They play great........not much difference from the Moori tips I had previously.......just a major difference in cost and wear. The Talismans don't seem to wear as quickly as the Moori tips. - Scott

Installing the cue tip

Generally we recommend taking your cue to a professional for tip installation. It does cost a bit more but a properly installed cue tip will last a long time with normal use and make the extra paid on installation worthwhile. If though you have experience in installing your own tips and will be installing your own Talisman tips please take a look at all the information on this page as we have had some reported problems with customers using certain tools to install their own tips.

Firstly if you are using a lathe or will be taking your cue to a repair guy with a lath please click here to see our installation suggestions sent in by one of our cue maker customers. This guy has installed many 100s of our tips. We suggest printing the suggestion page out and letting your repair guy take a look before installation. Click here for the suggestions page.
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There are many different tools available that are used to install cue tips. Most of these were designed for use with single layer leather cue tips and there use with laminated cue tips such as Talisman can cause problems with delamination. Usually the tools do two or three different jobs. The first job is to trim the diameter of the tip down to the diameter of the ferrule. Our tips come in 14mm standard and will require trimming after fitting to most cues. For the most part we have had no problems reported using these tools to trim the tips diameter. The other job that a lot of these tools do is to shape the tip to the desired radius (nickel or dime). If you have a tool that does shaping and it uses "blades" for this job, then we strongly recommend not using this too shape Talisman cue tips. The angles of the blades can easily cause the tip to delaminate much in the same way you can peel an orange. For shaping the tip we recommend something like a Willard's tip shaper or an Ultimate Cue tip too (see below). These both use a dome shape with an abrasive material in the dome to shape the tip to the desired radius. Just hold the tool on the floor with your feet, with the shaft tip down in to the abrasive dome. The just twist the shaft in your palms. This should only take around 5 minutes or so.

We have had some reported problems related to the height of the installed tip. Generally we advise against leaving the tip too high. If the height is more than the diameter of the ferrule then its possible the tip will suffer damage and perhaps delamination near the ferrule. The best way I can explain this to describe a tall building in a high wind. A lot of force gets exerted at the foundations. Its the same with a high tip and playing extreme english. The sideways force can cause the layers to come apart or the leather layers to become spongy and loose. We make our tips with plenty of height so as to give plenty of tip to work with during installation. Be careful though of leaving them too tall.
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We also advise against applying any liquid to the side of the tip to get a shine. Please do not apply too much spit (a tiny bit is OK), water, WD40 or any other liquid to the sides of the tips, including coloring the sides with a felt marker. These liquids can react with our glue formula and cause the tip to separate.

Previously with single layer tips you had to tap the tip with a tip tapper to get it too hold chalk. That is not necessary with our cue tips and we strongly advise against using a tip tapper. The reason is that the pins used in these tools will perforate the top layers of the cue tip and the layers will quite often fluff up, when you try to clear this you can end up with a hole in the middle like a volcano. If this has happened to you, then you need to reshape the tip down one layer until the damaged layer has gone.

1. Consider professional installation and show our installation suggestions to your repair guy.
2. Do not leave the tips too tall after installation and shaping.
3. Do not use any tip shaping tools which use blades to shape the tip radius
4. Do not use a tool like the ultimate cue tip tool to burnish the sides of the tip unless the tip is shaped to a taper as well. We advise against its use.
5. Do not apply any liquid to the sides of the tip to shine or burnish.
6. Do not tap the tip with a tip tapper.
7. Basically leave the tip alone except for chalking and the occasional scuffing or reshape.

If you have any problems please do not hesitate to contact us, we take responsibility for all our tips and we will arrange replacements while we find out what the problem is. email us on info@talismanbilliards.com