Terrence06, welcome to the world of clubmaking. Basically, the shaft/head/club length thing works out as follows; a 1 iron would use a 41” shaft, a 2 iron a 40 ½” shaft, a 3 iron a 40” shaft, a 4 iron a 39 1/2” shaft, a 5 iron a 39” shaft, a 6 iron a 38 ½” shaft, a 7 iron a 38” shaft, a 8 iron a 37 ½” shaft and finally the 9 iron and all your wedges a 37” shaft. This would be for Dynamic Gold and Dynamic Lite shafts. Dynalite Gold and Dynalite would be different. The 5 iron would take a 40” shaft length. You can figure out the rest by adding 1” to the lengths above. The TT Lite XL would make the 5 iron from a 38” shaft. To confuse things even further, Royal Precision shafts use different raw lengths from those already mentioned here for True temper shafts. In your case, I am assuming that you trimmed the 3 1/2” from the butt end of the shaft. This does not change the shaft stiffness nearly as much as trimming from the tip end. Again, not knowing which shaft you purchased, you could actually end up with a little softer feeling shaft. If you hit this club well, you could have found a head shaft combination that works really well for you. Terrence, this is a great hobby to enjoy because you can do whatever you want and keep experimenting until you build the best set for you. Besides, you learn a lot along the way.
Building Your Own Golf Clubs Is One Great Hobby!
Why? Because everyone needs to relax and do something that they enjoy. Many jobs are stressful and many are not, but we simply need to get away from work occasionally to expand our horizons and maybe, just maybe, we can learn something new and have some fun in the process. The only reason that I am in the golf business today was simply my desire to learn more about the sport I loved. Unfortunately, back in the 1960’s it was impossible to obtain any information about the technical aspects of golf clubs. The only information I found was a small booklet about golf club repair written by Kenneth Smith.
The problem with the book was that it had very little information in it and was terribly outdated. This is not the case today. Anyone looking for technical information on golf clubs has numerous books, videos and articles to read over and has the potential to learn as much or more about golf clubs than many of the people who are currently in the golf business.
Building and repairing golf clubs is fun!
The GolfWorks clubmaking schools are another great way to get hands on experience and learn at your own pace. The people who attend our schools come from varied backgrounds. Many are school teachers, golf professionals, lawyers, doctors, dentists, construction workers or simply interested golfers.
However, they all have one thing in common, which is, they love golf and want to get more involved in it and understand more about their equipment. Building golf clubs, repairing golf clubs, fitting golf clubs or simply altering the specifications of golf clubs is exciting and that’s what makes it fun.
We all have to start somewhere when we take up a new hobby. To find out if this is really for you, simply take the first step and either build a golf club or regrip your set of clubs. Individual golf club kits and the regrip kits come with complete instructions. For the regripping crowd, a new “Learn All About Grips” video shows every aspect of understanding grips. It’s geared for beginner to expert and has all the latest tips and tricks of how your grips can help you play better. For the club assembly people, my new “Learn All About Wedges” video provides plenty of insight into what type of wedge you should build to help your game.
Roll up your sleeves and jump right in. It’s inexpensive, educational and very rewarding.
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Article Discussion
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11:44AM - Oct 15, 2007RE: Building Your Own Golf Clubs Is One Great Hobby!
#21
Report ThisRalph Maltby
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9:48PM - Oct 14, 2007RE: Building Your Own Golf Clubs Is One Great Hobby!
#20
Report Thisterrence06
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Mr. Maltby, I recently have became interested in building my own irons. So to get started I ordered a #5 MTF iron head and 41” tapered true temper steel shaft, regular flex. The assembly was easy, but I think I may have ordered the wrong size shaft, or does it matter? The finished 5 iron with grip and all is 37 3/4” just what I wanted. Does cutting off 3 1/2” effect the flex and make the shaft too stiff? Or should I have ordered a smaller shaft? Thanks for your time.
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9:21PM - Oct 2, 2007RE: Building Your Own Golf Clubs Is One Great Hobby!
#19
Report ThisAntony
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Thank you Ralph…you are right..I will book for some of the training programs next year…I already ***ambly some clubs and it’s easy but I’am interested to get more experience…it’s my hobby now…have a great day.!
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4:14PM - Oct 1, 2007RE: Building Your Own Golf Clubs Is One Great Hobby!
#18
Report ThisRalph Maltby
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Antony, obviously, the graphite shaft extractor machine is the best way, but it is expensive to buy. Yes, you can remove any graphite shaft without it, but it does take patience. I have done this with only a heat gun and about 20 to30 minutes free time to allow the heat to penetrate slowly into the hosel and head to soften the shaft to head epoxy bonding material before you soften the graphite shaft resins and ruin the shaft. The extractor bar in combination with the heat gun will help in making this job a little easier. Antony, if you really start getting into this club repair, club alteration thing, consider coming to our golf club repair and assembly school here at the GolfWorks. You will learn and perform all the neat tricks so that you have the confidence to tackle about anything you will ever encounter.
