Billiards Speak

Over the next few weeks we will be adding several hundred more products to the already extensive list we currently have.  We’ll bring back Predator cues and add quality production cue names like Joss McDermott and Meucci.  We’ll also add Cue lines like Lucasi, Mezz, Riley snooker cues and a half dozen more name brands.  Our case offerings will increase substantially with popular lines like Instroke Joe Porper and Giuseppe.  By May we should have all our new product in place.

Your hands perspire. Perspiration, because part of its purpose is to remove cellular waste from our bodies, is acidic. Acid isn’t good for your cue. Neither is the chalk, powder, table grit, French-fry oil, cigarette smoke, or spilled pop or beer you inevitably come in contact with. Hopefully you occasionally wash your hands. Do the same with your cue. Don’t scrub it with a kitchen pad. Dampen a soft cloth in clean soapy water. Or just use rubbing alcohol. Wipe down the body of the cue with the cloth and immediately dry it with a different soft dry cloth. Pay special attention to the shaft. Regularly removing most of the embedded chalk and powder from the shaft will extend its playing life. A gentle rub down with a good wax or furniture polish, after the bath, will help protect your cue until its next contact with the outside world.

This cue is used but it is in like new condition. It comes with the full lifetime warranty. It was my personal playing cue until April of 2008. Photos are of the unfinished cue. It had not been polished. Serial number 00016 has 4 purpleheart spliced points into a nicely figured birdseye maple forearm. The purpleheart butt sleeve is inlaid with 4 malachite four leaf clovers. The clovers are offset by alternating black and white decorative circles above and below. The butt sleeve is separated by white and green trim rings. The butt cap is imitation ivory as is the joint collar which is also separated by green and white trim rings. It comes with 1 RAVEN tapered hard rock maple shaft that has matching rings and joint collar. The pressed linen wrap is green with white specks. This cue can be weighted up to about 20 ounces with a weight screw. It has had a few changes since it was built. The current bumper is a little different. The wrap has been replaced with the same pressed Irish linen. I also made a slight modification to the joint collar, but it looks the same.  Click Here to See This Cue!

Serial Number 00089 is complete. It is a Titlist Conversion Cue. That means the two piece cue was made from an original World War II era Brunswick-Balke-Collender Willie Hoppe Titlist house cue. The body is rosewood. The forearm is straight grained maple with four full spliced rosewood points. Each point has four veneers. The forearm is stamped with the original Willie Hoppe stamp and the original 18 ounce weight stamps. The points have the traditional early Titlist veneers: maple, mahogany, pale green and purple. The butt cap is double black linen phenolic. The butt cap is preceded by a buckhorn Hoppe ring that is underpinned with phenolic. The cue has a thick black phenolic ring on the butt side of the joint. The joint is buckhorn faced and underpinned with black linen phenolic.  Click Here to See This Cue!

We just added shipping to include Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Spain, France, Germany and Italy. If we don’t already ship to your country, send us an email and inquire. We may be able to extend our shipping range.

International Customers and those Outside the Continental US

We only offer one option for shipping outside the Continental US. To keep things Simple choose FedEx Ground. It calculates the least expensive shipping for you. The Country we are shipping your items to adds the proper shipping charge. 

Most people just don’t know how to care for their shafts. A shaft should be a consistent diameter to the ferrule for several inches back toward the butt or have a gradual taper in that direction. Most used shafts are not like that. They tend to be thinner a few inches back from the ferrule because of the over use of sandpaper or Scotch-Brite. In his first book Robert Byrne told the pool-playing world about Scotch-Brite. Now shafts all over the world sag in the middle because of its over use. It isn’t Mr. Byrne’s fault. If I recall correctly he described the usage of Scotch-Brite as a gentle caress on the shaft. Instead of a gentle caress, I cringe as people wrench a green pad around the shaft and pump it up and down like a piston in a cloud of wood dust. Sandpaper unless about 1500 grit is usually worse.

There are many new or improved features in our Discount Store. It now has Thumbnail Images next to all the Product Titles. It has Full Sized Images when you click to view and item. The Search feature is more responsive than it used to be. The upper Search Box is for Product Ids, Product Names or terms like Key Words. The bottom Search Box allows you to search by price if you are looking for a gift item. We added options to select your weight preference on cues instead of writing it in the notes section like before. The options are also there to choose sizes in the Clothing section.

Overall Security was excellent before but now it is even better. Encryption is more advanced. If you happen to forget to fill out something important in the actual Check Out process, the system ‘Reminds’ you go back and fill it out. We have added PayPal as an option to use for Purchases. Many of our Customers had requested PayPal so we added it. There are now several different choices for Shipping options. The Thumbnail Images follow over to your Shopping Cart so you can see the items as well as have a description of them. We hope these improvements will add to your overall shopping experience.

Accidentally leaving your cue in a hot car or a cold one, even for a relatively short period of time, may be enough to ruin a perfectly good cue.  Please don’t leave your cue in the trunk of a car.  The best rule of thumb is “If you are comfortable …your cue would be comfortable”. 

If your purchase is $45.00 or more from our Discount Store it qualifies for Free FedEx Ground Shipping. We can only ship for free within the Continental United States! If your purchase is less than $45.00 the shipping cost is only $4.95 for FedEx Ground within the Continental United States!

We do ship to all 50 US states.  We ship to Guam, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands! We also ship to Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom.

(Update 04/08/08) We just added shipping to include Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Spain, France, Germany and Italy. If we don’t already ship to your country, send us an email and inquire. We may be able to extend our shipping range.

There are about a dozen different materials in a typical two-piece cue. All of those materials expand and contract differently with heat and cold. The constant expanding and contracting is largely responsible for components of a cue being eventually felt through the finish. The finish is also worn down over time just by handling and playing with a cue. Taking it out of a case, putting it back in the case, cleaning the cue, in short every time it is touched the finish is being worn down. Metal rings are a particular problem. Because metal will expand and contract more readily than the other materials in a cue. Moisture, or humidity, is another cue killer. Most materials will absorb water and they swell when they do. The various results of exposure to temperature extremes alone can be severe. Joints become brittle and lose, rings poke through a previously smooth finish, inlays pop up and the finish separates from the surface of the wood. Unless you are going to hermetically seal the cue in a temperature and humidity controlled environment all you can do is slow down the process.  In almost every cue with metal rings you will eventually be able to feel them through the finish.