24 Feb 2008 12:33:29 | Bob Meucci
The Black Dot Bullseye Shaft is the result of many years of
research and development to bring to the player the optimum
conditions necessary to play the extremely accuracy-demanding
game of Billiards.
The goal of the Black Dot Bullseye Shaft is to deliver to you
the player something that has never been done before by any cue
makers (custom or production) – any time or anywhere including
Meucci Originals. That goal is to provide multiple shafts that
play precisely the same, while reducing cue ball deflection and
increasing power to an unprecedented level.
Why is that important to you as the player? Decreased cue ball
deflection, and increased power should be obvious. As you might
know, your mind adjusts to the very fine variations in the shaft
you choose to play with over a fairly short period of time. But
heaven help you if the tip comes off that special shaft in the
MIDDLE of intense competition.
As all top players know, one shaft fits their brain (sight
picture) better than the other, unused shaft in their case. If
you don’t believe that, open any top player’s case and the
second shaft will be virtually unused and the player might tell
you that one of the shafts (the dirty shaft) happens to be his
favorite; meanwhile, the other shaft remains clean and fairly
unused. There is a very good reason for this phenomenon and it
has to do with the differences in natural wood, and the power of
the human mind.
Single-piece, maple shafts vary considerably from one to the
next because of the grain structure created by the location that
the shaft is cut from within the particular tree. Fast growth
wood – near the center of the log – is softer, and more
flexible, where later growth rings nearer the outside of a large
tree, are closer together and create a much stiffer shaft. That
variation is as much as more than double the stiffness from one
side of the spectrum of the tree to the other. When you take
into consideration the differences in the wood grain and the
time it takes for the human mind to readjust to the fine nuances
of “sight picture,” this is more than a player should have to
deal with when attempting to change from one shaft to the other.
For these reasons, we have decided to take random chance out of
the picture.
When we released generation 1 of our performance shafts, the red
dot shaft, it was a quantum leap in performance in regards to
power and reduction of deflection. However, the flaw in the red
dot that has now been cured by generation 2, the black dot
bullseye, is the fact that it was made from one solid piece of
maple.
The Black Dot Bullseye Shaft is a composite of 35 single,
hard-rock maple veneer pieces flat-laminated uni-directionally
with extreme heat and pressure. Through multiple turnings, and
stress-relieving processes the desired, optimal result is
achieved by the perfect blend of the stiffness of the glue, the
pressure used to laminate, and the consistency of thin, maple
veneer. The variations between one Black Dot Bullseye Shaft
(tapered the same) and another is no more than one and a half
percent. This amount of variation would change the flight of the
object ball on a Black Dot Bullseye Shaft with a Meucci Power
Piston butt as little as ten one-thousandths of an inch, when
shooting a spot-to-spot shot into the corner pocket.
Comparatively the variations between two one-piece maple shafts
under the same conditions, would cause the object ball to vary
by up to 100 times greater variation than the black dot bullseye.
Now let’s consider segmented shafts. The problem with the pie
segmented shafts, when considering only one flaw, variations in
stiffness, is that the segmented shaft is also under the
influence of grain structure of the original wood used. All six,
eight, ten, or twelve segments of the shaft coming from the same
piece of wood, and the same location of the log it was hewn from
brings us back to the same problem we addressed before with the
single-piece shafts: variations in stiffness from one shaft to
the next.
The benefits that we have discussed are only available in the
Meucci Blackdot Bullseye shafts. There are other flat-laminated
veneer shafts that have attempted to duplicate the performance
of the Meucci Blackdot Bullseye, but tip, ferrule, and taper
design have caused a deviation from the perfection that we have
brought to fruition through many years of research and
development.
Like never before, you now can have a perfect, matched set of
shafts whether it be two, three, four or more, to increase the
consistency and accuracy of your game.
About Author :
Bob Meucci is the owner and founder of Meucci Originals, Inc,
which manufactures pool
cues and other billiard products. If you’re interested in
buying one of his cues, check out Meucci Cues at
Budget Billiards Supply.