Hickory Shaft Straightening Boards?

A while ago I purchased a group of supplies, tools and equipment from the son and mother of a deceased club builder in Buffalo, N.Y.. Included in the group were these two items. They were boards of some type and were manufactured and sold by " GolfWorks". The young man told me he didn't know anything about what his father's hobby but wondered if the two boards had something to do with," Hickory Shaft Straightening". I've never done any work on hickory shaft woods or irons until the last year and decided to pull them both out, take a few pictures of them and send the pictures off to GolfWorks(Canada) in Ottawa and the Golf Historical Society of Canada..

Doug Marshall(Historian) from G.H.S.C. wrote me a nice email. It read," While some of us have had a lot of experience working on bent shafts, no one has ever seen the apparatus that you have sent us pictures to identify".

Then I received a nice email from Jim Yachinich at GolfWorks - USA. He wrote," These are gripping alignment boards used to square the clubface on irons and woods when installing grips".

The mystery boards riddle was solved. Along with the email was included a few scanned pictures from the 1997 GolfWorks Equipment Catalog. Jim also wrote that these gripping alignment boards went back earlier than 1997 into the 1980's. Jim also wrote," the gripping alignment board for the woods, may not work as well with today's larger drivers and some of the wide sole irons"

Took some pictures of the gripping alignment boards. Thought some of you might find them interesting. The Walter Hagen driver is Chris Sprietzer's fathers.

Blair

Canada

Yeah I remember seeing those offered in Maltby's catalogs back then. Seemed like a good idea but it was one of those luxury items that I really couldn't afford at the time. Besides I didn't have issues with squaring the face when gripping clubs. I think I recall reading somewhere that some high volume club manufacturers used something similar during production.

Never have seen such an animal--- Thanks for posting---- Like I have said many times I learn something darn near every time I fire this thing up and go into this section