Cue Made with Japanese Hand Tools

[Daniel Marc Brooks]

Not an Aurora project is it, I seem to recall they were in BC 😂

No, it's just home made. I saw some photos years back of those cues, and I noticed that they were made locally.
They looked really well made. I think it may have been a maker in Richmond, BC, where there is a large Chinese
population and you can still find a few snooker halls.

[vmax]

Thanks very much! You clearly have a lot of know-how and experience in cue making, and I appreciate the tips.
I am very interested in why you also chose wenge for your first cue. I chose it simply because the lumber yard did
not have any ebony and the wenge was the only dark hardwood they did have. Had I known how tough it is to work
with, I would never have chosen it. I have since managed to get my hands on some ebony, and I can honestly say
that it is a dream to work with by comparison. Why did you choose it? Was it just prior woodworking experience, so
you already knew how to work with it? I do not see many cues made with it, so I am a bit curious.

You're right about the badge and flat. I had intended to do both of what you recommend, but I ran into problems.
The reason I made the mini-butt first was so that I could practice doing everything on wenge before starting the cue
itself, including planing it into a cylinder, cutting the flat, and embedding the plaque. Most mini-butts do not have flats,
but mine has one because I needed to practise and did not want to waste valuable wood. I tried with the plane, and I
wanted to plane from the butt towards the end with the joint, because the blade would be starting from the same point
on each pass (i.e. against the end of the wood). However, I was scared that the wood would splinter upwards. Also,
I noticed that no matter how sharp I had my plane, and how fine the shavings were, the wenge stubbornly refused to
plane smoothly in consistently the same direction. It only planed smoothly from the joint end towards the butt end, but
I could not get the blade to always start from the same point, which made a mess. Eventually I just decided to do it
slowly with my saws instead. I tried to use my chisels to cut away a small indent in the flat in which to embed the
plaque, however, I could not get the edges of the indent sharp and clean, and it looked messy. So I had to sand it
away and just screw the plaque on as is. I actually do not mind the screws sticking up, as I like the way they feel
against my hand. I did that on purpose actually, as I remember liking the feeling of screws that stuck up slightly on
a previous cue I had used as a teenager.

Your points on balance are really interesting. Does that apply to both types of cue, hand- and machine-spliced?
Do they both balance out naturally, provided that the proper wood and techniques are used?

Cheers

I chose wenge because it looks good, I had no idea at the time that it was full of resin pockets and splintered easily. I got around that by using the plane until 0.5mm oversize and sanding from there until final size and filling the open resin pockets I had left with epoxy mixed with wood dust.
If you think wenge is tought to work then stay away from ipe tabacca, a type of ironwood that is very aptly named, so hard that that blades blunt after five minutes of working so you're always sharpening them, but again it looks great when finished. One needs to check the direction of the grain before planing as planing against the grain is a definite no no. When I cut the wedges for my hardwood butt splices (split a piece diagonally on the bandsaw corner to corner to make two) then obviously one will have the grain going in a different direction to the other, so the cue will need to be planed according to the direction of the grain of the splice you're working on and changed when another splice comes under the plane.
Some really tough hardwoods like the afore mentioned ipe are so dense that it's almost impossible to see the grain but you'll know how it lies as soon as you start work on it as against the grain will tear out pieces but with the grain will give you shavings.

Yes most well made cues balance naturally around the eighteen inch mark, a bare shaft without the hardwood butt added will balance at around twenty five inches but this isn't absolute as all wood has different densities and a good cuemaker will take this into consideration when working on the cue if the need is to make it balance at a specific point for a certain customer, something that I don't do btw as satisfying a customer is a bloody minefield, not to be entered into without great caution as aesthetics seem to be incredibly important to some people, and those people are not proper players imo. They'll bitch about balance being 5mm out, not enough chevrons on the ash shaft, brown streaks in the ebony etc etc.

For more info see the threads on the cues section from myself, j6 and ninja as we all have pics and info for you to learn from.

[Danger Steve]

Excellent video Dan!

[Daniel Marc Brooks]

Excellent video Dan!

Thanks Danger Steve! Appreciate it

[Daniel Marc Brooks]

I chose wenge because it looks good, I had no idea at the time that it was full of resin pockets and splintered easily. I got around that by using the plane until 0.5mm oversize and sanding from there until final size and filling the open resin pockets I had left with epoxy mixed with wood dust.
If you think wenge is tought to work then stay away from ipe tabacca, a type of ironwood that is very aptly named, so hard that that blades blunt after five minutes of working so you're always sharpening them, but again it looks great when finished. One needs to check the direction of the grain before planing as planing against the grain is a definite no no. When I cut the wedges for my hardwood butt splices (split a piece diagonally on the bandsaw corner to corner to make two) then obviously one will have the grain going in a different direction to the other, so the cue will need to be planed according to the direction of the grain of the splice you're working on and changed when another splice comes under the plane.
Some really tough hardwoods like the afore mentioned ipe are so dense that it's almost impossible to see the grain but you'll know how it lies as soon as you start work on it as against the grain will tear out pieces but with the grain will give you shavings.

Yes most well made cues balance naturally around the eighteen inch mark, a bare shaft without the hardwood butt added will balance at around twenty five inches but this isn't absolute as all wood has different densities and a good cuemaker will take this into consideration when working on the cue if the need is to make it balance at a specific point for a certain customer, something that I don't do btw as satisfying a customer is a bloody minefield, not to be entered into without great caution as aesthetics seem to be incredibly important to some people, and those people are not proper players imo. They'll bitch about balance being 5mm out, not enough chevrons on the ash shaft, brown streaks in the ebony etc etc.

For more info see the threads on the cues section from myself, j6 and ninja as we all have pics and info for you to learn from.

Thanks vmax, I'll check out those threads.

Yes, I can only imagine how frustrating it must be for commercial makers to satisfy customer demands. When I did my research on
the Internet for my project, I read quite a bit and watched a lot of videos about ebony, as that was the wood I wanted to use. It is
interesting how in the West, jet-black ebony without any brown streaks is prized the most; however, in Japan and other parts of Asia,
it is the opposite. Ebony with gold or brown streaks is more prized than the jet-black variety.

Anyway, thanks again.

Dan.

[Daniel Marc Brooks]

Not an Aurora project is it, I seem to recall they were in BC 😂

Forgot to comment on your profile pic. Great choice! A legend in Canadian snooker