Post War Powerbilt Set

One company that seems a little harder to come by, at least late 40’s/ early 50’s era clubs is Powerbilt. I bought a very nice set of all original 1952 Powerbilt woods a few years ago and had them boxed up in the garage. So after digging them out a few weeks ago and spending more and more time hitting them, I decided I needed to find a matching iron set to play with them. I wanted to find a set with the original Powerbilt Golf Pride grips, just like the woods.

After what was probably a year of searching eBay for late 40’s Powerbilt’s, I found this set of 1949 Powerbilt 8990 irons. They are a perfect match with the woods with both the same grips as well as the same True Temper Dynamic stiff shafts.

Irons are diggers with the sharp leading edge and no bounce, but they are surprisingly long.

The 8990 dtc irons were listed on page 1 of the 1949 Powerbilt catalog, so I’m assuming these were their top-of-the-line offering.

The woods look to be 1952 model 500 deep face models.

And both the irons and woods have the Golf Pride vulcanized rubber and cork grip.

I’ve really come to like this immediate post war era of clubs. The heavy shafts feel great for my swing. I’m going to keep the patina on the woods as is and just seal them up with some spray poly. And after 70 years the stainless steel iron heads still look great.

Those irons look to be in amazing condition, especially considering that they're older than most of my best jokes, which haven't aged so well.

Golf pride grips rather than the leather ones, right? If they're vulcanised on, does that make them harder to remove?

I was thinking that maybe the rubber cork compound was in liquid or paste state and the clubs had a form around the shaft with the compound injected in and then hardened or vulcanized, but that’s just my theory.

I’m sure it wouldn’t be too hard to remove the grips, but they would surely come off in pieces and would be destroyed in the process.

See a commonality in iron design from this era. These H&B's are very similar to the '53 Spalding Top-Flight Synchro-Dyned (diamond dot) and '49 Wilson Top-Notch irons that I've had. The Spaldings were stainless steel and still in excellent shape considering the age. The Wilsons are not stainless and badly pitted from rust damage. Despite my best efforts cleaning them up to some measure of respectability using my typical methods.

Not sure if those "vulcanized" grips are the same as the 50's era MacGregor "molded" on grips. But if they are, once tried getting one off a Mac iron and it was a fruitless effort. Made an absolute mess of it and determined removal was an impossibility. Banished it off to the scrap pile never to be seen again. Subsequently, read somewhere that the only way to get them off was torching to a smolder and scrap. The exercise sounding seriously hazardous and toxic. The grip was not unlike those H&B grips above, except it was an off-white color. Guess they were meant to last forever. IDK.

About the only way to get those grips off is to scrape them off with a knife. And a rather large one at that. Horrible job.

Luckily I have no intention of removing these grips. I’m sure it would not be fun. ?

Nice find there DJ--- And that is what amazes me you always seem to find what you are looking for and in pristine shape too! On the grip part I think you are correct. Seems I heard or read somewhere that they used a mold and poured the hot liquid compound to make those grips. What also blows my mind is the fact you have the catalog pics to go with them.

> @Fellaheen51 said:

> See a commonality in iron design from this era. These H&B's are very similar to the '53 Spalding Top-Flight Synchro-Dyned (diamond dot) and '49 Wilson Top-Notch irons that I've had. The Spaldings were stainless steel and still in excellent shape considering the age. The Wilsons are not stainless and badly pitted from rust damage. Despite my best efforts cleaning them up to some measure of respectability using my typical methods.

>

> Not sure if those "vulcanized" grips are the same as the 50's era MacGregor "molded" on grips. But if they are, once tried getting one off a Mac iron and it was a fruitless effort. Made an absolute mess of it and determined removal was an impossibility. Banished it off to the scrap pile never to be seen again. Subsequently, read somewhere that the only way to get them off was torching to a smolder and scrap. The exercise sounding seriously hazardous and toxic. The grip was not unlike those H&B grips above, except it was an off-white color. Guess they were meant to last forever. IDK.

>

>

You know you are dead on it on the age thing. Those look similar to my Mac Toski Mity Mites which along with your help we dated to about 1953 remember that? And even though I have never owned a set they do resemble some of the Wilson Top Notch sets I have seen posted. I have done some regrip jobs on older Macs and Spaldings with that type of grip. Yep I lit them up with a torch like you described OUTSIDE and yes they do stink.

> @"BIG STU" said:

> Nice find there DJ--- And that is what amazes me you always seem to find what you are looking for and in pristine shape too! On the grip part I think you are correct. Seems I heard or read somewhere that they used a mold and poured the hot liquid compound to make those grips. What also blows my mind is the fact you have the catalog pics to go with them.

I have been looking for a nice set of early 1950’s Powerbilt’s for some time. I have the Kaplan H&B book and have looked through it often and I was really drawn to the shape of the early to mid 50’s Powerbilt designs. These 8990 irons are a little earlier than what I was looking for but I knew they would be a good match with my 1952 Powerbilt woods.

Found these irons on eBay. Pictures were dark and couldn’t see much detail but I figured being stainless they would be in pretty good shape still and they are. Grips are a bit hardened but still playable. Just cool that they have lasted this long.

When I get a minute, likely this weekend, I'll post a few pics of my Olin Dutra H&B Louisville Grand Slam's. I believe they are early to mid 30's, I have the H&B Kaplan book as well but still can't quite date them.