Phantom
12-14-2007, 12:59 AM
Recently, after letting a friend demushroom my tip, I noticed a series of long parellel scratches on my ferrule. Being the freak that I am about cue conditioning, and a dork in general, I decided to have a look at it through a magnifying lens (an inverted eyepiece actually) to see if the ferrule was cracked or just scratched ( I have heard that Predator ferrules do scratch easily).
What was really intersting though, in a perfectly meaningless way, was not what I found on the ferulle, but the shaft itself. I had always assumed that shafts took on the tint of the colour chalk used most predominantly, but under magnification, I noticed that the shaft was not Master Chalk blue, but dark green with red highlights, the colour of the tables cloth I play on most. It appears that cloth fibers are actually being imbeded in tiny scratches on the shafts surface, or the wood pores. All the fibres (if they are actually fibres) run horizantly along the shaft, which makes sense considering the cues path during a stroke. Many of these fibres could be "picked up" when cueing on the rail, or during draw strokes that follow through to the felt.
I know this subject has no relevance really, but as an academic experiment it would be interesting to see if any forum members (who regularly play on tables with a colour cloth thats different than their chalk colour) can confirm my observations. Just place your shaft under a light source and look backwards through a pair of binoclars with the surface very close to the lens (you will have to move the binoculars closer or farther to focus).
What a lame post this is.
I do realize that shaft tint may be a combination of both chalk and embeded cloth fibres.
No, I will not let anyone touch my tip again, unless they are certified professionals.
What was really intersting though, in a perfectly meaningless way, was not what I found on the ferulle, but the shaft itself. I had always assumed that shafts took on the tint of the colour chalk used most predominantly, but under magnification, I noticed that the shaft was not Master Chalk blue, but dark green with red highlights, the colour of the tables cloth I play on most. It appears that cloth fibers are actually being imbeded in tiny scratches on the shafts surface, or the wood pores. All the fibres (if they are actually fibres) run horizantly along the shaft, which makes sense considering the cues path during a stroke. Many of these fibres could be "picked up" when cueing on the rail, or during draw strokes that follow through to the felt.
I know this subject has no relevance really, but as an academic experiment it would be interesting to see if any forum members (who regularly play on tables with a colour cloth thats different than their chalk colour) can confirm my observations. Just place your shaft under a light source and look backwards through a pair of binoclars with the surface very close to the lens (you will have to move the binoculars closer or farther to focus).
What a lame post this is.
I do realize that shaft tint may be a combination of both chalk and embeded cloth fibres.
No, I will not let anyone touch my tip again, unless they are certified professionals.