handmade ??? probably not !!!

[jim evans]

That's what I thought lol

[JimB]

A very interesting thread Crispian and I agree, a good, clear understanding of 'fully handmade' would be best. At the minute I'm just getting into cue making, just finished my 5th one, a private order and each one is totally handmade from planks to finished cue by me.

The reason I got into cue making was to get working with wood again, doing something I have a passion for ... after being in the guitar making business for many years then moving from the building side of things to management side and wood buying etc I really needed to get my hands dirty again

Whilst I can understand why people would buy pre-made shafts it defeats the purpose for me, the pleasure I get is from the full build and hand planing is the part I like, I could hand plane all day long ... erm ... that almost sounds like a fetish

With regards on what to use on the badge, it reminded me of what some companies in the guitar industry do, they use the term 'hand-crafted' instead if it's not totally 'handmade'. I would run into this issue from time to time because our guitars are totally handmade here and quite expensive but I would get customers say they had seen guitar so and so, solid timbers etc, handmade etc etc for a lot lower price but when you explain the building procedure and the differences between them, it all becomes very clear why the cost varies.

So ... maybe 'hand-crafted' instead of 'handmade' is worth considering for those type of cues ?

[archalf1471]

handmade ??? probably not !!!

not sure if my opnion is one that is shared by the majority or minority here, but as someone who has pretty much owned and played with cues made, spliced, customised, third party sold, etc etc etc I couldn't care if its been made by Mongolian goat herder's or South American pygmies and is finished either in darkest Rochdale or on the thighs of Angelina Jolie if it plays well and is what I consider value for money then its good enough for me.
There was a thread very similar to this a few years back also started by a "cuemaker" as such I believe and thinks it ended in tears and was deleted by Ferret in the end. Can see this going the same way also.

[crispian jones]

these are a few of my thai cues ready to work on !

They come to me as in the picture, i referrule them all add splices if needed reweight, rebalance, retaper, lengthen if possible (lower splices needed) alter butt size, tip and finaly go through a finishing process !

The whole point that im getting at is that thailand is a business just like anywhere else and if i chose to i could have these cues sent to me with joints added, lower splices added, tips on them even the bloody badges if i asked !!!
so in theary i could have a cue sent here that just needed a polish off, now i have a 15year old son who chooses to spend most of his time with girls, it is so easy that if i wanted to i could have him set up as a new cuemaker within a month, with a product that im confident that would sell at 6 times the investment !!!
for this my lad would not need a lathe, plane, bandsaw, g clamps, rule or any other bits required to make a cue, he would only need sandpaper, linseed oil and a tube to post it off to the sucker that bought it !

Now as stated im not trying to expose what already goes on in this market, im simply trying to say that this so called skilled trade needs something in place to safegaurd against this from happening soon !

[crispian jones]

not sure if my opnion is one that is shared by the majority or minority here, but as someone who has pretty much owned and played with cues made, spliced, customised, third party sold, etc etc etc I couldn't care if its been made by Mongolian goat herder's or South American pygmies and is finished either in darkest Rochdale or on the thighs of Angelina Jolie if it plays well and is what I consider value for money then its good enough for me.
There was a thread very similar to this a few years back also started by a "cuemaker" as such I believe and thinks it ended in tears and was deleted by Ferret in the end. Can see this going the same way also.

please read my coments all clearly a few times mate, ive stated from the very begining that it does not concern me who does what, what worries me is that the amount of guys who do this has tripled to my knowladge in the past 3 years !
so what does the future hold ?

[jim evans]

I don't think people will pay the silly prices just like that from a new cue maker, to be honest I think most cues are overpriced as it is

[crispian jones]

I don't think people will pay the silly prices just like that from a new cue maker, to be honest I think most cues are overpriced as it is

see i dont think cues are over priced ? far from it with the work involved and health risks involved i think the prices should be a lot higher !
£400 for example to a customer yes its a hefty amount, but to a cuemaker who has to subtract the costs and labour then it is nothing near that amount !

[vmax4steve]

My main concern regarding cue makers is not whether it is totally handmade or not but rather than from where do these cuemakers source their timber.
With rainforest depletion at an all time high at the moment I personally would need a cue made with hardwoods that are proven to be ethically sourced.

A lot of these hardwoods are from Indonesia and are said to be ethically sourced from re-planted forests, but what they don't say is that these forests are re-planted as Palm Oil plantations, thus the indigenous flora and fauna is gone forever.

To get back on track though, handmade is handmade from plank to finished article, I certainly don't expect a cuemaker to fell their own trees, but refinishing a lathe crafted cue made in Thailand and calling it handmade or handcrafted is cheating and simply a part of the great british/far east/cheap labour business rip off that we are all being taken for. We all know that handmade or handcrafted bumps up the price of everything and I wouldn't want the word "hand" mentioned at all in the marketing of such cues as it is easily misunderstood, and the business men know it which is why it is mentioned.

Put your name on it by all means but don't call it hand anything, save that for your truly handmade cues, which are excellent BTW.

[jrc750]

... There was a thread very similar to this a few years back also started by a "cuemaker" as such I believe and thinks it ended in tears and was deleted by Ferret in the end. Can see this going the same way also.

Was it deleted because it got too near the truth ????

[louise sheldon]

just about every thai cue i have seen has about 6 to 6 1/4" finger length of the splicing, thats not to say other genuine cue makers splicing length is not the same length but if the butt is 19" long with that finger length it could be as when the shaft is machined by the thai cue makers to take the splice of ebony it is not done flat but concave, this saves on ebony size as you can have a 10mm squar at the end instead of 9mm square. i know its only 1mm but 3 cuts into a 1 3/8" block of ebony and it soon adds upto 1/8" or 3mm and if the block is bent you soon lose a size when planning it straight.

some thai cues are also spliced the opposite way to our cues eg top and bottom first then the sides, this sometimes shows on the flat where the badge goes as two lines.

also the tips of the splices are quite rounded.

i have seen cues respliced but to do this you have either to go deeper and keep the same length but this uses more timber and you end up with no square or you could go higher say 22" and keep the same depth but again this uses more timber or you could do a bit of both

[SouthPaw]

So ... maybe 'hand-crafted' instead of 'handmade' is worth considering for those type of cues ?

That sounds like a good alternative to me, at least it would give some clarity between what could be described as fully handmade or part made but the question is how could this be enforced..? As it seems that this is a craft which you can get away with fraud...

[louise sheldon]

The cue in the middle is a Thai cue, notice the shorter fingers and the more rounded tips.

[SteveDay]

Pasting a comment I made on another thread regarding handmade cues, as far as I am concerned I would only consider "handmade" cues by the following cue makers.

John Parris
Trevor White
Dave Coutts
Stamford Cues
Robin Cook
Craftsman Cues
Tony Glove
Crispian Jones
Jim Evans

If there are any others that fully make by hand rather than finish off and stick their badge on then it is up to them to prove they do rather than allow people to assume they are handmade simply because the badge says so. Semantics aside, if a cue maker is charging a premium price on a cue on the pretence that they have fully handmade it but have actually just bought in, finished off and badged it then it is fraud. Whilst a cue handmade in Thailand is still handmade, if the cue maker is saying that he makes it himself or implies it is handmade by him by charging the price that reflects such then it is misleading the customer. Reputations can be faked as easily as pretending they make the cues from scratch. I wouldn't buy a cue from someone whose only selling track record seems to exist on an internet forum, makes no sense when there are known, reliable cue makers out there.

[Maxsys]

No MW or Jason Owen?

[SouthPaw]

Steve how do you know for certain who makes cues fully and who doesn't?