September/October 2001 Volume 12, Number 5 Masterful Cuemaker By J.C. Gamble Photography by Paul Nurnberg Pages 38-50 In Martin Scorsese’s “The bered balls clicking across Color of Money,” Fast the green baize of a billiards Eddie Parker, played by table will tell you straight Paul Newman, bestows a up - all pool sticks are not one-of-a-kind Balabushka created equal. pool cue upon an eager Two-tone cues called young hustler played by Sneaky Petes line the walls Tom Cruise. It’s a pivotal of pool halls all over the scene in the film - the young world. Each with a different prodigy replacing the fading weight, some straighter and Josey knows this difference hero who struggles to accept in better condition than oth- very well, for he is a master his aging. ers, those house cues are at transforming bedpost-size yours for a few hours of call wood blocks into these also one of the most promi- shot. Handmade cues, car- gleaming javelins. You can nent film depictions of the ried in leather sheaths or find him on page 229 of pool cue as art form. Any slender briefcases by ama- Brad Simpson’s “Blue Book player who has nurtured at teurs and hustlers alike, are of Pool Cues,” where he least a passing affair with a different story altogether. shares space alongside vet- the sould of colorful num- Savannah native Keith erans of the art such as Bill More importantly, it is "!#!$"%'&$$())*)+,!#- .0/2143)5687:9<;>=3$5#?@6<ACB Schick, Tim Scruggs and Ernie and I think I paid $100 for it, and then I the cashier pointed him in the direction Gutierrez. bought another cue that was $250,” of Wayne Gunn, an older cuemaker said Josey, an avid weightlifter and whose shop happened to be a few martial arts enthusiast. blocks away. Considered one of the top 10 cueists in the country, Keith is one of only five members of the American Cuemaker’s The more expensive Josswest cue, “When I walked in the shop and Association board of directors, the gov- though well made, began to wear and they were turning shafts and turning erning body of cuemaking. show a typical sign of stress - the rub- cues, I had no idea what they were do- ber tip mushrooming from a hard shot ing,” he said. “I told him that I was try- “It shows what his peers think of him,” said Georgetown, “I asked the local guy ing to learn repair work, he said, ‘well, S.C.-based pro Shawn there to fix it for me, if you promise to do a good job, I’ll Putnam, a touring player and somebody cut it teach you to do repair work.”’ for seven years who is with a razor blade and From then on, company vacations sponsored by Josey. messed the ferrule (the were spent in Tampa staying with his “You could call him a cap on the end of a cue father-in-law and apprenticing in master cuemaker.” stick) up and when he Gunn’s shop. Josey soon could replace gave it back to me, he tips properly and re-work broken fer- said, ‘that stuff’s going rules. Dale Perry of DP Custom Cues A little more than 15 years ago, Josey was climbing power poles for Savannah to happen.’ I try to be a perfectionist at from Orange Park, Fla., was another Electric and Power and shooting occa- everything I do and when I saw that big invaluable resource who critiqued sional weekend rounds on the felt with old gouge in my new cue, you know, I Keith’s work. his wife Sherri at Player’s Place, a pool was like, sick.” hail on Eisenhower now called the It was a definitive moment in With money borrowed from his father-in-law, Josey purchased a lathe- a Green Room. He sponsored a league Josey’s life, the epiphany that led him machine for shaping wood by turning it for a while, owned a pair of custom to take a sabbatical and eventually quit against a blade - that opened up a new pool sticks and placed as high as third his dangerous job climbing poles. dimension of possibilities for more ad- in an Atlanta tournament Soon, he would build a shop for shap- vanced repairs. As a client base devel- ing pool cues and embark on a self- oped, he re-invested profits in more- While Josey’s interest was growing from that of a hobbyist, the sport itself imposed quest “to be- woodworking equip- was undergoing a renaissance, bouyed come the foremost maker ment such as table saws by Scorsese’s “Hustler” follow-up film of handmade superior and sanders, each ma- and the attention given the Las Vegas quality cues.” chine a key piece in a tournament circuit by the growing Con- “It triggered some- necticut-based sports television net- thing in me,” he recalled work ESPN. No longer the province of of the botched repair. derby-hatted drunks and cigar-smoking Hoping to fix his pre- complete cue-making studio. Soon he