cue making, repairs and help

[ADR147]

lol - yes my sister was there for a while and said its very nice and the curry is superb!

[keith auld]

Thanks ADR, it appears that it was a good story to get me to by the ebony they had available - oh well never mind !! - I needed ebony at that stage so suppose I should be grateful for what I got !!

[MikeWooldridge]

i believe the tamil tigers control the north and the ebony comes from the southwest - would be a lot easier to ship it from there than drive it hundreds of miles through what is effectively a war zone?

[ADR147]

mike sometimes my cheeky side comes out - benefits of education!

[keith auld]

Main article: Ecology of Sri Lanka


Flora and fauna
The mountains and the southwestern part of the country, known as the "wet zone," receive ample rainfall (an annual average of 2500 miliimeters). Most of the southeast, east, and northern parts of the country comprise the "dry zone," which receives between 1200 and 1900 mm of rain annually. Much of the rain in these areas falls from October to January; during the rest of the year there is very little precipitation, and all living creatures must conserve precious moisture. The arid northwest and southeast coasts receive the least amount of rain 600 to 1200 mm per year. However, though many say that there are no really dry areas in Sri Lanka, there are many pockets of very dry and abandoned areas where there is little to no rainwater. Concentrated within the short period of the winter monsoon. Varieties of flowering acacias are well adapted to the arid conditions and flourish on the Jaffna Peninsula (North of the Island) Among the trees of the dry-land forests are some valuable species, such as satinwood, ebony, ironwood, and mahogany. In the wet zone, the dominant vegetation of the lowlands is a tropical evergreen forest, with tall trees, broad foliage, and a dense undergrowth of vines and creepers. Subtropical evergreen forests resembling those of temperate climates flourish in the higher altitudes. Forests at one time covered nearly the entire island, but by the late 20th century lands classified as forests and

[trevs1]

Sounds beautiful doesn't it?

[keith auld]

General answers to e-mails, texts, private messages and phone messages left on the an

Hi all - Thanks for all the questions and enquiries, here's some general answers to many of your questions.
1) Yes - I do still make cues
2) I trained as a cabinet maker and the bulk of my work is bespoke furniture
making and restoration and the restoration of snooker tables
3) No - I'm not making any cues at the moment - I'm too busy !!
4) Yes - I will be making cues again and will be making a batch of 20-30
3/4 ash shafted/ebony butted cues together with 6 x 1piece at end
January/early February - all will be made to 60" long and then finished
back to individual requirements - any extra splices required in the butt
are extra - all cues come with small ebony butt extension and will be
allocated on a first order first get basis - email or private message me and
put you on the list in date received order and get back to you when I
start making
5) Yes - All my one piece cues are handmade
6) 3/4 cues all have handmade shafts and splices but the seperate butt
sections are turned
Sorry to have to answer your private questions this way, it's just that I'm too busy at the moment to be able to spend detailed time on the computer
Regards - Keith

[keith auld]

Hi all - at last managed to catch up with outstanding work and am back online if you've got any questions
Keith

[keith auld]

Mannoch and Colin Beets cues

Hi Mike - I've directed this to you because I'm sure you would have come into contact with Colin Beets over the years, as he lived near you in Portsmouth.
I wondered what your take was on this cuemaking discussion from the other night - The topic was engineers who used engineering principles for cuemaking, as opposed to us lot who use hand planes and traditional methods. From what I remember Mannoch was a top engineer and his cues were the first I ever saw that were made on what he called using engineering principles to obtain a very slim cue taper but retain a rigidity normally only found in a standard cue taper. However most of Mannoch's cues had flared butts, so some other variation must have come into his manufacturing back in the early 1950's . Another 'cue making' retired engineer, but probably less well known was, Ken Henry, (a top engineer who later reproduced Mannoch's hidden joint with great effect) who lived in Morden in Surrey, who took Mannoch's principles of mixing metric and imperial measurements one step further to produce these perfect tapers Mannoch wrote about, and adapted them to traditional cuemaking, possible I think with the advent of better quality plantation produced American ash being used for cues. When I moved from London to the South Coast in the early 90's I came into contact with cues made by Colin Beets, and although I knew of him due to a collaboration he once had with Henry West (Jimmy White's and Tony Meo's first manager), I never met him; but I still consider those cues he made to be some of the best around. However when comparing his cues, there seem s to be a close manufacturing similararity to Mannoch's and Ken Henry's; ie. the same engineering principle seems to have been used. I know that a local player, Colin Norton, was very friendly with Colin Beets before he retired and my eldest son knows him well so could ask him, but he's not a cue maker and is unlikely to understand the principles involved in cuemaking, but as you're more accessible here on the forum, I thought I'd ask you first whether you knew him and whether you were ever privvy to his cuemaking methods.

