Paul Fox Cups

Once again I received the cups well protected.They looked great and they feel great. Upon further inspection of the cups one can see clearly the spinning lines of which I am not certain if they should be visible. Never saw them on my Gazzo's or MM cups. I think I will let the cups develop a nice patina, then maybe the lines will dissapear.

The background of the cups is very well explained on the site of Mr.Palmer, http://69.89.31.132/~cupsandb/museum/roundedcups.htm So I will not repeat what is written there.

You will receive 3 spun copper cups and a bag. The bag is not of the highest quality, just a simple bag to transport the cups or to store them safely. No bag with the Paul Fox logo on it. No balls included. Upon inspection I noticed that there even wasn't the Paul Fox logo inside the cup. There was mention that RNT2 doesn't have the rights to use this logo, however the logo is up for sale at RNT2. So they should be the rightfull owner at this point.

All other Paul Fox sets had this logo stamped(?) inside. Maybe because these are a cheap version they left the logo out. Well they aren't cheap now, they went back up to $250.-.

At first inspection I noticed that the mouth bead was open, the picture on the RNT2 website doesn't show this. However many thanks to the cups fans here, they were able to tell me that they had the same on their cups.

Each cups stands 7.2 cm (2.8”) high.
Pic 1 http://i405.photobucket.com/albums/pp136/Floyd_78/HPIM2532.jpg

Total stack heigh about 13 cm (5.1”) high.
Pic 2 http://i405.photobucket.com/albums/pp136/Floyd_78/HPIM2533.jpg

ID of the cup 6.5 cm (2.5”).
Pic 3 http://i405.photobucket.com/albums/pp136/Floyd_78/HPIM2534.jpg

Which brings me to a conclusion that these cups will not take a lacrosse ball or even a tennisball as a final load. I don't have a lacrosse ball, but I do have a tennisball and it doesn't fit. The size of a lacrosse ball should be 2.5” (according to Wikipedia), since the ID of the cup also is 2.5” it is obvious that it will not fit. They are advertised that they will take a lacrosseball.
Pic 4 http://i405.photobucket.com/albums/pp136/Floyd_78/HPIM2540.jpg

The tennisball wouldn't go any further in the cup.

I you have the Fab Fruit or the Mike Roger's baseballs then you are ok, these will fit inside, and make a great final load.
Pic 5 http://i405.photobucket.com/albums/pp136/Floyd_78/HPIM2528.jpg

Pic 6 http://i405.photobucket.com/albums/pp136/Floyd_78/HPIM2527.jpg

Pic 7 http://i405.photobucket.com/albums/pp136/Floyd_78/HPIM2529.jpg


The saddle has just enough room for 3 7/8” balls, you can stack the cups with 3 balls on the saddle without any trouble.
Pic 8 http://i405.photobucket.com/albums/pp136/Floyd_78/HPIM2526.jpg

The Paul Fox cups look like the MM cups, they are useable together. One will stack with the other.
Pic 9 http://i405.photobucket.com/albums/pp136/Floyd_78/HPIM2535.jpg

Pic 10 http://i405.photobucket.com/albums/pp136/Floyd_78/HPIM2536.jpg

If you look at the top of the cup and the saddle those are different. The top of the PF cup is more rounded and the saddle is some what on the shallow side.
Pic 11 http://i405.photobucket.com/albums/pp136/Floyd_78/HPIM2537.jpg

Compare the Jes cups with the Paul Fox cups.
Pic 12 http://i405.photobucket.com/albums/pp136/Floyd_78/HPIM2531.jpg

some photo's of .......
Pic 13 http://i405.photobucket.com/albums/pp136/Floyd_78/HPIM2538.jpg

Pic 14 http://i405.photobucket.com/albums/pp136/Floyd_78/HPIM2539.jpg

All considered, great looking cups, nice handling. Would I have bought them when I had read this review, think not. As I said before I am not a fan of open mouth beads and the fact that they will not take a tennisball/lacrosse ball would have stopped me from getting them. But know I can say I am an owner of a Paul Fox set.

