Guides5 minute read
Looking after a cue
Most cues are ruined by a hot car, not by play. Five minutes of care, and the things that quietly destroy one.
Almost nobody wears a cue out by playing with it. What ruins cues is where they are kept between games — and in this climate that is overwhelmingly one thing, which is the boot of a car in February.
What actually destroys a cue
- A hot car
- The single most common way a cue dies. Timber warps in heat, and a boot in an Adelaide summer reaches temperatures nothing made of wood survives straight. Take it inside.
- Damp, and then dry
- A cue left in a garage through a wet winter and a dry summer moves twice. Somewhere indoors with stable air is worth more than any amount of polishing.
- Standing it in a corner
- A cue leaned against a wall for months bends toward the wall. Lie it flat or hang it, or keep it in its case.
- A worn tip
- A tip flattens and glazes with use. A glazed tip will not hold chalk, and a tip that will not hold chalk miscues — which is usually blamed on technique.
- Hand oil on the shaft
- Sweat and skin oil build up and make the shaft sticky, so the cue drags through the bridge instead of sliding. This is what makes an old cue feel wrong.
The five minutes that keep it right
Chalk properly
Brush the chalk across the tip rather than grinding it in. Grinding rounds the sides of the tip and wears it unevenly, and it puts chalk dust everywhere. Chalk before any shot you care about and certainly before anything with side on it.
Wipe the shaft down when you finish
A clean, slightly damp cloth, then a dry one. Once a session. This is the whole of what most cues need and the reason an old cue in good hands still slides like a new one.
Keep the tip shaped
A tip should be domed roughly to the curve of a five cent piece, not flat. A flat tip cannot strike anywhere but the centre of the cue ball, which removes half the game. Any club will have a tip tool; ask rather than attacking it with sandpaper.
Know when to replace it
When it has worn down close to the ferrule, when it has gone hard and shiny and will not take chalk, or when it is mushrooming out over the edges. A tip is a consumable — a player who plays weekly will change one once or twice a year, and it costs very little compared to what it does.
If you use house cues
Most of this still matters, in one respect: pick a good one. Roll each candidate along the table and reject anything that lifts at the tip as it turns. Look at the tip — domed and slightly rough is good, flat and glazed is not. Thirty seconds at the rack before you start is worth more than anything you will do in the following hour.