Keith

[poolqjunkie]

I would like to ask is hand spliced points used more often than butterfly splicing because of weight and balance concerns?

Also, would you please explain to me why is it that when I look at the hand spliced points on some cues, I see that the top of the points are even, but the bottom are a bit off. Is it very difficult to make the bottoms even as well?

Thank you.

[MikeWooldridge]

briefly to keith - i know colin but not well at all and no, i am/was not privy to his methods. from what i know he was notorious for being slow. e.g. a friend gave him a cue for re-ferrule and after many phone calls and months (yes, months) the guy's dad went to his house and saw his son's cue in exactly the same position behind the sofa as the day he dropped it off . he grabbed the cue and left. unhappy...

his work was pretty good, and i have it on good information that he had a small lathe set up in his bedroom (yes, his bedroom). bottom line, he appeared, like all of us, to have found his way of doing things.

his 'collaboration' with henry was due to me. i showed henry's brother wally, a great character and fantastic snooker player, one of my cues once and he was blown away and decided he wanted to set up a cue manufacturing business. his ideas were not in keeping with mine so i took an early step back, and a local engineer (whom i introduced) ended up setting the business up. colin came in at a late stage i believe.

the venture went tits up, as i suspected, the engineer done his 'nuts' and everyone 'disappeared'...

now going back to your original post, i mentioned that i'd keep my secrets to myself, and colin beets is partially to blame. i remember when i first started in this business, i was in a club chatting to him and a local club owner, and i asked him to show me how to put a join in. he said "yes, come round", and was very friendly and obliging, in front of the other person. but when i phoned next day he was completely different, guarded, and to be honest, quite rude. i would have had no problem if he was honest from the start, and in front of the other person. but he wasn't. i don't like that.

anyway, i decided there and then that i would never show anyone my own secrets. but at least i'd be honest and always make that clear. i sleep easy on that score...

mmm, not so brief after all. and i have so much more to say...

poolqjunkie - basically 'hand spliced' or four point splicing as i like to think it cos it's all 'hand splicing' when it's done 'by hand' and with care, is really a traditional thing that people expect. there are issues on weight/balance etc., but nothing that would make a butterfly splice, or machine spliced cue any worse than a hand spliced one. in fact there are some advantages.

great point about bottom of splices. i could hand splice a cue in 10 minutes and get the top points level. the hallmark of a really well made cue is to get top AND bottom splices level. this takes great skill, and time. and is VERY hard to get right.

however, something to always remember is that factor alone does not make a good cue. it just means it was carefully and well made. a cue with uneven points will play as well as any 'perfectly' spliced cue. but it all comes down to final quality and what we want to see. i set my stall out years ago to make the best cues to play with AND the best looking cues. so even points, top and bottom, are important to me.

perhaps we should liken it to a car. yes, any car will get you from a to b, but would you rather turn up in a mercedes or fiat panda?

we all want to look good eh?

[poolqjunkie]

Thank you Mike, for your answer. Much appreciated. I have seen one of your cue with snakewood here in my local area, and it is top notch in everyway.

When you use the term hand made, do you mean it in its strict sense, as in no lathe being used at all?

If you do not use any lathe, does that mean the shafts only fit the butts they were built for? How do you make sure it is centered and faced?

If the joint is built above the splicing, will the ash move over time, so the grains do not match anymore?