I have one more review almost ready (Jes Squatty 2), and when I recieve the Foxy 2.5 cups I will review them also. The Foxy cups are now on their way to a polisher according Epiphany and would take up to three weeks to get them back. So in about 6 weeks that review will be posted.

Etienne

Etienne,

Lacrosse balls vary a great deal in size. If you want lacrosse balls as your final loads, I suggest that you take a cup with you to the store.
You may get some strange looks but you can try before you buy to ensure that that the balls fit the cup.
The PF cups will not take a tennis ball, none of the PF's do.

Nice cups!

Tom

Etienne… Another great review thanks again. I am still waiting for my set to arrive as well as a set of Foxy 2.5 Cups. It seems we have similar taste in Cups.

Now that work is getting less hectic, I hope to get back to enjoying my down time with my Cups.

Take care,
Bruce

Bruce, I think that you will love the Foxy II.V cups. Bill Sutter said that they were the best cups that RNT2 makes. The tennis ball looks unbelievable on them. The things that I wish I could've gotten are the Foxy II.V cups, the Paul Foxy Cups, the SBL Super Shibby Street Cups, the Strolling Chop cup, the JES Squatty 2 cups, and others.

Bruce,

If I read all the posts correctly then we all share the same taste in cups. We all ordered PF cups or Jes or Foxy II.V
Can't wait for them to arrive. How are the Jes cups coming along?

You're right Ketchup, I can cut my wishlist for about 80% if RNT2 dissapears. If we had the money RNT2 would be sold out months ago.

Etienne

Etienne…. You are right, it does seem that we all have similar taste, but I think the truth of the matter is we all just like Cups!

Best wishes,
Bruce

Points of information concerning Paul Fox Type II cups and the Chinese imitations thereof.

The ONLY Paul Fox cups that have the logo stamped on the inside are the ones that Jeff Busby sold. Presumably the logo was cut by the CNC machine on the CNC cups and stamped on the spun cups.

There were a couple of sets from RnT II that have the PF Logo engraved on top of the saddle.

Danny Dew did not hallmark the cups on the inside or the outside, and neither did Jake, except for the couple of sets I mentioned above. If you have a set of brass or copper Paul Fox cups that are hallmarked with the PF logo on the inside, they are from Jeff Busby.

There are very minor inconsistencies in the saddle size between the Magic Maker/Penguin cups and the genuine Paul Fox cups. Part of this can be attributed to the way the pressure plate was applied on the Chinese products. Also the brass Magic Makers cups have a flattened section in the center of the saddle. By and large, there is no more than a 1 mm difference in the outer diameter of the saddles of the cups that were made by MM and the ones from the American spinners.

Many of Danny's cups, particularly the earlier ones, were made of thinner metal. They have a tendency to have a sharper, better defined ridge on the edge of the saddle. The Chinese copies have a less pronounced ridge. They are a bit more rounded. The inner area of the saddle is approximately the same as the inner area of a Paul Fox saddle.

The exception to this, of course, is the Type I cup. I believe that only about 50 sets of these exist. The saddle on these cups is about 1/8 inch smaller in diameter. Paul Fox did not like this type of saddle and asked Danny to retool.  Examples of these can be seen on my web site.

Regarding the load size on the RnT II cups. They will take a lacrosse ball. I have a set of them, which I received last week. The lacrosse ball fits fine. Wikipedia is not accurate in their report of the size of the lacrosse ball. Lacrosse balls have a very wide permissible range of sizes. A lacrosse ball that fits into a regular Paul Fox cup will fit into the RnT II cups  just fine.

Here is what the latest lacrosse rule book says about the balls:

SECTION 16. The ball shall be white, yellow, orange or lime green smooth or slightly textured solid rubber — between 7-3/4 and 8 inches in circumference, between 5 and 5-1/4 ounces in weight and, when dropped from a height of 72 inches upon a concrete floor, shall bounce 43 to 51 inches at a temperature of 65 degrees to 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

7 3/4 inches in circumference is roughly 2.466 inches in diameter.  8 inches in circumference is roughly 2.54 inches in diameter. That's a fairly large range.

