Materials and Design
The choice of materials used in the construction of the cue butt and the artistry of the design can lead to cues of great beauty and high price. Good quality pool cues are customarily made from straight grained hard rock maple wood, especially the shaft. Snooker cues, by contrast, are almost always made of ash wood, although you might come across one with a maple shaft. Maple is stiffer than ash, and cheaper. Cues are not always for play, some are purely collectible and can reach prices of tens of thousands of dollars for the materials they are made of and their exquisite craftsmanship. There have been a number of famous cue makers over the years. Among the most famous are George Balabushka, Herman Rambow, John Parris (Church Vale, London), Hunt & O'Byrne (Butler's Wharf, London), Palmer, Longoni, Samsara, Southwest, and Szamboti whose cues are often very valuable to collectors. A good B-brand for a snooker cue might be an Adam (made in Hong Kong) or an SM, which stands for snooker master. These "collector" cues often have ornate inlays with precious metals and stones, and varying woods to display designs and works of art, but mainly fine workmanship and top quality materials. The woods can be stained to be absorbed into the wood and transparent or painted upon. These cues are also valued because of how well they perform. Competitors of custom cue makers and mass-production manufacturers usually try to make cues look like they are made of expensive materials by using overlays and decals. Although these deter the cost of the cues, they do not degrade the cue's effectiveness in gameplay. Another mark of quality is the precision that inlays are set in the wood. High quality inlays are set perfectly in the wood without any extra space to be filled; they are also perfectly symmetrical on all sides as well as clean cut so that the points are sharp and not rounded. The use of machines has aided much in the production of high quality inlays as well as other ornaments.
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