Joint thread thread!

[JellyTot]

"The female part requires a larger hole and can also have a hole right through it which will allow weight to be removed or added to the butt."

or as is the case with Trevors cues the hole allows for a biro to be hidden in there

[totlxtc]

hehehe that still not out yet?

[YDJ]

Thanks Trevor for your short statement of agreement.

Thank you Mike for trying to destroy my apparently inaccurate Theory.

No I am not a Master Cue maker such as you but I have repaired many and made a few.

The few cues I built with joints were based around the theory I stated.

Rightly or wrongly that is the logic I used for why I did it that way.

[DandyA]

it will take between 1.5 and 2.5 seconds.

many thanks for that ADR ... I'm sorry for being a newbie and never having seen an airlock joint in action but it sounds like they are reasonably quick ...

[DandyA]

ahem... (clear throat). RUBBISH!!!

<remainder of post deleted from this quote by DandyA cos it's quite long but absolutely fascinating - see above for the whole of it>

Mike, huge thanks for your posting ... I for one really enjoyed reading your detailed comments and appreciate you spending the time to explain that to us ...

Thanks!

[poolqjunkie]

i should add, i'm not saying fitting joins one way or the other is better. i'm saying categorically it doesn't make a blind bit of difference

Mike,
Why is the wood to wood joint very commonly used in American pool cues not used in snooker? By a wood to wood joint I am referring to a joint pin 3/8" in diameter, made of brass or stainless steel, with a wood female threaded in the shaft or butt, no brass insert. Usually a phenolic collar is added to prevent the wood from cracking around the joint. e.g. 3/8x10", 3/8x11" and so on.

[trevs1]

ahem... (clear throat). RUBBISH!!!



ebony is no doubt dense and strong in some senses, but very brittle. ash is not so heavy but extremely strong under stress. for the purposes of examining strength at the join, the shaft is not 'weaker'. and i reckon i've seen more ebony butts split with the so called smaller join so the evidence goes totally against your 'theory'.

of course the shaft is smaller, but we are talking tiny fractions between shaft and butt making it negligible.



in theory it sounds good, but makes little difference regardless of how big the join is. e.g. hunt and o'byrne original is big internally. but i've rarely seen any of those over the years that have broken at the join.

in fact, in my opinon, within reason, the larger diameter the join internally, the bigger the contact area (and glued area) between wood and metal, thereby giving greater overall strength.

also, the wood in a centre join 2pc is much thinner than a butt join cue. and yet the 'bigger' female is successfully fitted and remains 'unbroken' indefinitely. this alone disproves the theory that the larger sized internal join should be fitted in the larger butt part for fear of 'weakness'.



what?!? are you experienced in american pool cues or something? cos i've never ever seen a weight put into a cue through the female join and i've never had the need to do it myself. not least cos the hole would be quite small meaning how are you going to get a reasonable sized weight through that hole with enough glue to hold it without getting glue in the threads?

of course, it can be done, and i have toyed with it in the past. but it is NOT a reason that i've ever come across for manufacturers/cuemakers fitting joins that way.



lol. give me a room of 1000 people and not one of them could detect the tiniest change of balance by swapping the joins around. you're talking about 1oz-2oz over a 2"-3" area. NOBODY would notice and NO discernable 'distribution' of weight would be evident.

one question remains, where did you get your information from? do you make cues? repair them?



as i've explained above. there is not a genuine reason why a join should be fitted one way or the other. so fitting the join the most convenient way is, well...simply more convenient, and user friendly.

Good post Mike, more concise and accurate than my half an effort.

When I replied to the post you referred to, it was to agree with the joint orientation and was not intended to imply that holes in one fitting or another aided weight adjustment etc.

I should have been a little clearer than I was perhaps.

I would say though, that in my experience, jointed cues breaking tend to break more at the shaft end of the joint and not the butt, but I'd agree that your experiences of this might be slightly different to my own.

For those who are interested....this is my take on it.