According to the International Tennis Federation, the acceptable ball diameter for a regulation tennis ball is 2.575-2.700 in. For a slow ball it is 2.750-2.875 in. As you can see, these balls start at a size larger than the acceptable range for a lacrosse ball.

One problem with some lacrosse balls is that they have a logo about the size of a quarter which sometimes protrudes from the surface of the ball. This should be sanded down, if you find the ball sticking in the cups. There are cheap, non-regulation tennis balls from China that are about the size of a lacrosse ball. There are pet toys that look like tennis balls, but are a bit smaller than a regular tennis ball.

One difference I noticed in the new RnT II PF cups is that the curve starts a bit higher than the shoulder bead than it does on a PF/Danny Dew cup.

Thanks for correcting some of my mistakes and giving information on the cups. It's difficult to get a lacrosseball here, if there are any shops here I haven't found them. I can order them online but then I won't know what size I'm getting. So I have to rely on Wiki or other websites.

How do you remember all that information? I don't even know what I had for dinner last week.


Etienne

Etienne:

I cheat. I have all of it in TXT files here and there on my computer.

A couple of years ago, someone posted in the green room that they needed the diameters of all of these different balls, so I went to the NCAA web site and downloaded the lacrosse rules, and also downloaded the tennis rules from some other site. I cut and pasted the information about the balls and saved all of it.

Because of some rather odd speculation on another forum (that the .050 copper RnT II Paul Fox cups were JES cups that were being sold off cheap or some other similar nonsense ), I have made a set of comparison photos, so everyone can see the difference in the way a lacrosse ball fits the various cups.

Here is the photo on photobucket:
http://i696.photobucket.com/albums/vv321/cupsandballsmuseum/lacrossecomparison.jpg

I took these photos with the camera pointing very slightly downward into the cups, because I didn't want anyone to believe I might have shot from below to make the ball (which protrudes very slightly from the Paul Fox cups) disappear. If you are looking directly from the side, the ball in the .050 copper cup protrudes 1 mm. The ball protrudes less than that in the other Paul Fox cups. You can see what it does in the squatty cup.

The ball is 2.48 inches in diameter. If I had a 2.47 inch ball, it would, of course, go further down into the cups.

The cups are a JES Squatty, RnT II Paul Fox .050, Rings and Things Paul Fox cup (ca. 1972 or so), and an early Paul Fox/Danny Dew cup by Perigee.

Bill,

I have read your statement on the other forum and I was glad that someone mentioned this. Those posts got me worried a bit, they do look very similar. If RnT2 says its a PF cup why doubt them? Eitherway I like my cups very much and I would not want to miss them, PF cup or not.

Etienne

I never doubted Epiphany or Jake for one second. However, there were a couple of people who had made some rather accusatory remarks about them on yet ANOTHER forum. I didn't bring it up in the "green room" until Epiphany mentioned it. So I decided to take the photos.

She explained what caused the situation with the JES cups. It's that crease between the double beads, basically.

BTW, I found another, slightly smaller lacrosse ball, which I dropped into these cups. It went all the way to the bottom of the PF cups (ALL of them!!!), but still would not go down into the Squatty cups. I also tried this with an RnT II Squatty cup and got the same results I got with the original JES cups.

As I mentioned on the other forum, it's important to remember that there has never been any guarantee, from Danny Dew or anyone else, that a lacrosse ball will fit into a particular cup. In fact, they are called lacrosse balls, not Paul Fox cup load balls.

I really liked my set I just got... no real spin lines, very clean look, all identical and equal weight. I also looked at your pics with the mouths open bead... mine was MUCH more closed, you could slide a playing card in it... but just barely, and it would stick. GREAT cups for $150. As for the final loads, I haven't tried any balls for final loads yet so I can't speak on that. But the Morrissey final loads will in fact fit... perfectly.


-DJ

Love those Paul Fox cups! 

DJ, welcome,

I also like the cups very much (cupnut!! ), except the bead. This is something I have to live with.  As stated in the review I found that the Fab fruit by Michael Ammar works best for me. I have some steel ball bearings on the way that are 2.25" , have to look how these work.

Etienne