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Hard Maple Pool Cue Dowels

ROLAINE Enterprises, Inc. offers precision machined 1" diameter, 30" long dowels made from Sugar Maple  (Acer saccharum).  These are graded for pool cue shaft quality, which means that they are bright-white sapwood, straight-grained, physically-straight, tight-grained, and vacuum kiln-dried down to approximately 6% moisture content  (very stable and stress relieved).  These dowels are made from trees harvested in far-northern Wisconsin, Upper Peninsula Michigan, and Canada.  Trees growing in these extremely cold climates are very slow-grown, and on average, results in wood with extremely high ring counts.  To further improve the quality of these pool cue shaft dowels, we only process dowels made from trees harvested in the Fall and Winter.  Trees that have dropped their leaves no longer have sap, and this results in far fewer sugar streaks commonly seen in Sugar Maple.  Because of this, you will find that the availability of our shaft dowels is very seasonal.  We do try to stock up in the early Spring, to carry inventory until the next Fall.

Pool Cue Shaft Grades.

If you visit our Hard Maple baseball bat site  (RockBats.COM), you will see that we are very familiar with grading high-quality Hard Maple.  Solid-wood baseball bats is another product that requires high-quality Hard Maple.

 

Over the years, we have developed a simple, yet objective, grading system that provides the cue maker a clear picture of the grain structure they can expect to receive when ordering from us.

 

Pool Cue Shaft Dowel Grading System

While viewing the annual rings at one end of the dowel, we follow the center annual ring to the other end of the dowel  (30" of length).
Grade 1.   The center annual ring at one end remains near the center at the other end.  Not more than plus or minus 1/4" deviation from the center.
Grade 2.   The center annual ring at one end deviates slightly more than plus or minus 1/4" at the other end of the dowel, but less than 1/2"  (i.e.  the center annual ring remains on the dowel)
Grade 3.  The center annual ring at one end of the dowel runs down the center for about 1/2 the length, but then runs off the shaft.  These are best oriented such that the straight-grained section of the dowel coincides with the narrow end of the shaft.

Grade 4.  The center annual ring runs off the dowel right away.  This is a low-grade dowel based on grain structure.  However, it is given a pool cue dowel grade because it is PHYSICALLY STRAIGHT.   Physically-straight, bright-white maple dowels are still high-quality dowels.

 

(if you ever browse the dowel bin at your local hardware store or lumberyard, you will find that nearly all the dowels are warped, and none are as bright white as those offered here)

Grade 5.  These are dowels that are NOT physically straight.   Their grain structure may be grade 1 through grade 4 quality, and they are always bright-white... but if they are not straight, they are lumped in this final grade.   Great for smaller lathe projects: chess men, pen blanks, etc.

 

(if you have a special steam-bending technique that can possibly form these dowels back to straightness... these might still be worth considering for pool cue shafts.)

 

 

Ring Counts

In addition to grain straightness, cue makers also search for Hard Maple with extremely high ring counts.  The histogram below shows data that we gathered from a batch of dowels.  Note that a very small percentage of dowels have ring counts above 20 rings per inch.  The majority of dowels will be expected to have 8 to 15 rings per inch.

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Why is straight-grain needed for pool cue shafts?

All wood undergoes changes in moisture content... from summer to winter;  day to night; indoors to outdoors.  When moisture content increases, wood expands;  when moisture content decreases, wood shrinks.  It is important to understand that the maple in your pool cue shafts WILL change in moisture content  (i.e.  it will expand or shrink).

 

Wood expands or shrinks differently in the 3 axes:  Radial, Tangential, and Longitudinal.

 

Expansion/Shrinkage in the Tangential direction is about twice that in the Radial direction.  The figure below of the end section of a warped board illustrates this phenomenon.

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     T = 2xR 

 

 

 

A dowel will remain straight through changes in moisture content if the expansion/ shrinkage is symmetric throughout the length of the dowel.  If you have the same annual ring running the whole length of the dowel  (i.e. straight-grained), then the expansion/ shrinkage characteristics of the wood is the same throughout the whole length.

 

If you don't have straight-grain, one end of the dowel will have wood that is slightly closer to the outer bark of the log, and the other end of the dowel has wood that is slightly closer to the pith of the log.  This results in wood that has different expansion/ shrinkage characteristics at each end and along the length, and you can expect a dowel that is more prone to warp.

Availability.  Everyone always asks for grade 1 dowels having 30 rings per inch and higher.   We hope that the histogram below clarifies the ring counts that you can expect on a regular basis.  Dowels with 25 rings per inch, or higher, make up less than 1% of the ring count population. 

We based our pool cue categories on the frequency of ring count.  Using the data that we have gathered, you can expect 25% of all dowels to have 7-9 rings per inch; the next 25% have 10-12 rings per inch; the next 25% have 13-15 rings per inch; and the last 25%  category has about 16-20 rings per inch.  Any dowels above 20 rings per inch are considered RARE... and their price and availability reflects that.

Pricing

The following table shows how we organize our price structure, based on rings per inch and grade.  Click on the ring counts and grades to get more details.

 

Ring count Grade
1 2 3 4
7-9 $10 $8 $6 $6
10-12 $14 $12 $8 $7
13-15 $18 $16 $10 $8
16-20 $22 $20 $12 $10
20+ $30 $30 $20 $15

Above prices apply to orders of 1 to 15.

 

 

Click on the link below to view our page that we have setup for ordering the above pool cue dowels.

 

ORDER

 

If you have questions about shipping costs, please follow through with a simulated order to the check-out page.  Our website will calculate your shipping costs  (you must enter your zip code).

 

 

Shipping.  Most common sizes of packages are 4-packs, 16-packs, and 64-packs.   More than 64 dowels are shipped in multiple UPS Ground packages of 64 dowels each.

 

Our 4-pack sets are wrapped in poly bags, to protect from moisture during shipment.ROLAINE Enterprises

 

 

 

 

 

Current Specials!!!  Below are packages that have been put together and are ready for immediate shipping.  

 

(updated 01-06-2010)

 

(16) Grade 2 Cue Shaft Blanks

- all are exactly 7 rings per inch

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- bright white, clean

$69.95      Qty:     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
ROLAINE Enterprises, Inc.   ·   P.O. Box 6713   ·   Monona, WI  53716   ·   Lumber@ROLAINE.COM