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6:17PM - Sep 30, 2007RE: Building Your Own Golf Clubs Is One Great Hobby!
#17
Report ThisAntony
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Ralph. What is the easiest way to remove a graphite shaft without using a shaft extractor ? Can be this done only using the extractor bar?. Thank you
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1:38PM - Jul 5, 2007RE: Building Your Own Golf Clubs Is One Great Hobby!
#16
Report ThisRalph Maltby
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Scott, I think this was a case of not knowing any better. It could also be that this is the only grip size they stock. There is no standard practice of putting a .580 grip on a .600 butt shaft that I am aware of. Leaving the old tape on is definitely not acceptable when regripping. I do think that you found one of your problems however. Too large a grip as you are aware will cause a golfer to hit the ball to the right because too large a grip size for the golfer inhibits the wrist action which in turn can reduce the normal clubhead rotation coming into impact. This can leave the clubhead open causing the tendency to hit the ball to the right.
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5:18PM - Jul 3, 2007RE: Building Your Own Golf Clubs Is One Great Hobby!
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Report ThisScott
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Ralph, why is the use of putting a .580 core grip on a .600 butt shaft so common practice? Doesnt this make the grip size larger than standard? I am not talking about purposely making the grip size larger, I am talking about new clubs and clubs I had worked on by a golfsmith that were done this way. I am a men’s standard size. I took off the grips today of a set of woods that I had a golfsmith work on (extended the shafts). He not only put on .580 core grips but never took off the old tape, he just put more tape on top of the old. I hit these clubs with a heavy fade usually, so I am hoping the new grips will help me release better. Do golfsmiths and manufacturers stretch the .580’s down the shaft to thin them out?
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5:07PM - Jun 22, 2007RE: Building Your Own Golf Clubs Is One Great Hobby!
#14
Report ThisRalph Maltby
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Bill, it gets a little muddy sometimes on the hybrid types but here is a general rule. The iron hybrids generally have an iron shaped face and the fairway metal hybrids have a face shaped like a shallow fairway metal. The iron hybrids are generally not painted finishes, but some are. The fairway metal hybrids are mostly all painted finishes. They can both be designed to play very easy. The main thing to consider for your wife or for that matter everyone who uses hybrids is to use a hybrid designed shaft or a shaft designed for fairway metals or drivers. Do not use an iron shaft as they are too stiff and defeat the purpose of a hybrid. A number of iron hybrids use iron shafts and are designed to iron lengths. This can work very well, but I almost always recommend the fairway shaped hybrids because they usually more favor the playability of fairway metals. OK, I am probably confusing you a little, so here goes for a hybrid your wife will really like. Pick a fairway shaped hybrid with a minimum of 22 degrees (I like 24 degrees) and put a standard flex ladies (L) shaft in it (not a hybrid shaft). Make the length either 1” or 1 1/2” longer than her 5 iron (hopefully her 5 iron should is no longer than 37”) and make the swingweight a minimum of C-8. Be sure to fit her for proper grip size as many women play with too large a grip. See what happens when you ask me for advice; I have plenty of it. Let me know how this works for her.
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6:42PM - Jun 21, 2007RE: Building Your Own Golf Clubs Is One Great Hobby!
#13
Report ThisBill
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Mr. Maltby, what a wonderful site, such great information. I am new to club building (just started Oct. of last year and yes, I am planning on coming to the five day school next spring). My wife asked me to build her a hybrid club because she can hit her irons off the fairway OK but has trouble with her fairway woods. A friend where I work who also builds clubs and I were emailing on this and he said to make sure you get her a hybrid that plays like an iron because some are meant to play like irons and others like fairway woods. Is there a difference and if so, how to you tell what is what? Sorry if this is a dumb question but as I said, I am new at this, but have sure found what I want to do when I retire in a couple years. Thanks for any advice.
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10:53AM - May 27, 2007RE: Building Your Own Golf Clubs Is One Great Hobby!
#12
Report ThisRalph Maltby
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Frank, this is quite common with first time ***emblers. In almost every case, the head is correctly epoxied on the shaft. The problem is that the ferrule was not tight enough on the shaft to keep it from slowely sliding up the shaft from each ball impact. One way to correct this is to apply a little epoxy in the gap and push the ferrule back down tightly against the hosel. This will usually keep it from moving as long as it is not overly loose. The ferrule can be a little tough to get back down on top of the hosel, so here is a method that I use: I take an old golf grip and cut a 1” by 5” strip out of it (rubber grips only). I wrap the grip strip around the ferrule and this gives me grip and leverage to twist the ferrule as I push down on it. Tip, when you first install any ferrule, make sure that it is tight enough on the shaft that you need to drive it into place with a ferrule install tool or when the head is installed, use the head itself to drive the ferrule. This last method always keeps the ferrule perfectly tight against the hosel after ***embly.