About Us

Jim Stadum and Dave Doucette
founders of Samsara Cues

Samsara Cues is the creative forces of Jim Stadum and Dave Doucette. Dave’s experience as a master cabinetmaker, machinist and design engineer gives Samsara an advantage of custom building most of their machinery. Jim is a founding member of the Academy of American Cue Art (AACA) and also served for six years as Chairman of the Board for the American Cuemakers Association’s (ACA). Dave’s experience combined with Jim’s business sense and unrelenting strive for perfection produce the most original and mesmerizing designs in cue making.

Through the years, their unique style has earned them awards including “Best Design of Show”, “Best Execution of Show” and “People’s Choice”. The Smithsonian Institute has also recognized their talents; a unique cue named “Illusions” permanently resides at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC. Samsara is known to many as “The Best Woodworkers in the Industry”.

Crafting a Samsara cue is very labor intensive as well as material consuming. Dave and Jim have combined modern technology with an ancient technique called Intarsia, which is done by gluing many pieces of wood together at different angles to create a specific design. Inlay techniques such as True V Points and Pocket Inlays are utilized to customize their designs. This is done on state of the art customized CNC equipment using different materials such as Curly Maple, Birdseye Maple, Cocobolo, Snakewood, Tulipwood, Pink Ivory Wood, Camitilla, Bocote, Ziricote, Padauk, Purple Heart, Black Cherry Burl, Thuja Burl, Amboynia Burl, Rosewood, Bubinga, Ebony and Ivory to name a few. Tiger-eye, Crazy Lace, Turquoise, Malachite and Petrified Wood are also inlayed using Diamond Dental tooling.

Samsara Cues strives to build cues that not only play with precise accuracy, but have the artistic beauty that makes them highly collectable. To achieve this, they adhere strictly to “Old School Quality Standards”.