Designing and making cues

[hammyali]

This may be a ridiculous question as I am fully aware of the skill involved in making a precision cue, but has anyone, purely as a hobby, tried to design and make their own?

[sanman]

Yes. Its bloody hard work. And its costly hobby. Additive too

[jim evans]

i think most cuemakers started by doing some design they fancied mine was a mannock rep

[knox]

i more or less got started (starting process still) by learning backwards.. i started out fixing n doing tips for friends, got good, everyone came seeking tip advice n for me to do it, then came ferrule problems, and fnishes on their cue problems, and i got more n more into it, then friends started asking about joint problems, and lengthening cues, and shortnening, and ive more or less done all the processes just not on the 1 cue lol

so brings me to now, about to churn out my first cue, or cues, i dont know. thought about working on multiple at a time to try different things, lets see how it goes :P

[biggus stickus]

So just for interest how long would it take to make a cue. Something basic for instance. I only ask because I see a lot of people carry on about the price of cues lately. I figure if it takes say 20 hours to make a top class cue and they are selling it for 1000 pounds then surely 50 pounds an hour is a reasonable figure to pay for someone such as JP, TW or MW and their skill level?

[hammyali]

I was thinking the same thing really. It would be a good hobby, but realistically how much would it cost for all the equipment to actually do it?

[Tiger800]

There are many parts to building quality cues.
Equipment and tooling can be upwards of 10k depending on how fancy you want to get.
The second part is materials, most good cue makers will have years of wood stock that is rotated and cut in stages over a long periods and what you buy gets reduced quite a bit when you start to select and sort the usable timber.
It's not as simple or cheap as you might think, you need quite a bit of tooling and it all adds up.

[EnterTheDragon]

I've put up to 2.5K € in this "hobby" of mine. It's been so frustrating at times that it is hard to describe..
Must be the love for beautiful cues that's made me go on and try to improve and get better results.