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The problem with the book was that it had very little information in it and was terribly outdated.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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The Clubhead And The Shaft
Whether you’re analyzing your game or choosing new clubs, think of clubheads and shafts as two separate entities.
GolfWorks' Maltby Honored in Ohio's Golf Hall of Fame
Ralph joined Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and others in the Ohio Golf Hall of Fame.
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Recent Comments
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.
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.
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.!
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.
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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