[keith auld]

Hi Mike - thanks for the reply - yeah Wally was a character, but I knew Henry better because at that time I used to look after Jimmy's and Tony's cues and if they couldn't drop them in to me at the shop I had in Wimbledon at the time, then Henry would, and boy could he talk !; so it appears 'characters' run in that family. The cue you refer to was if I remember correctly called the 'Knowledge' cue and made in Portugal. I remember getting a phone call from Henry asking if I could straighten some for him, thinking he only had about 4 or 5 to do, I said yes; he said that he had them at Jimmy's club in Aldershot, I said ok I'd collect them and and having recently moved to Southampton area by that time agreed to do them in the workshop I had in Titchfield only to find that he had in excess of 50 needing straightening and (strangely enough bearing in mind poolqjunkie's question) they were all duck beak spliced and all were a heap of crap, it's no wonder they never sold any. Maybe Henry managed to get rid of them on his market stall at some later date. I did get them straight but for how long they stayed that way is debateable.
Great thread though, You hear all sorts of things in this trade (not many of them flattering, mostly through jealousy), and it's good to hear your observations of certain people and it's nice to know there's another perfectionist around.
I totally agree with you with your reply to 'poolqjunkie' regarding handmade cues. He does bring up an interesting point though, 'at what stage does a cue stop becoming handmade ?' and do we have to consider that if we physically turn a cue butt on a lathe (as opposed to automatic lathes), does this still qualify as handmade' - I would say 'yes', I would like to think this method could still be considered handmade because we all tend to use tapers that we become accustomed to making and are therefore to a degree unique to ourselves and even with a copy lathe the taper set up is based on something you have produced by hand and then transferred to the lathe and although turned in the rough still needs to be finished, sanded and burnished on the lathe by hand
It'd be interesting to hear other cue makers views on this point

[MikeWooldridge]

When you use the term hand made, do you mean it in its strict sense, as in no lathe being used at all?

no. i mean one person physically doing the jobs using his own eyes and hands from start to finish to make sure every detail is correct. i mostly use planes, but i can make a shaft with lathe or plane and you would not see the difference cos the end result would be the same. and that's cos it was done 'by hand'. mass produced cues are 'machine' made, often using big copy lathes with little attention to details. easy in, easy out.

If you do not use any lathe, does that mean the shafts only fit the butts they were built for? How do you make sure it is centered and faced?

i've never said i don't use lathes...

lathes are essential for joint work. but even then there other ways...

If the joint is built above the splicing, will the ash move over time, so the grains do not match anymore?

not the ash, the brass face may wear.

[MikeWooldridge]

Hi Mike - thanks for the reply - yeah Wally was a character, but I knew Henry better because at that time I used to look after Jimmy's and Tony's cues and if they couldn't drop them in to me at the shop I had in Wimbledon at the time, then Henry would, and boy could he talk !; so it appears 'characters' run in that family. The cue you refer to was if I remember correctly called the 'Knowledge' cue and made in Portugal. I remember getting a phone call from Henry asking if I could straighten some for him, thinking he only had about 4 or 5 to do, I said yes; he said that he had them at Jimmy's club in Aldershot, I said ok I'd collect them and and having recently moved to Southampton area by that time agreed to do them in the workshop I had in Titchfield only to find that he had in excess of 50 needing straightening and (strangely enough bearing in mind poolqjunkie's question) they were all duck beak spliced and all were a heap of crap, it's no wonder they never sold any. Maybe Henry managed to get rid of them on his market stall at some later date. I did get them straight but for how long they stayed that way is debateable.
Great thread though, You hear all sorts of things in this trade (not many of them flattering, mostly through jealousy), and it's good to hear your observations of certain people and it's nice to know there's another perfectionist around.
I totally agree with you with your reply to 'poolqjunkie' regarding handmade cues. He does bring up an interesting point though, 'at what stage does a cue stop becoming handmade ?' and do we have to consider that if we physically turn a cue butt on a lathe (as opposed to automatic lathes), does this still qualify as handmade' - I would say 'yes', I would like to think this method could still be considered handmade because we all tend to use tapers that we become accustomed to making and are therefore to a degree unique to ourselves and even with a copy lathe the taper set up is based on something you have produced by hand and then transferred to the lathe and although turned in the rough still needs to be finished, sanded and burnished on the lathe by hand
It'd be interesting to hear other cue makers views on this point

lol

portugal? portsmouth!! a local engineer set it all up. and he got stung with the bill!

my view on 'hand made' is answered in part in the above post, and i basically do not believe the use of any power tool makes a cue 'machine' made.

perhaps there should be a third category of cue to make it clearer to people how we make cues:

the 'made by bodily parts only' cue

first we go into the forest and break the ash from from the trees with our bare hands, then gnaw the shafts with our cuemakers teeth until we form a perfect shaft, before finishing off by polishing it between the crack of our a*** cheeks...

now that's a pure hand made cue!