Insertion depth of Ping's w/hosel weights (G410, G700, i500?)

I'm going back through my G410's after experiencing bonding failure on a couple of clubs. I've cleaned the hosel down to the weight and have noticed the insertion depth is either 1.20" or 1.05". I've also found a plastic disc that was down over the weight on at least some heads. I'm assuming the 1.20" depth hosels take the discs? That would help equalize the insertion depth on all the heads. Can anyone either confirm or refute my suspicion?

And for what it's worth, 1" insertion depth ain't much. Add in the collared ferrule, which is plastic, and these clubs don't have a whole lot of bonding surface area connecting the head to the shaft. I built the clubs using 3M DP420 which is high quality epoxy BUT it sucks with stainless steel. I spaced out when picking it out of my supply cabinet. DP460 is much better with stainless as is Hysol E60HP, which is what I've been using recently. On the two clubs with bonding failure the epoxy stuck well to the shaft but not to the hosel. I'm prepping these much more carefully this time around.

Ness ~~~ I can confirm the short hosel depth on the G410s. I was surprised to find mine at between the two dimensions you got. Most about 1.125".

When I ran across club heads in the past that were short hosel length I would run a tap through the hosel. Similar to what some OEMs do. It creates a bit of added epoxy hold.

HTH

Yup just a hair over 1”. Makes me nervous to work on Pings.

Thanks for the feedback. I made some spacers for the deeper insertion heads so they are all the same. Makes me nervous too. I spent a lot of time prepping everything and using good epoxy so fingers crossed.

This is concerning. Wanting to do some shaft testing with my g410s. The Alta is lighter than I would like. Might be better to get fit and trade in and let Ping do the work.

I'm a little confused. Are you saying that not all of the iron heads have the weight port?

Ping's newer clubs all suck for reshafting. The loose fit that has to be taken up with the ferrule does give one the heebie jeebies because as noted, there isn't much surface area bonding to anything. I first noticed it on the G700's, but it seems to apply for all of the new stuff. It must be a nightmare on the production floor trying to figure out which hosel plug to use in conjunction with which density of toe screw to use. Hopefully the computer program does it all.

As for the weight port... up until they introduced the i500, G700 irons, Ping irons didn't have anything in the hosel other than the shaft prior to that. I haven't done much of the new stuff, but I think one would have to be damn (really?!? damnn snowflake censors at it again) sure about buying any pulls for Ping clubs these days.

DenkeaWhen I ran across club heads in the past that were short hosel length I would run a tap through the hosel. Similar to what some OEMs do. It creates a bit of added epoxy hold.

I don't think that is actually creating a better bond. It would seem to me that you are actually reducing the surface area that the shaft can bond to as the shaft (or ferrule wall) is now only bonding to the ridge. You are going to get a better bond on flat surface to flat surface because you are maximizing the surface area.

All the heads have the weights. It's just a matter of which one.

You guys have forgotten more on club building than I'll ever know. Anyone ask Ping Customer Service? I am not aware of anything posted to this website or on the internet in general of Ping iron heads flying off shafts. Or is Ping doing a great job hiding this info?

Ping won't provide clubmaking info to the general public. They will just tell you "send the clubs in."

I don’t think any OEM is immune to stuff coming apart. One thing Ping has had going for it is very high quality epoxy and doing most if not all assembly in house.

You have to remember that 99% of csr’s you are going to speak to, have never repaired a club in their lives. They might be familiar with the process, but that’s it. They stick to the script most of the time.

Nessism and Socrates, thanks for the feedback, always learning something new on this website.

Interesting on the G410s. Crappy weather here today so I was just hanging in the pro shop when rhe Fed Ex guy came in with G410s that were sent back after only a couple rounds two of the heads came out while in action.

The whole set was sent back. I wonder if the whole set was pulled and put back together or just the two that had heads come off.

Glue failed in my 410's AGAIN. I'm at a total loss. I spent a LOT of time during the build: cleaning the shafts, hosels, washing out the hosels with alcohol after abrading the metal with a sanding sleeve on a dremel to rough up the metal, and using high grade industrial epoxy - Loctite Hysol E-60HP. I've been building clubs for more than 20 years and never one time have I had a club fail...but now I don't know what to do. The epoxy stuck great to the shaft but not to the metal in the hosel.

The problem as I see it is that 1) there is only 1" of insertion depth, 2) the collared ferrule take away about 3/8" of contact area between the shaft and hosel, and 3) the hosel has that typical loose Ping fit.

Anyone want to buy a set of G410's?

BTW, the mesh stuff on the tip is fiberglass drywall tape. I go around the tip 2X and it snugs up the shaft fit in the hosel to keep the shaft from tilting in the hosel while the glue drys.

Do you have data sheets on the epoxy your using, anything stating shear strength for different materials? I was doing some reading a while back on epoxies and saw several references that when used on stainless, the shear strength can drop by almost half and in some cases even more versus mild steel. I’m sure Ping has something specially formulated for their clubs.

Another option would be to drop the collared ferrules and just use regular ones, gain a bit more surface area. Collars are longer than normal (~3/8”) on Ping ferrules. I know it would be harder to keep everything centered while the epoxy cures but might be worth the effort. Grab a shaft/head drying clip from GolfWorks, they run about $6 each, keeps everything nice and centered.

I used Loctite Hysol E-60HP. It's very strong with stainless and claims to be toughened which means it should work well when impacted.