was no longer content simply gamblers, pool halls were evolving into cious cue, Keith bought a repair kit at a doing minor repairs. Josey decided to upscale venues suitable for family out- Tampa billiards shop while on a trip engage the process from start to com- ings. visiting Sherri’s father. After inquiring pletion. By the end of 1992, after four if anyone local was working with cues, years working on cues as a hobby in his “That’s when I bought my first cue, JLK MGK"N#N$K"O'P"K$QRK$SRT,NU V0W2X4Y)Z\[]:^<_>`\Y)Z#a@[<bdc backyard tin shed and laundry room, Keith signed his first Josey Custom homes. Skip Josey was more than just a Cue. It was a break stick (break sticks man adept at hammer and nail. After 17 are used by players only when breaking years as a machinist, he switched into a rack of balls because such a powerful custom home builcling and together hit wears a tip down over time) with with his boys produced many fine hand-carved spades that he finished on homes in the Savannah area. A con- Christmas Day for local pool enthusiast summate professional, Skip would Paul Brown. regularly check the boys’ work at day’s Brown, a two-time winner of the end, pointing out bent nails and sub- Southeast regional championship in ‘87 standard work to be redone until per- and ‘90 when playing for Georgia fect. Southern University’s billiard team, was the first convert. “He made that cue as a break stick DEGFH I His work ethic, fired in his Southern “We could have a two-story house upbringing, is reflected in the tireless that we were building and way back in attention to detail readily apparent in the last rafter, you could bend a nail,” any finished cue. because I already have a rare Bill said Josey. “Bend it, ram it in there and Stroud Josswest cue,” he said. “I hap- put another one in. He would go back sic- filled studio, Sherri, the technical pened to be in Savannah and left the and check everybody’s work and if he support of the business, manages wood Josswest at the house. I had that stick in found a bent nail, you could hear him orders and accounting duties, thus free- the back of my car and started shooting holler. We’d have to climb back up ing Keith to focus on his art. Intricately with it After a few games, I said, ‘My there, pull the nail and do it right. inlaid cues near completion will be set God, this is wonderful.’ I packed up my Josswest.” “And my mom was the same way. If you made up the bed and it had wrin- On a typical day in the classical mu- to dry while a fresh shipment of wood blocks are being turned on a lathe. Five years later, Keith was a full- kles in the sheet and she came back in time cueist minting 125 cues a year, his to check what you did, she’d rip every- to middle to finish, and I might be fin- name recognizable in billiard halls in thing off the bed and say, ‘Now do it ishing some cues and I’m also getting countries as far away as Japan, Italy again and do it right.”’ wood ready,” he said. and Taiwan and his cues the centerpieces of magazine spreads in This unerring quest for perfectionism carried over into Keith’s first cue. “It’s a continuous process from start The process begins with a highquality square wood block. It is then “American Cueist,” the top industry shaped into a slender dowel-size piece publication. and allowed to breathe for weeks be- Keith will tell you the Lord’s guid- fore being fused with glue to another ance led to his mid-life discovery of his interlocking piece. While this thicker true calling. When taking into account handle piece of the cue dries, the slen- his background, it is not altogether that der forward shaft piece is turned sev- surprising. Josey, 44, was raised by a eral times over months and allowed to woodworker, a man who often took sit dormant while Keith outfits the han- Keith and his four brothers to the pool dle piece with precious stones. room after a hard day’s labor building When a player contacts Josey about efgh i jk lk"m#m$k"n'o$k$p)k)q)r,m#s t0u2v4w)xy8z:{<|>}w$x#~@y<C a custom cue, he/she must decide section of each cue. These ornate pat- each piece with a virtually unmatched whether he/she wants a standard terns, all hallmarks of the Josey cue, uniqueness, a quality that will soon es- Sneaky Pete or a cue with inlay work. are carved by a computer numeric con- tablish the Josey cue as a prized col- Unless specific instructions are given, trolled (CNC) router, a $22,000 com- lectable on the emerging vintage cue length- usually 58 to 60 inches- and puter aided machine made by the market weight of the cue are dictated by the Techno Isel comoanv.Picture a sewing person’s own