Predator Demystified
Ever wonder what’s in those fancy 314 shafts that make them all special? Predator doesn’t really go into all that much detail on their website about it other than to say that their patented shaft reduces cueball deflection, so I decided to look it up and see for myself. Since the stuff is patented, the paperwork is all on file (thank you Google Patents).
As you might guess, the patents deal with the ferrule and the end of the shaft.
The shaft patent (#6110051) comes down to this: Predator hollows out the tip end of the shaft “having a wall thickness of about 0.030 to 0.050 inches between opposed ends of the bore”. Basically, they hollow out the tip end almost all the way to the end of the shaft “in order to minimize the buckling of the tip end of the shaft” which has the effect of reducing cue ball deflection. According to the patent, the bored out tip reduces the overall weight of the tip while maintaining the shaft’s stiffness.
I don’t know about you, but this is some pretty clever shit. You can find the full patent documentation through Google Patents. Thanks to the lawyers, it isn’t exactly in layman’s terms, but still worth a read if you’re interested.
