do you feel comfortable about the Bacote staying straight.
 
Canadian cue said:
As a side note to what Tom said about sharp tools a properly sharpened high-speed steel tool will give you a keener sharper cutting edge than carbide.
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I told that to a tool and die maker years ago and he laughed in my face. He told me that maybe I couldn't get carbide as sharp as tool steel but with the right grinder and no how He could get carbide much sharper than tool steel. The bad about carbide is that it is so brittle that to make an extremely sharp edge with a proper angle for cutting wood it will chip in a heartbeat.
Dick
 
rhncue said:
I told that to a tool and die maker years ago and he laughed in my face. He told me that maybe I couldn't get carbide as sharp as tool steel but with the right grinder and no how He could get carbide much sharper than tool steel. The bad about carbide is that it is so brittle that to make an extremely sharp edge with a proper angle for cutting wood it will chip in a heartbeat.
Dick
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I had an engineer who is a master machinist explain to me why carbide will not get as sharp as high speed steel. He told me carbide was just very small balls of carbide that are compressed into a tool cutter. And he said when sharpening them you are removing the balls which hold their shape and you still have the edge of those tiny round balls as your cutting edge. Who knows who is really right? But one thing for sure is that you are right about carbide being brittle and chipping so easily. I am a high speed steel man when it comes to tenon cutting bits but am a carbide man when it comes to router bits.
Chris
www.cuesmith.com
www.internationalcuemakers.com
 
As a general rule when it comes to tool geometry the softer the material you are cutting the keener your tool needs to be. Wood is very soft relative to most other materials you would turn in the lathe. You need to use a tool which cuts rather than shears. To achieve this you need a tool with lots of top rake as well as clearance, as rhncue mentioned if you grind a cardide with these extreme rake angles and clearance your tool will be very weak. I have found that you will know your tool is sharpened properly when your shavings come off the tool in ribbons rather than dust. Now having said all that there are carbide inserts designed for aluminum which come close to what works good http://www.iscar.com/ProductLines/PDF/InsertsforAluminumMachining_30.pdf as well as some solid carbide tooling,
http://www.truemade.com/boringbars.htm
but you are starting to spend alot more money on tooling that you really do not have to.
 
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cueman said:
Are you using wood cutting tools to shape your cues instead of metal lathe tools? I used the term burnished which would not be quite burned but more shiney. And yes I think roughing it up is the answer. And what the thinner does is remove the oils from the surface so you can get a good glue bond.....
Chris
www.cuesmith.com
www.internationalcuemakers.com
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Chris,

I use metal lathe tool bits. I use SS just as often as carbide. I find it more pleasant to turn denser wood with carbide and softer woods with SS. I never payed too much attention to it, but I truely believe that Canadian cue is right about the tools... ;)

But again, just roughing up the surface of two pieces of wood you want to glue together is not the good thing to do...
Glue (I suppose you use epoxy) needs to penetrate in wood like bocote in order to fill up gaps and to get a longlasting bond.
But if it works for you, that's fine.

I'm just trying to give tips, so that some people might have a reason now why some species act differently than others. You see, the sad truth is that most players have no idea about the woods in their cues and how the woods influence the hit.
And there are too many cuemakers who don't have a clue either... :(

With these posts of "Wood of the week", some people can get info wich they would normally get by making mistakes over and over for a few times...

Tom Penrose
 
My cue ...

My cue is made from Mexican Bacote and African Padauk with Cocobolo lined
points, and I love the color and contrast of the wood together.
I wanted a cue that looked 'Southwestern' style, and with
Bob's original design on the butt, it does. Sorry, but I didn't have a good
camera when I took pictures of it, and they are blury somewhat, and do not
even begin to show the true beauty of the woods together. It was featured
with 5 other cues that Bob Owen (Shurtz's Custom Cues) made on the cover
of American Cueiest Magazine in January 2001. I will try to scan the cover
in and post it, but it really needs individual good pics to see the beauty
of the woods. It has a slimline butt. Bob Owen is Gabe's Dad.

Look at the butt end to see truer color of the woods together.
 

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cueman said:
Bocote is a wood that plays vastly different depending on the weight of the piece of wood. The real heavy bocote has a flatter hit similar to ebony. But if you get the lighter pieces it has a lively hit kinda in between purple heart and maple. It does not make much noise when you strike the side of it with your hand and absorbs vibration better than most woods in it's weight class. It has a little end give or end compression and that is what makes it hit nice, and produce a fair amount of cueball action. Bocote will darken with age like cocobolo does so you should finish it with a UV resistant finish to maintain the vibrant color. Calling it "reddish brown" doesn't seem right to me about the color. I would call it more of a brown to blondish brown with dark brown streaking. My son plays with a one piece butt made out of bocote. For wrapless cues like sneaky petes I feel Bocote into maple makes one of the best hitting cues. The weight of a bocote into maple sneaky pete usually hits close to a 19 ounce cue with no weight bolt.
Chris
www.cuesmith.com
www.internationalcuemakers.com
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Hay cueman were is my pic ??? of that butt ...??
 
Here is my Viattorre buttsleeve. Should be getting it any day now :)
 

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cueman said:
Bocote is a wood that plays vastly different depending on the weight of the piece of wood. The real heavy bocote has a flatter hit similar to ebony. But if you get the lighter pieces it has a lively hit kinda in between purple heart and maple. It does not make much noise when you strike the side of it with your hand and absorbs vibration better than most woods in it's weight class. It has a little end give or end compression and that is what makes it hit nice, and produce a fair amount of cueball action. Bocote will darken with age like cocobolo does so you should finish it with a UV resistant finish to maintain the vibrant color. Calling it "reddish brown" doesn't seem right to me about the color. I would call it more of a brown to blondish brown with dark brown streaking. My son plays with a one piece butt made out of bocote. For wrapless cues like sneaky petes I feel Bocote into maple makes one of the best hitting cues. The weight of a bocote into maple sneaky pete usually hits close to a 19 ounce cue with no weight bolt.
Chris
www.cuesmith.com
www.internationalcuemakers.com
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i have had two cuemakers say bocote has a sharp hit,,,,,,ed young and joey gold. i finally played with one(i think it was a full piece, not cored), and i must say, i think i got a bocote from the other end of the spectrum.

i wouldn't characterize what i played with as being "sharp". it felt very very dense, ie very little feedback. as if the whole hit was being absorbed by the bocote. so dense, in fact, that i couldn't really assign bocote any "characteristics", other than "wow,,,this is really thick"

full ebony can be so dense it feels like something other than wood............ it has that ping sound that's a little lively. and cocobola is a wood i hate. it's dense but has a hit like a soggy, compressed telephone book. BOCOTE,,,,,well, it just feels THICK.
 
bruin70 said:
and cocobola is a wood i hate. it's dense but has a hit like a soggy, compressed telephone book.
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And people say it's hard to describe a hit of a certain cue. That must be the best description of a hit ever ! :cool:
 
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