Or snooker cues.
Players rub chalk on the tip to get better grip on the cue ball, but why not have a thin layer of rubber on the tip instead? Surely this would give better, consistent grip and make for a more reliable shot
It’s been awhile since I haunted the pool hall, but I seem to think that pool cue tips are rubber; you chalk the tip to control the bounce.
The tips are leather, but I thought the chalk was to reduce friction, not increase it.
Why not use aluminum for major league baseball bats? The ball comes off the bat better. Why not use laser sights for target shooting? Sometimes things are used in sports, or games, just because that’s what’s always been used. As long as everyone is playing by the same rules, the game is still interesting.
The chalk is to increase friction.
Rubber tips are inferior to leather. You don’t want a soft tip on a pool cue - for one thing, soft tips degrade faster. For another, it’s harder to have precise control over the cueball if it’s being contacted with something squishy. Trying to put consistent english on the ball would be extremely tough, because the rubber would react differently as it wears, and with humidity and temperature changes, etc.
There’s no rule in pool that says you can’t use a rubber tip. Hell, you don’t have to use a tip at all - if you want to smack the ball with the bare end of your cuestick, go for it. The fact is, the cue tip we have today is the result of over a hundred years of experimentation with various materials, including rubber. A lot of attention has been paid to the cue tip, because it’s the most important part of the cue. As Robert Byrne said, you can give a good player a broom with a good tip on the end, and he’ll run a rack and then sweep the joint out after.
Well, I think (a quick google), that aluminium bats are banned in MLB, but I can’t find any such rule for cue sports.
There are many, many different grades of rubber, made to various specifications. Some of them are extremely hard and resilient (think of the solid rubber wheels on sees on some furniture casters), and between altering the material and shaping the surface, it’s almost certainly possible to produce rubber tips to any specified standard of grab. So rubber pool cue tips is certainly a plausible idea.
Where it falls down is that (1) pool players are accustomed to leather tips, (2) the perceived performance advantages of rubber tips over leather ones are negligible, and (3) the initial manufacture of rubber pool cue tips would involve a great deal of expense, without any economies of scale.
Upshot: I don’t think there any reason why pool cue tips aren’t made of rubber other than “it’s just not done” with a side order of “there’s no real reason to start”.
Then there would be rubber cue tips on the market. The barrier to entry is very low. If you think you can make a better cue tip, there’s a market waiting for you.
Do you hang out with serious pool players? Pool players are the world’s most enthusiastic tinkerers you can imagine. They’re constantly trying different brands of tips, tips of varying hardness and varying materials. They own multiple cues looking for the perfect feel, and they buy oodles of aiming aids, training videos, gloves, tip tappers, cue cleaners, ad infinitem. I absolutely guarantee you that if you can come up with a cue tip that plays better than the leather tips on the market, you’ll sell them faster than you can make them.
To a pool player, there’s no such thing as a negligible performance advantage. If it can be measured, or even endorsed by a professional player who uses it on the circuit, they’ll buy it.
This is crazy. Cue tips are exactly the kinds of products that benefit from economies of scale, and very rapidly. And I don’t know why you’d think they’d be expensive to make. It seems to me that you could make these in a mom and pop garage, so long as someone supplied you with the right grade of rubber. You could easily sell them for a buck a piece if they were measurably better.
Again, this makes no sense. New pool products come out every day. Cue manufacturers invest millions of dollars in manufacturing facilities. You don’t think they’re going to churn out rubber cue tips for a buck a pop if they thought there was a market for them?
The ‘it’s just not done’ comment is confusing. You seem to think there’s some kind of tradition in pool that results in the use of inferior materials. That just tells me you’re not really knowledgeable about the industry. Like most sports manufacturing industries, innovation is a big part of the game, because it’s a marketing weapon. A new, superior tip that players actually like would be right in their wheelhouse.
No, rubber tips aren’t in use because numerous trials of all kinds of materials have shown that rubber has limitations in this application.
You’d kill too many pitchers that way.
It’s been my observation that some of the fiercest, snippiest arguments on the Internet happen when the two parties are basically on the same page.
Manufacturers, yes, will make anything, provided that they see enough market to recoup their entry costs. So: manufacturers are not interested in producing rubber pool cue tips. Therefore, we can conclude that they don’t see enough market to recoup their entry costs. I don’t see how we’re not on the same page on this point.
I really think it’s an extraordinary claim that no possible formulation of rubber can meet the specifications required for a pool cue tip. A less extraordinary claim would be that nobody has yet identified a common formulation of rubber that meets those specifications. So R&D will be expensive (though I’ll happily volunteer for playtesting), and all that expensive R&D would be likely to select an unusual rubber that would be likely to be expensive to obtain or produce. Meaning, of course, that entry costs will be high – and also that no mom-and-pop firm, let alone any poolhall tinkerer, is likely to hit on the solution. (Wouldn’t it be nice if you could cut a superior cue tip out of the sidewall of a tire? 
)
And even if you do manage to keep R&D down, there’s the problem that synthetic rubber costs money, and rubber engineered to custom specifications is even more expensive. Leather is both a reliable, well-tested material and cheaper than synthetic rubber (and will probably remain so for as long as McDonald’s is in business). In the end that’s what it comes down to: money.
I don’t accept that it’s flatly impossible to produce rubber pool cue tips, or that rubber tips can’t possibly give the same performance as leather. But they can’t give the same performance/price ratio, not by a long shot – and that is why manufacturers aren’t interested in producing them. Which means both things I’ve said: it’s not done, and nobody has any good reason to start. And which also means that we’re on the same page.