When we think of it, if we have a joint which has female side spiggot with an O/D (outside diameter) of 15mm, and, a male spiggot (or side) of the joint which has a O/D of 10mm, then it's easy to see that one of these joint fittings is going to need a larger hole to fit it than the other half of the joint will.

On a 3/4 cue, the shaft has four short splices of ebony bonded onto it, which will typically leave about a 15mm square of the ash or maple underneath them. This shaft, with its short ebony splices and central 15mm square of shaft timber would then need to be bored to accept a joint fitting.

If this side of the cue was bored with a drill of, let's say 13.5mm, then a thread tapped to accept the joint, then the hole which has been bored out, will be virtually the same size or diameter as the piece of solid ash or maple left in the centre of the short ebony splices of the shaft. This does not allow much solid ash or maple to then offer support to this joint.

This would mean that the fitting is now largely relying on the integrity of the gluelines of the short ebony splices, and, while adhesives as we know them are excellent today, it would be easy to argue that they still do not offer the same amount of strength that solid timber offers.

So, for this reason, (and personally speaking) I'd say the male joint, with its 10mm diameter would be more reliable in service than the larger female joint, at least in the shaft side of the cue. As Mike states, solid ebony can be brittle but it's still an extremely strong timber, and as such, would offer an increased level of strength over the shaft side, which is constructed of four gluelines bonding the short ebony splices, along with a very minimal amount of ash or maple to aid with support.

I hope I have'nt bored you all with my view on it, but this post is the reason for such a short response earlier.

[trevs1]

Mike,
Why is the wood to wood joint very commonly used in American pool cues not used in snooker? By a wood to wood joint I am referring to a joint pin 3/8" in diameter, made of brass or stainless steel, with a wood female threaded in the shaft or butt, no brass insert. Usually a phenolic collar is added to prevent the wood from cracking around the joint. e.g. 3/8x10", 3/8x11" and so on.

Maybe it's due to the fact that in North America the makers of cues are a little more into different joint materials than we are here in the UK.

I believe there is a strong set of opinions and views over which materials offer this or that type of contact (or hit) in a cue, whereas we over here are less concerned with this particular issue in a cue.

I might be wrong with that, but it's what I've seen and experienced.

EDIT....

I am sure Mike will provide his own reply when and if he appears later today.

[YDJ]

Now that is informative.
Thank you Trevor.

[burwatchampion]

I know im not mike ether!

I think the theory is that a wood to wood joint will give you more feel for the shot using spin and screw etc..
And metal joints for power shots. (break and jump shots)
I think it has allot to do with the sneaky pete cue myself for hustling.

[ADR147]

trevor you don't have time for these long posts mate get back to my cues!

[MikeWooldridge]

Thanks Trevor for your short statement of agreement.

Thank you Mike for trying to destroy my apparently inaccurate Theory.

No I am not a Master Cue maker such as you but I have repaired many and made a few.

The few cues I built with joints were based around the theory I stated.

Rightly or wrongly that is the logic I used for why I did it that way.

lol. i wasn't trying to 'destroy' your theory as such. it's just misleading and inaccurate. like i said, nothing wrong with the theory, but it doesn't quite work like that.

it concerns me when people post information which is factually misleading. albeit, intended as an opinion etc..

many inexperienced people come to this forum for advice and faced with well written 'facts', may draw the wrong conclusion and pass on their new found knowledge to others. thus increasing the circle of 'misinformation'.

i wasn't questioning whether you were a 'master cue maker' and therefore 'allowed' to voice your opinion. i simply wondered where you drew your in-depth opinion from cos it read like a statement of fact rather than a general opinion or view on the matter.

i suspected an american pool background cos of the weight through join idea. i simply have never come across it in all the cues i have repaired/altered. fitted at manufacture behind join, yes, but retro fitted, no. therefore not a reason for the female being fitted in any particular place.

