Yep. I'm really reaching here. This has nothing to do with life in Bleecker, and most certainly not much to do with even living in Florida.
I shoot a lot of pool. I love to shoot, but it is also physical therapy for my bum right arm. I wear weights on my right hand when I shoot now, to try to rebuild some muscle.
My friends Russell and Star have a little boy named Trenton. He's five or six. He challenged me to a game of 8 ball. I had run all of my balls and Trenton, barely able to pick up a cue stick and even hit a ball, had all seven of his left. Well, he buried the 8 ball, and trying a fancy bank shot to sink my eight, I scratched instead.
"Trenton, you beat me." said I.
Trenton looked at me with a blank stare.
"Trenton, you beat me. You won!"
His eyes grew big... then he got all excited and grinned from ear to ear. Russell told me the next day that it was all he could talk about all night.
I have a pool table in the garage. I also have a bunch of old cue sticks. One was cut short to use on the side of the table close to a garage wall (I've since moved the table). I decided to refinish this short stick and give it to Trenton.
I sanded all of the old finish off this stick and stained it. The bottom part I put on more stain to make it darker. Where the light stain and the dark stain met on the shaft needed to have a band of black paint to mask the joint. I needed a lathe, along with black paint and a brush to make a smooth finsih. I don't have a lathe here. What to do?
My dad was a master of improvisation. I think some of that rubbed of on me. I used a battery powered drill, two small dumb bells, a fishing boat anchor which was cement in a coffee can, a clamp on vise, and a nail.
My cue stick lathe on the garage pool table.
Two dumb bells, the fishing anchor, and the clamp on vise.
Nail inserted into a hole in the cue stick.
The drill end.
The joint that was to recieve the black paint.
The black paint.
It came out OK. I'll post a pic of the finished product in a day or two.
Hey, we retired guys have the time to mess around with little projects like this.
