The following topics have not necessarily been raised by member questions, but they have entered my thoughts while doing this forum stuff, so I’d like to take one additional post to put forth my views:
Origin of the ACA:
In January of 1992, in Columbia, South Carolina, eight men met in a side room at one of Grady Mathews’ “Legends of One Pocket” tournaments. Those eight men were:
Leonard Bludworth
Jim Buss
John Guffey
Dale Perry
Joe Porper
Tim Scruggs
Thomas Wayne
some guy named “Whitey”
At that meeting the
American Cuemakers Association (“ACA”) was formed and Leonard Bludworth was elected its first president. Those are the roots of the ACA and those eight men are the founding fathers of that organization. At the time, some cuemakers refused to attend; some weren’t invited; some were still in diapers (and Bludworth is pretty close to being
back in diapers, I’m told). I’m sorry if you weren’t at that inaugural meeting, but history is history and that is that.
Scrimshaw:
It’s become pretty common practice for some cuemakers to put big blocks of Ivory into an otherwise plain cue and then send it out to Sandra Brady (or someone else) and have a bunch of scrimshaw added to it. Some of these cues are kind of interesting, but let’s make no mistake about who the artist was on
that little effort.
Jim Stadum said it best when he described the practice as: “…building a ho-hum cue and then handing it off to a
real artist”. I personally believe that if the scrimshaw
isn’tdone by the cuemaker himself then it is sort of a “cheat”; all scrimshaw that has ever been in my cues (and ever will be) is my own work.
Mike Bender is the lone exception, since his wonderful wife Tracy does all the scrimshaw in his cues -they are both artists and partners.
Ugly butt:
The attached photo is of a butt sleeve that I built many years ago. It is particularly ugly (in my opinion), so I have never finished the cue. The primary reasons I find it ugly are:
1) It has one too many elements - probably the Silver inlay around the Malachite “football” – making it (to quote McWorter) “ten pounds of sh*t in a five pound bag”.
2) It appears to be painted with too “broad” a brush
I keep it around, prominently displayed in my studio, to remind me that just because it seemed like a good idea at the time doesn’t mean it has to become a finished cue.
TW