Hills Cues.com

About us

Darrin Hill's Cue Story

Living My Dream

It all started at about age thirteen when my dad caught me running his lathe in his machine shop. All the machines in the shop, especially the lathe fascinated me. For my fourteenth birthday my dad surprised me with a box of parts, which was a small Atlas lathe. I completely refinished the lathe and built every little part you could imagine for it. That was a very exciting time in my life. Once I got into high school, I entered the machine shop class and my shop teacher noticed that I was advanced for his class and eventually made me his teachers aid, helping others in the class. At the age of seventeen I was working part time for a machine shop. Eventually it turned into full time and I ended up staying with them for eight years. The days of the lathes eventually died off and everything started going to CNC (Mass Production) and I just couldn’t stand punching a button duplicating the exact same part over and over. Which lead me into a full time body shop painting custom designs on cars. Eventually the fumes started affecting my health and I wasn’t enjoying the work anymore. My real passion is running a lathe and building parts from scratch. My dream was to be my own boss and hand make my own custom cues, no CNC, all hand made one at a time. I started small doing cue repair in 1998 and by 2001 my cue repair was full time. The desire to make cues was there and I started designing and creating my own cue styles and custom building my own lathe parts and extensions. In 2003 I sold my first cue for $600 dollars. I was excited that not only did I make a nice looking cue, but the hit was really great as well. I got a call from a new pool hall called Pockets in Crestwood, IL. to do cue repair for a big tournament there. I met the famous Glen "Piggy Banks" Rogers, one of the best bank players I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. Playing pool with him led to us sponsoring him and building him a cue. He loved it. The word was spreading fast throughout Chicago about how great the finish was, which is a direct result from my car painting experience and the nice wood combinations, and how well balanced the cue was. We then sponsored another great Chicago 9-ball player Ike Runnels. We saw him playing everywhere, if there was a big tournament, he was there. He also travels all over the U.S. to all the big events with our cue. The talk in the "Windy City" is that I could be the next great cuemaker with unreal quality. I have dedicated my life to building cues full time. The hours are long and it is a lot of hard work but I put my heart into everything I do and its all worth it. Every one of my cues are handmade one at a time and I only use hand picked exotic unique woods. I love the beauty of the exotic woods and appreciate its life and character. I specialize in showing the natural beauty of the wood which is my trade mark. This is a family run business and I take my time to make all the turns on all the wood and shafts to ensure I make a long lasting quality product.

Sincerely,
Darrin Hill
Hills Cues

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