I love how we all just buy into certain assumptions. It happened in the ‘metal clutch pedal’ versus ‘rubber clutch pedal’ in another thread.
There is this assumption that rubber is somehow better than metal… (metal that is designed to hold onto a driver’s shoe)
See… rubber is better… even grippier. Hogwash.
Who says it’s better than leather? Rubber ain’t all that. Drop this assumption that rubber is grippy.
I was thinking table-tennis bats. Don’t see many of those made out of leather.
Well now you can market leather covered table tennis paddles.
Hmmm… my word ‘grippier’ spell-checked to “grippy”. Rubber can provide grip, but it isn’t always the best choice. Seems paddles and rackets of any quality have leather grips.
After I posted it I realized that the tone was too harsh. My apologies for that.
I thought your point was that the right grade of rubber would probably make for a better pool cue tip, but that they weren’t on the market because of tradition, lack of willingness of pool players to experiment with something new, startup costs, and other factors having nothing to do with the superiority of rubber.
My point is that rubber is actually inferior in this case, and that if it wasn’t, it would almost certainly be on the market. So it’s not any of the things you mentioned.
Have a look at the various cue tips on the market. They aren’t just a slab of leather with some glue on the end. They are actually finely engineered. Some of them are layered, impregnated with various chemicals, etc. Some tips have a fiber-based backing layer sandwiched with the leather. The leather itself may be from Elk hide, Boar hide, Bison, or other types of leather. Some cheaper tips are sold embedded in a slide-over phenolic ferrule. Most pool players I know have tried numerous brands and types of tips before settling on the one that gives them the feel they are looking for.
I play with a Le Pro tip, which is very hard and gives me the type of hit I’m looking for. I’ve probably tried a half-dozen other brands of pool tip.
I would think it’s a more extraordinary claim to say that you know better than the cue industry which material should be used, and that you take it as a given that rubber would be superior to leather without really knowing how much R&D has gone into pool tips or what players actually look for in a pool tip.
You seem to think that rubber is a good material because A) it’s springy, and B) it can be made to have friction on the end. But in fact, pool players don’t want a springy tip. They want it to be very hard. A ‘soft’ tip is one which, if you dig the tip of the fingernail as hard as possible into it, will show a slight indentation. Cue tips do not feel even remotely like rubber - even hard rubber.
And the whole reason for using chalk is not just to give friction, but to give precisely applied friction so you know exactly what the ball will do. An unchalked tip with natural friction is subject to change from dirt, oil, temperature, humidity, etc. A fresh application of chalk with each shot gives you extremely consistent performance.
Again, you don’t seem to understand what a good cue tip does for you. Another thing it must do is survive thousands of impacts without A) changing shape, B) changing density or hardness, C) degrading in any other way, such as resiliency or compressibility.
And your comment above leads me to believe that you think cue tips have so little R&D in them that having to playtest different grades of rubber is somehow too expensive. But in fact, tip manufacturers playtest dozens of different grades of leather, glue formulations, leather treatments, backing materials, and construction techniques. Some tips are solid one-piece leather impregnated with chemicals to make it harder. Some are made up of as many as 14 layers of leather, glued together with proprietary engineered glues and assembled in presses using proprietary processes. A lot of R&D goes into these tips - far more than just selecting a few grades of rubber and playtesting it.
You keep making statements like this, but I have no idea if you’re basing this on actual knowledge of the industry or if you’re just making it up as you go along.
A pool tip can sell for a dollar a pop, and has about as much material as maybe two pencil erasers. Can you provide a cite for a rubber material that costs more than, say 50 cents for an amount of that size in very large quantities?
Again, what do you base this on? Rubber isn’t the universal material. We don’t make rubber clutch plates or rubber desks or rubber computer monitors.
If I were to pick a replacement material for a cue tip, rubber wouldn’t even be one of my top candidates. I’d probably look at some form of plastic or fiberglass. Rubber’s just not what you need for a pool tip.
Nice try, but we’re nowhere near the same page. You seem to think that rubber is a superior material that is not used for reasons other than its technical superiority. I think it’s probably an inferior material based on what I know about cue tips, and that enough materials R&D goes on in the cue tip industry that I’m certain various formulations of rubber have been tried and found wanting. I won’t deny that it’s *possible that there is some exotic rubber compound out there with the right characteristics, but what I know of the industry tell me that this is unlikely, for if there were, it would be in use. Enough people would pay $5/tip for a truly superior playing experience.
Let me ask you a question: What is it about rubber that makes you believe it would be superior to leather? Be specific. What qualities does it have that leather tips lack?
If rubber was better, professional pool players would be using them, because of the advantage they would provide in competition, irregardless of the cost differential to leather. (okay, not if rubber tips costs $1 million).
Then, it would spill over into the general consumer market. You don’t see professionals using rubber tips, because they aren’t better.
They do make cue tips out of other materials (as I’m betting you already know), but they’re only really good for jump cues, and they are expensive ($10 - $15 a piece)!
CMC fnord!
Actually, I didn’t know that. I haven’t been following changes in the industry that much in the past few years, and these seem pretty new. Thanks for pointing them out.
A rubbery type substance may not be too far fetched a concept for a cue tip, we have worked on a formula for years and are very close to clinching the answer. Rubber or flexible substance fortified with nano particle metal powders offers some incredibly interesting results with the tip being non maintenance and very, very long lasting. English on the ball we are told is easier and more consistent. Bear with us as stated we are very close to cinching the answer.
I remember when they were covered with sandpaper. Anybody still using those?
chalk will increase friction…