How To Care For Your Pool Cue Tip
The Cue Tip is used in every shot you make. To keep your shots accurate and consistent, it is important to have a good tip at all times.
It is very important to keep your Pool Cue Tip clean. How clean your tip is will affect your accuracy, touch, back spin, smoothness of your stroke and precision of each and every shot you take.
The actual tip to ball contact point is what primarily determines the spin to speed ratio on the Cue Ball. You want to make sure you have precise control of the spin without a miscue. For this purpose, a rounded tip is better than a flat tip. To shape your Cue Tip you can use a Tip Scuffer, a File, a piece of 400 to 600 grit sandpaper or other abrasive Tip Tools.
Miscues occur when the Cue Tip slides on the surface of the ball. One reason this occurs is when the tip will not hold chalk. This happens when the tip gets packed down and slick from hitting the cue ball.
Tapping the tip will give the surface of it texture and allow it to hold the chalk. You can buy special Tip Tools to tap the tip, or you can use a rasp, a coarse file or coarse sandpaper glued to a wood backing which can be rolled over the tip surface. Scuffing with sandpaper will wear the tip away fast. For longer tip life, scuff less and tap more.
Cue Tips can also mushroom over time. This means that the tip leather is bulging at the sides so that it is wider than the ferrule. Most players prefer to remove this bulge instead of replacing the tip. The best way to remove a bulge from a tip is to use a lathe. If you do not have one, other methods can be used too.
You can buy cutting tools that are designed especially to remove a bulge from the tip. Fine 600 grit sandpaper can also be used, but care should be taken not to scratch the ferrule. Pocket knives and razor blades can be used, but make sure you do not damage the ferrule, or your fingers.
After removing the mushroom bulge from the Cue Tip, the edges can be polished by wetting the sides and rubbing the leather edge of the tip firmly against a cloth or a leather pad.
You should also maintain the Ferrule. Over time, chalk, dirt and other foreign substances can build up and embed on your Pool Cue like a tar substance. You can clean the Ferrule and Tip of your Pool Cue regularly by simply wiping the whole cue down with a wet cloth. Just make sure to fully dry it off after doing so. This will prevent the build up from occuring and will make for a smoother, cleaner and better playing shaft,
Keeping your tip, ferrule and shaft clean will not only improve your game but will extend the life of your Pool Cue.
