Beware of hobbiest cue makers

[jim evans]

but how the hell did you take the photo?
or best not to ask?

Daughter took It so i could Hold vernier right up.lol

[ADR147]

Lol yes clearly Jim had magically added width to the butt..

i was just thinking that!

[willtyson]

Lol yes clearly Jim had magically added width to the butt..

It's all a conspiracy, Jim is actually in the Illuminati and he and Jay Z's goons are on there way the Scotland as we speak to deal with the matter Brian, or should I say Mr Snowdon, is leaking valuable information of the cue making world and has revealed the secrets of butt width witchcraft! lol

[alabadi]

This surprises me as I have always found Jim to be a true gent, so the responses you've received could be as a result of the tone of your communication to him.

this is spot on, i play with Jim and he is a great guy, i saw the cue he made and to be honest it wasn't that bad. it was no ultimate but a decent cue.
i remember the guy asking for his money in a un-patient and threatening way, sending message after message, almost 10 in as many minutes. Jim was out so he had no way of sending the money till he got home.
i have dealt with sent back goods and didn't get my refund for at least 10 days. so i couldn't understand the guy, it wasn't as if he was not going to give a refund.

Jim is making me a cue and if its anything like the ones i have seen him make for others i'm sure it will be great.

[alabadi]

i showed it to friend it was no where near strait and splices were miles

you call a couple of mm miles out.....thats over exaggerating it

[jb134]

i remember the guy asking for his money in a un-patient and threatening way, sending message after message, almost 10 in as many minutes.

Slowly but surely the truth comes out.

[alabadi]

Nice to see friends sticking up for jim tho! Also nice of him to tell me why he offered to fix cue if there was nothing wrong with it!

i can't understand why you keep going on about this, I think you'll find that most cue makers will offer to adjust a cue if the customer isn't happy. doesn't mean the cuemaker made a mistake, its good customer relations

[Leo]

Just a thought, i wonder if the seller would of got as much support off forum members if the buyer was a regular poster who bought a cue off a junior member

[Phil C]

Jesus Christ I just drank a can of coke and I was only on page 10.

To be honest Brian, if you had the intention of publicly slating another member on here, you should have the intelligence to back up what you're going to say - Which would of been with photos.

Personally, if I forgot to get any proof whatsoever, I wouldn't even post a new thread and make a fool of myself. What's the point in word vs word? How's that conducive to your cry of anguish?

So:

- No photos
- Did you even play with the cue instead of forensically examining every splice? It could of been great.
- Can you even play snooker???


I think what you've done is downright immature. No one deserves to be publicly humiliated unless absolutely necessary. You got your money back, we're all sorted.

Now I'm going to page 11 to carry on my session. :congratulatory:

By the way, I'm also just a 'background' user. I don't know Jim, or yourself.

[jb134]

Just a thought, i wonder if the seller would of got as much support off forum members if the buyer was a regular poster who bought a cue off a junior member

Anyone who is a well known good honest guy will get support. Jim is all of those. The buyer would have got support if he had not been so aggressive and had made a bit more of a case. Simply repeating "why offer to fix it if there was nothing wrong with it", is hardly likely to be follwed by "the prosecution rests m'lud". The buyer would also have got support if he was a well known good guy and Jim was a known shyster.

As it stands it's an aggressive unknown (who I am sure is a nice guy) against a known nice guy and human nature being what it is.....

[wmccreedy]

What's Jim'S Surname. Does he live in Northern Ireland ? I think Id still buy a cue off him, no worries. Sounds like he was dealing with the customer from hell i.m.o.p

[DeanH]

What's Jim'S Surname. Does he live in Northern Ireland ? I think Id still buy a cue off him, no worries. Sounds like he was dealing with the customer from hell i.m.o.p

The "Jim" in question is Jim Evans and he is in Sheffield.

There is Jim Black (JimB) from Millisle, Northern Ireland who is starting to make some lovely cues.
As well as Martin Daly (platt) making Tyrone Cues in, you guessed it, Tyrone.

[gem]

I think the alternative question is why do people purchase cues from hobbiest cue makers when they should know that they can not produce the same quality of cue.

I think this should be the main point of this thread. Hobbiest cuemakers just don't have the necessary experience to do as good a job as the top cuemakers.
If you buy from them then it really is at your own risk. I have seen some work done recently by a hobbiest and it was terrible.