dimensions. With the ex- machine with a woodcutting blade on make a good first impression,” said ception of stock pieces like the rubber the end that cuts tiny designs in wood Josey who uses optical lenses and goes tip, black rubber bumper at the base of and stone based on a computer pro- over every inch of each one of his cre- the cue and the screw that joins the gram. The CNC router allows Josey to ations before shipping it out. shaft and the base, Keith makes the en- realize the exotic designs of Tim’s tire stick from scratch. Ten to 14 weeks imagination. They are programmed stick, if aimed and stroked with exacti- later, depending on the lime demands onto a floppy disk that Lilek ships to tude, will deliver the target ball into of the inlay work, the cue is ready. Keith to test and then incorporate into one of the six soft cups that frame a the next batch of cues. Prior to the pur- billiard table. The cue itself, honed chase of this machine, Keith used an from hours and weeks of one man’s exacto knife, dremel tool and panto- attention, performs flawlessly. A graph to cut designs by hand. missed shot with a Josey is the player’s “It’s like getting a suit made for you - all tailored,” he said. With such a high standard of craftsmanship, it is no wonder that Josey prefers exotic imported woods such as ebony wood, burlwood, cocobolo, purple heart, bocote and bird’s-eye maple, “Now I’m not limited by design. I can do anything,” he said. “You don’t get a second chance to When you hit with a Josey cue, the fault. Along with the exquisite patterns Never one to get too comfortable, that gleam beneath their reflective fin- Josey continually pushes the medium ish, it is this stiff-hitting consistency, a mind a spider’s web or the and prefers result of the cue’s forward balance (the scattered lines on the retina to mint only weight slightly favoring the front of the of the eye. Etched into the a handful of cue), which characterizes all cues that base and tapered shaft of each design leave the Josey studio.“Besides the fact the butt section are the before en- that the workmanship is on parallel Josev trademark - medieval gaging a with anyone making cues, his cues are shields cut from precious more diffi- very, very consistent and that’s very stones such as malachite, cult, yet important with a professional on tour,” turquoise, mother-of-pearl visually stun- said Lilek. “You can take a $7,000 cue and ivory. ning, sche- and a $500 cue, and they both hit the matic. Not same. That’s the key.” woods with undulations that bring to Chicago-based Timothy Lilek, a former circuit only does Putnam, currently ranked #1 on the player in the Midwest and a this chal- Viking Pro Tour, plays in most of the cue collector, designs the lenge him 56 Viking tournaments as well as some intricate medieval webwork creatively of the eight major tournaments hosted that is inlayed near the butt but it brands by the Billiard Congress of America, L G"#$"'"$R$R, 024)\:<>\)#@<d the NBA of pool. He depends on this and he’s one of the nicest guys you’ll constancy when competing, as it makes ever meet. He’s not going to produce his famous jump shot easier to shoot anything short of perfect and that says a accurately. lot about him as a person and a cue- “You’d have to pay me a lot of money to switch cues,” he said. “I can maker.” (For more information on Keith tell you I wouldn’t have been able to Josey and his unique custom cues, win the Viking tournament without the Josey Custom Cues can be reached Josey.” Monday through Friday 9 a. m. to 5p. If pool cues are in essence weapons used in a highly strategic chess-like competition, then a Josey custom cue, with its medieval inlays of malachite, ebony and mother-of-pearl, befits a high-ranking lord. On the felt battlefields of Savannah, warehouse parlors like B&B Billiards downtown or the Billiard Club on the south side, players bear witness to a pecking order established by skills with a stick. The mighty in this field play with sticks of their own; the best often shoot with a Josey. While the average price for one of these few cues tops $1,000, Keith, unassuming and always friendly, will continue to produce $200 Sneaky Petes and do repair work for local players, often shuffling his schedule to accommodate their needs. He seems truly happy that his life-long love of billiards and his enjoyment of woodworking have led to a passion-filled, successful career. “His business is huge, all over the world ... but he still hasn’t forgotten where he comes from,” said Brown. “He takes a great pride in what he does m. at 356-1816 and on the web at www. joseycues.com.) G