History of cue making

[TornadoTed]

I have a friend who bought round a Peradon Joe Davis yesterday. First of all he said it was 100 years old and straight away I thought no way! It turns out that Peradon have only had the patent for 80 years

There were loads of things that pointed to it being new, the varnish hadn't yellowed, the butt looked ebonized, there was a brass joint, it was straight taper, it was around 17-18oz, the badge hadn't yellowed.

It then got me thinking when manufacturers started using brass joints, weighting cues, using ebonized wood, when the straight taper became popular etc. I spent an hour searching Google and this site but couldn't seem to find much history on when a lot of these things came into existence.

[100-uper]

I have a friend who bought round a Peradon Joe Davis yesterday. First of all he said it was 100 years old and straight away I thought no way! It turns out that Peradon have only had the patent for 80 years

There were loads of things that pointed to it being new, the varnish hadn't yellowed, the butt looked ebonized, there was a brass joint, it was straight taper, it was around 17-18oz, the badge hadn't yellowed.

Peradon started to supply a "Joe Davis" cue in 1935. This is an advert from their catalogue of that year.



I'm pretty sure this was not the earliest "Joe Davis" cue on the market, as I recall seeing one which referenced his championship record break of 2,052, which dates from 1930. I'm not sure who manufactured this, probably Thurston, as the break was made on one of their tables.

Can anyone push this date further back?

[blackswan01]

According to Andy Hunter's 'The Cue Collector' articles:
'The earliest Joe Davis cue I know is a
machine-spliced black butted cue
commemorating the "Joe Davis record break"
of 980. It has an ash shaft with a plain ebony
butt. The single example I have seen was
presented to the Grandfather of the current
owner who lived close to Joe Davis'
Chesterfield home. The break of 980 was made
in the preliminary round of the Second Division
Professional Championship in 1924. The
match was against Tom Carpenter, the Welsh
Champion and played at the Great Western
Hotel in Cardiff and by mutual consent, the
players used a table fitted with the new
"Janus" cotton cloth. This innovation was
obviously to the liking of Davis who
surpassed all his previous achievements with
the break which was spread over three
sessions. Davis, who was still only 23 years-old easily passed his
previous best of 599 and also Tom Newman's championship record in
the "senior" Professional Championship which at that time stood at
850.'

Andy intends on writing further articles in the future on the history of the snooker cue. He's also in the process of making a series of videos on this subject. I'm uploading these onto Youtube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOgzXxj0y3E.
He will be addressing subjects such as early ebonizing of cues (this process began before 1900) as well as the other topics mentioned.