Cue Components

Before you start reading here, I would like you to please click on the two photo's above and study them; give them a careful review and just sit there and stare at them for a minute.Those tips were returned to us from two different goofball's who said, our "tips suck, fell apart and were no good". The blame was all ours; "it was our fault for selling such crap". This is the nonsense that we have to put up with. It's never their fault and always our fault or the tips fault. It's very strange how 99.99% our our clients never have an issue.These freaking clowns are gluing tips on and then trimming them, with what I presume is perhaps a chisel or knife to chop the tip down. The second picture, the moron is taking a 14mm tip and trying to cut it down to like 9.5mm. You don't buy 14mm tips to cut down to 9mm. You buy smaller diameter tips for that or you take your time cutting them down.Look at those tips on the left! So now, he would have squared off areas that would need to be sanded and abusively sanded unmercifully! Can you imagine putting a tip through this brutal attack and expect the tip to withstand all that abuse!?No honest person with just half a brain would expect these tips to withstand such an attack. However, occasionally we get these misfits who want to either install their own tips or install tips for others.Please, if you are doing your own installations, buy the proper installation tools or for heavens sake, get a professional to do it. I mean, it's only $10 bucks or so to install a tip. If you can't afford that or are too cheap to spring for it, then please, PLEASE go elsewhere to buy your tips. We don't need your business and more importantly the abuse that comes from it after you hack the tip apart.The crap we have to put up with from these jokers never ceases to amaze me. Fortunately, they are few and far between but yes, they are out there and walk among us. INSTALLATION TECHNIQUE Installation has a lot to do with how a tip will play. If you have Cheap Charlie install the tip in the back seat of his car with pliers and drill, most likely it will play as well as Charlie installed it. You get what you pay for.Installation is paramount. A proper installation will not mushroom, will play consistent, will hold chalk and will last. All tips need to be cut down and some need to be cut back, some sanded and all burnished. If it's not done properly, you may not like a perfectly good tip that would otherwise play extremely well had it been properly installed.Delamination or the layers falling apart is always due to inexperienced installation where the installer builds up excessive heat by sanding and or cutting the tip to shape it. Experience is key as is not building up heat. Take your time and don't sand it excessively. All tips need to be cut down and not sanded down.Lastly, if the tip delaminates, pops off, explodes or balloons it's due to cockpit error. PERIOD. We've installed thousands of tips as have our clients and we sell tens of thousands of tips all without incident. All problems are 99.9999% of the time installation issues. Proper installation by a knowledgeable cue mechanic is always recommended and encouraged.

Here we show some fabulous cue construction technique. This was the actual forearm of a cue from a well known "cue maker". Even more surprising than this is that the usual voices from people within various newsgroup forums boast about how wonderful and what quality construction techniques this particular maker utilizes. The obvious conclusion is that these voices, or what we like to refer to as the �peanut gallery�, don�t really have a clue about the inner working of cue construction and the participants. They are so far from the true pulse of cue making that they actually don't have a clue as to who does what and how.Anyway, this was the actual forearm which had a �buzz�. The cue was taken apart and was going to be put back together properly until what was seen and displayed here became visible.Ok, so here we have a front that was turned down too fast or joined together to the handle too fast or a combination of both. The cue was then put on a lathe and did the mambo (warped while spinning) but the "cue maker" decided to just cut down the cue with a taper and in doing so, just cut the warp out. In doing so, the tenon and connection were forced cut off center and the results are shown here.The "cue maker" had three choices here:A) take the cue apart and rejoin the component partsB) scrap everything and start overC) turn out the warpObviously the correct answer is B but this illustrious "cue maker" decided that the almighty dollar shall prevail and chose option C. Afterall, who would or could possibly find out once the cue is together. Well, Ta Da!!!!This is a disgrace that this particular "cue maker" would allow this cue to be continued and even worse yet, be sold with such shoddy construction. We can only expect a beginner to realize these results and this "cue maker" was and is hardly a beginner. Very sad indeed. And he knows who he is.On a side note, this construction is prevalent with many imported cues from Taiwan, Mainland China and even the Philippines. Not all imports boast this fine construction but many do. It's sad to say that this shoddy display of craftsmanship emanates from the USA.

The first thing we'd like you to do is click on the picture to your left and study the photo. We want you to see if there is anything wrong with the item in the chuck. Study it carefully.Do you see anything wrong? Just look and see if everything is on center. As you look closely, you'll plainly see that there is more ferrule material on one side of center whereby making the ferrule installation off center. True quality craftsmanship (and yes, we are of course being sarcastic).This shaft was taken in for repair; we were asked to put a new tip on. While we will put tips on most any cues, we will not work on just any cue. This picture explains why. Cues from overseas usually exhibit some form of poor quality control and this creates more problems for us that the repair is worth. As such we refuse all such repair requests such as rewraps which notoriously spin out of control. To avoid any potential problems we respectfully decline all repairs of imported cues.To take this one step further, we will not do repairs on any production cues as well. In many instances, this type of construction is typical with many production cue makers. Pumping out quantity for cash profits has resulted in poorer quality in many American production cues. We were recently asked to glue a butt cap that came loose on a very well known production cue. We looked at it and declined the repair because the butt cap did not match up to the butt sleeve properly and when put in the lathe - well, that's another story.And to take this to the next level, the cue pictured here is from a well know custom cue maker. We were shocked at seeing this but when your name is well known and demand far exceeds a cuemakers capability, the net results are obvious. There is no excuse for this shoddy craftsmanship. It is just as easy to do it correctly as it is to produce this creation.The moral to this story.... just because you make a cue and cover a mistake does not mean that someone else may not find it out. Take your time and do it right. Do not put this type of quality into the marketplace and if you do, you will be found out. And when you can no longer sell a cue, you'll know why.Special Note: While we do not like to work on production cues, this is not to say that all production cues suffer from shoddy construction techniques. We will say that we have yet to see a imported cue that spins on center or is not warped. Everyone wants to be a cue maker!