Mike,
Why is the wood to wood joint very commonly used in American pool cues not used in snooker? By a wood to wood joint I am referring to a joint pin 3/8" in diameter, made of brass or stainless steel, with a wood female threaded in the shaft or butt, no brass insert. Usually a phenolic collar is added to prevent the wood from cracking around the joint. e.g. 3/8x10", 3/8x11" and so on.

dunno really...

i've always preferred a wood to wood contact myself. i mean the join faces.

don't personally think it makes much difference how the actual faces are brought together, nor the materials of the threads.

i just think transferrance of feel is a little more natural and closer to a 1pc.

Now that is informative.
Thank you Trevor.

lol. i thought my post was rather informative...

I would say though, that in my experience, jointed cues breaking tend to break more at the shaft end of the joint and not the butt, but I'd agree that your experiences of this might be slightly different to my own.


When we think of it, if we have a joint which has female side spiggot with an O/D (outside diameter) of 15mm, and, a male spiggot (or side) of the joint which has a O/D of 10mm, then it's easy to see that one of these joint fittings is going to need a larger hole to fit it than the other half of the joint will.

On a 3/4 cue, the shaft has four short splices of ebony bonded onto it, which will typically leave about a 15mm square of the ash or maple underneath them. This shaft, with its short ebony splices and central 15mm square of shaft timber would then need to be bored to accept a joint fitting.

If this side of the cue was bored with a drill of, let's say 13.5mm, then a thread tapped to accept the joint, then the hole which has been bored out, will be virtually the same size or diameter as the piece of solid ash or maple left in the centre of the short ebony splices of the shaft. This does not allow much solid ash or maple to then offer support to this joint.

This would mean that the fitting is now largely relying on the integrity of the gluelines of the short ebony splices, and, while adhesives as we know them are excellent today, it would be easy to argue that they still do not offer the same amount of strength that solid timber offers.

So, for this reason, (and personally speaking) I'd say the male joint, with its 10mm diameter would be more reliable in service than the larger female joint, at least in the shaft side of the cue. As Mike states, solid ebony can be brittle but it's still an extremely strong timber, and as such, would offer an increased level of strength over the shaft side, which is constructed of four gluelines bonding the short ebony splices, along with a very minimal amount of ash or maple to aid with support.

I hope I have'nt bored you all with my view on it, but this post is the reason for such a short response earlier.

well i'm bored...

no, seriously, good post. although i disagree a little on the four splice thing:

laminated wood is stronger than solid wood. why? cos where solid wood may have a weakness in the grain somewhere, laminated is made of lots of different bits and where one weakness is, another strength counteracts it. same applies to four splices in my opinion. the central core of wood is held on four sides by four different pieces of wood, so any weakness is kinda covered.

i've often repaired cues that are completely split at the join by oversplicing. never breaks again, despite the fact that underneath the splices is a dirty big crack!

also, another reason i believe this, is that i've repaired shafts at ferrule end which have gone dry/brittle and snapped, by 4 over-splices, and you'd be amazed at the cue power and feel that the shaft suddenly has.

so, i believe four splices actually brings strength and does not bring any weakness.

but having said all that, this sort of thing has been mentioned many times, and as you know yourself trev, a well fitted join is a well fitted join regardless.

the subtle differences between one method or another really do not come into play.

like they say, there's more than one way to skin a cat

[burwatchampion]

Almost forgot the american cue makers would like you to buy 3 to 4 cues!
One for the break one for the jump shot one for a touch shot and one for power!!!
I love marketing

[cocked hat]

Shaft strength

I was interested in one of your comments there Mike,albeit slightly off topic.

You said about repairing the ferrule end with a four point splice.I must admit I've never heard of this before.Is this the normal way to mend damage at the narrow part?

I had to repair my old faithful a couple of years ago and decided the only way would be a Mortice and tenon.

http://www.thesnookerforum.com/board...1&d=1222425762

The tenon was about three inches long.Would I have been better splicing it,or would the position of the break,12 ins in,been too far up the shaft?The repair was successful btw.

[spartacus_ck]

like they say, there's more than one way to skin a cat

You sick b@stard!!! lol