Games - Cue stick

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	Games - Cue stick

A cue stick or simply cue, is an item of sporting equipment essential to the games of billiards, pool and snooker. It is used to strike a ball, usually the cue ball. Cues are tapered sticks, typically about 1.5m (58inches) and 510-600g (18-21oz). Most cues are made of wood, but occasionally the wood is covered or bonded with other materials including graphite and/or fiberglass.

Different kinds of cues and their parts

Construction aspects

Cues average around 58 inches in length and are of two major types. One type is a one piece cue; these are generally stocked in pool halls for use by the casual player. They have a uniform taper, meaning they decrease in diameter evenly from the end or butt to the tip. The other type is the two piece cue, divided in the middle for ease of transport, usually in a cue case. There are also cues that have more, notably three to five. They are usually for intermediate cues that can be used for breaking, jumping, changing of weights on the butt, as well as extensions on the butt end for longer reachs. Certain two piece cues that look like one piece cues are called "Sneaky-Petes". They are usually plain in design to look like a regular one-piece bar cue so as to hustle unsuspecting gamblers.

Joints

The large heavy piece of the cue is known as the cue butt and the smaller end is known as the shaft. The two pieces of the cue are attached at the joint, which is normally made up of a screw rising from butt end's joint which is threaded into a receptacle on the shaft's joint. The joints are made of various materials; usually a plastic, aluminium, stainless steel, or wood outer layer, but sometimes custom cues are made of bone, antlers, and other more expensive materials that are usually less common, but serve the same effect. The internal male and female connection points are almost always brass, or steel since they respond less to temperature changes and thus expand and contract less than other materials, preserving the life of the cue. Joints have different sizes as well as different male and female ends on the shaft and butts of the cues. Traditional designs employ a fully threaded connection, while newer versions such as Uni-loc, Accu-loc, or Tru-loc, employ half threaded "Quick pin release" connections to allow for players to assemble and disassemble their cues faster.

Parts of the Shaft

Shafts are made with various tapers, the two most common being the Pro taper and the European taper. The Pro taper has the same diameter from the tip to 30-35 cm (12-14 inches) down. The European taper is conical and widens towards the joint.

Ferrule

The end of the shaft has a cuff known as the ferrule which is used to hold the cue tip in place and to bear the brunt of impact with the cue ball so that the less resilient shaft wood does not split. Ferrules are predominantly made of ivory, carbon fiber, or a plastic such as melamine, aegis or phenolic resin which are extremely durable, high-impact materials that are resistant to cracking, chipping, and breaking.

Tips

Leather tips of varying degrees of shapes and hardness are affixed to the ferrule. The standard shapes for a tip are nickel and dime, determined by shaping a tip so that when one puts a nickel or dime to it, they are the same curvature. Quarter-shaped tips are less common, though are usually used for breaking cues because less curvature means less accidental spin and more accuracy for a straight shot such as the break. Rounder tips impart english/spin more easily since the point of contact between a tip and the cueball requires less distance from the center hit to do the same amount of spin due to the increased tangential contact. Tips are sometimes made of harder materials such as phenolic resin because it is favored upon for a break cue (Breaks usually require less spin, thus less round harder tips preserve the shape of the tip longer without sacrificing the effectiviness of the break). The tip end of the cue will vary in diameter but is typically in the 11 to 14 millimeter ('mm') range with 13 mm for pool cues being most common and 10 mm for Snooker cues being most common. The leather tip of a pool cue is used to hit the cue ball. Because leather naturally compresses and hardens with consequent shots, it is more likely to slide off of the cueball, from smoothness/glossiness of the tip, on the hit without some material allowing it to grip the cueball. To help in this matter, Cue chalk is placed on the tip of the cue, ideally after every shot, so that the player does not miscue. This is especially important when the player is not hitting the cueball in the center and is, thus, imparting spin/english to the cue ball. There are different grades of hardness for tips, ranging from very soft to very hard. Softer tips like "Elk Master" hold chalk better, but tend to degrade faster from abrasion (from chalk and scuffers), shaping (from cue tip shapers/tackers/picks), and mushrooming (from normal use or hard hits that compact the tip from all directions). Harder tips like "Triangle" maintain their shape much better, but because of their hardness, chalk tends to not hold as well as it does on softer tip materials. Usually the hardness of a tip is from the compression that was used in making it. Some tips are layered (like "Talisman") and some are one-piece (like "LePro"). Layered tips hold their shape better than one-piece tips, but they can sometimes "unlayer/delaminate" from use, shots, or tip tools. One-piece tips don't have this disadvantage, but instead tend to mushroom more easily.

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