Where I work we use EC-3333 to bond stainless steel to high tech thermoset plastics. I'm going to talk to one of our materials guys about using that stuff, or get his recommendation for something else.

Yeah after blindly doing a g400 hybrid reshaft for a buddy and now doing a reshaft of some i200 irons.....not a fan of ping. The irons are easy enough but still, having buy a special ferrule with a long collar just seems to add to the potential for failure, but of course I may be wrong. The g400 hybrid was a real PITA.....I fashioned a sleeve from a .370 to .400 bushing ferrule. Sanded the bottom portion of the sleeve until it fit roughly half way down and then sanded the whole sleeve to get it to fit......so its some.sort of tapered bore from less than .400 at the top and more than .370at the bottom......LOL.....now I read this about the g410.....I have a 6i I need to reshaft and at least the replacement ferrule is .49 and not .99 per; also a g700 5i which needs a reshaft, ugh!

A shorter collar may be the ticket. I've got some that will work after a collar mod to shave them down a little. What adhesive though? That Hysol E-60HP should have worked. 3M DP810 maybe? It's an acrylic adhesive that's more flexible than epoxies. Pretty sure Ping uses some sort of acrylic adhesive. Just don't know which one.

Edit: Just bought some 3M DP8410NS. It's a newer product than DP810 and has a better high temperature shear strength. They toute the toughness so should be good for impact absorption. I'm going to use the shorter collar ferrules and lathe cut them so the collar is a good fit inside the hosel. Fingers crossed...

I gave up reshafting the newer Pings and just buy them with the shaft I want. I have been doing my own club work for 20+ years and have just used Golfsmith and more recently GolfWorks 24 hour epoxy and never had a shaft come loose until I did some Ping i500’s. The larger top, shallow insert depth and the collared ferrule is tough to get a good fit on the newer Pings.

I’m looking to get a set of G710’s and will be biting the bullet and ordering them with Nippon NS Pro Modus3 Tour 105’s rather than going the pull route and used clubs later this season once people start selling their sets.

In the past I would just buy a slightly used set, pull the shafts and sell them and then set them up with tip weights, etc with the shaft I wanted. With the hosel weight, toe weight and near impossible to use tip weights in the short hosel it’s not worth the effort.

If one fails due to Ping original install then it’s easy enough to have them fix it at their cost rather than risking a failure due to something I did not do right.

Best laid plans...

My stock of short collared ferrules is down to two. Not enough to do the set (obviously.) Looking at the Ping ferrules on Golfworks and they have pretty large windows for epoxy to get through to the shaft but they could be larger. I'm thinking now of using those but opening the windows up to the max. The freaking insertion depth is only 1.05" so regardless of what I do I'm sort of gun shy at this point. I'm half tempted to reinstall the stock shafts and off these things. Don't want to pass off junk on some unsuspecting buyer though. Not happy with the hosel design at all.

I wonder if you would have better luck drilling out the hosel plug to give you a deeper insertion depth? In the few I've done, in one I substituted a cut down lead weight to give me more depth and still get to the same SW. Now, I was using shafts that weren't butt cut so I could afford the extra depth.

Other than that, I can only sympathize with you as I know they new Ping's are a PITA.

I'd do it but there is only extra depth available on a few heads. Most have the tungsten weight right at 1.05" and no way to drill into that.

Ness,

i feel your pain as I built a set of i500 and it irritated me to no end with the loose fit and collared Ferrules.

If it helps. This is what I used and have always used. And I beat the crap out those i500 for 6 months with no failures.

Some don’t like a fast cure. But I’m telling you I put a lot of swings on my clubs and I’ve hit drivers 30 minutes after gluing many many times with zero issues.

I talked to my materials engineer friend at work and he thinks the problem is contamination of the metal surface. He wants me to use MEK to clean the metal so I just ordered some. I'm having a hard time understanding how the metal could be contaminated but regardless, it can't hurt to use best practice. Regarding the short insertion depth his response is that there should be more than enough area if using good epoxy. The bond area is about 1 sq.in. so with epoxy that has 3500 psi lap shear strength "you could hang a car off that bond" is his comment. Oh, and that DP8410NS I ordered has "spacer beads" in it. Oh boy! I've been ranting against that stuff for ages here and now I've bought epoxy with it built in.

Beads! We don’t need no stinkin’ beads! ?

I know you won’t rest until you get this done. Keep up the good work.

What s MEK Ness?

I have been building clubs for years and never had a failure. I built 3 Ping G700's and 2 heads flew off in 1 round. Exact same as the picture above.

Mr. Wolfe

I'm half tempted to buy a 4 iron shaft and then soft step my whole set after chopping 3/8" off the tip of each shaft. That way the fatter shaft tip will tighten up the hosel fit.

Would there be any way to remove the factory hosel weight, bore the hosel deeper, then use a .355 taper reamer to get final dimensions at the bottom of the hosel. You would get a tight fit at the bottom of the hosel, then use a regular tip weight inside the shaft to replace the factory hosel weight. Would be a lot of work but would really be the best option to gain some surface area inside the hosel and get the proper insertion depth.

Do you have any .370 parallel tip shafts lying around to see how they fit? Would save you from chopping the tip off a tapered tip shaft just for testing.

Just wondering if something is different from a metallurgical standpoint from other recent Ping models to the newest ones. Had a set of Iblades that I reshafted twice, never had a failure and used the factory collared ferrules. I did and have always used Golfworks maximum strength high impact epoxy.