We all look for supposed good deals but usually it ends up an expensive mistake.

[vmax4steve]

I think this should be the main point of this thread. Hobbiest cuemakers just don't have the neccessary experience to do as good a job as the top cuemakers.
If you buy from them then it really is at your own risk. I have seen some work done recently by a hobbiest and it was terrible.

We all look for supposed good deals but usually it ends up an expensive mistake.

Both Jason Owen and Crispian Jones were hobbiest cuemakers a couple or three years ago, yet now they have excellent reputations on this very forum, despite 99% of the people on this forum never having seen or played with any of their cues.
I myself am a hobbiest, but I have over twenty years experience as a wood machinist/joiner and quite honestly I find that making cues by hand is quite easy, but very time consuming labour wise and the vagueries of the movement of timber when it is cut and shaped into a cue can be desperately annoying and very costly.

The quality of the raw materials used is paramount if the job is to be trouble free, but even close inspection and selection of what looks to be excellent timber doesn't make it so come the final or even the first cut. As a hobbiest I cannot afford to buy in bulk so make just one or two cues at a time at more cost than what it is to John Parris, but if the wood I'm using moves too much near the end of the process I find myself out of pocket to the tune of about £50, not counting the cost of forty hours of hard labour gone to waste.

I'm in the middle of making one now. The shaft I've had for over a year, shaped it little by little until it's now two mill oversize, tapering down from 32mm to 12mm and has stayed dead straight the past three months since it's last cut.
Glued on the first two butt splices last week and will glue on the second two sometime this week and then leave it for a month to see if the shaft moves. If it does I'm out of pocket again, if it doesn't then it will sell on ebay for enough money to fund my next one.

If I get good at this then next year I'm going to cash in a couple of frozen pension schemes, get myself some tooling and bulk buy some timber to do it this full time and hopefully get out of the awful monotonous soul destroying existence I'm in now and do something for a living that I'm actually interested in for the first time in my life.

So don't knock me/us hobbiests, we're trying our best and not (at least not yet ) deliberately ripping anyone off with shady deals on imported cues made from timber raped from virgin rainforests.
Just doing something we love that's all.

[gem]

Both Jason Owen and Crispian Jones were hobbiest cuemakers a couple or three years ago, yet now they have excellent reputations on this very forum, despite 99% of the people on this forum never having seen or played with any of their cues.
I myself am a hobbiest, but I have over twenty years experience as a wood machinist/joiner and quite honestly I find that making cues by hand is quite easy, but very time consuming labour wise and the vagueries of the movement of timber when it is cut and shaped into a cue can be desperately annoying and very costly.

The quality of the raw materials used is paramount if the job is to be trouble free, but even close inspection and selection of what looks to be excellent timber doesn't make it so come the final or even the first cut. As a hobbiest I cannot afford to buy in bulk so make just one or two cues at a time at more cost than what it is to John Parris, but if the wood I'm using moves too much near the end of the process I find myself out of pocket to the tune of about £50, not counting the cost of forty hours of hard labour gone to waste.

I'm in the middle of making one now. The shaft I've had for over a year, shaped it little by little until it's now two mill oversize, tapering down from 32mm to 12mm and has stayed dead straight the past three months since it's last cut.
Glued on the first two butt splices last week and will glue on the second two sometime this week and then leave it for a month to see if the shaft moves. If it does I'm out of pocket again, if it doesn't then it will sell on ebay for enough money to fund my next one.

If I get good at this then next year I'm going to cash in a couple of frozen pension schemes, get myself some tooling and bulk buy some timber to do it this full time and hopefully get out of the awful monotonous soul destroying existence I'm in now and do something for a living that I'm actually interested in for the first time in my life.

So don't knock me/us hobbiests, we're trying our best and not (at least not yet ) deliberately ripping anyone off with shady deals on imported cues made from timber raped from virgin rainforests.
Just doing something we love that's all.

I don't doubt that some hobiest cuemakers can make nice cues but the point I was making is that it really is at your own risk if buying from one without seeing the item first and you can't really moan about it afterwards.
Some people are naturally skilled at working with their hands and may quickly become better than someone that has been doing it for longer. In most areas though experience counts for a lot.

At the end of the day the quality of the cues that any individual consistently produces will dictate the price.