Part 1 and 2: Steel shaft removal and install tutorial(Install on post #22)

Update May 4, 2019

Apparently the DB change of the forum has caused problems with all the text/images of this tutorial. It also looks as though the new forum will not allow a long enough post to keep everything together. As an alternate solution, I have made the tutorial into PDF so that you may just download the whole thing and display/print, however you choose to do it. Perhaps as the DB evolves, this stuff will remedy itself, but I don't want to go through all the trouble and just have it get messed up again as the whole forum is a WIP at the moment.

See the attached PDF file. I put this together in a bit of a rush, so it may not be perfect. Please let me know if there is anything that doesn't make sense or looks messed up.

Shaft Removal & Install Tutorial.pdf

Nice job!

Well done!

Very informative, not something that I would attempt to do but I am considering regripping my own clubs instead of paying someone else to do it.

Great job......can't wait for the other parts of the tutorial!

This is awesome. Maybe we can get this as a sticky?

Excellent process description. Let's hope all the DIY newbies take note!

BT

Very good tutorial! Makes me want to try to do it myself next time instead of paying someone else!

This would have been useful a few months back when I fumbling through the process. Appreciate the step-by-step instructions and corresponding crisp images. Looking forward to part 2. Will this be the start of a larger series?

[quote name='PeanutsDaddy' timestamp='1385324907' post='8200344']
Will this be the start of a larger series?
[/quote]

First off, let me say thank you to everyone for the kind words. The objective was to get something out there that can be referenced instead of having to type the long, confusing responses when people ask, and with a lack of pictures. There again, not by any means the only way of doing it, but it will get you from A to B.

As far as a series goes, I am really not sure yet. I am going to put something togeather for the install, just not sure how elaborate I want to be with it. For the sake of having to write a novel, it may just be on teh basics of epoxying the shaft and head. I thought about going into the swingweighting portion, but then it starts to get a little more in depth, and gets into the butt end and measuring, cutting, etc.

I have thought about doing some hot melt videos from the hosel/sole as well since that has become a little more poular amongst a lot of people here since the equipment is a lot cheaper, but haven't made a decision on that yet either.

Great tutorial. Once I get my basement cleaned up this winter I plan on building a little work area and this is an awesome write up.

Thanks for the review.

I am in the process of reshafting my irons. In the shaft pulls I bought off ebay there were plugs in the ends of some of them. I thought they were weights, but they were made of a super lightweight aluminum and weighed less than a gram. any idea what those were?

Thanks for the review.

I am in the process of reshafting my irons. In the shaft pulls I bought off ebay there were plugs in the ends of some of them. I thought they were weights, but they were made of a super lightweight aluminum and weighed less than a gram. any idea what those were?

No sarcasm, one of the best posts (and probably series) of posts I've seen in my short time here. Kudos to you.

Excellent post. Very clear and easy to follow. Only thing I would add would be a little extra emphasis on the safety side. Eye protection, glove and I like to wear a respirator. When cutting shafts or sanding tips down, there is a lot of metal dust floating around.

Fantastic tutorial. This should be pinned.

awsome ,verry good detail.!

[quote name='Cochese23' timestamp='1385408547' post='8205398']
Excellent post. Very clear and easy to follow. Only thing I would add would be a little extra emphasis on the safety side. Eye protection, glove and I like to wear a respirator. When cutting shafts or sanding tips down, there is a lot of metal dust floating around.
[/quote]

I agree with above as well. Only thing I would also add is a little more emphasis on not doing this to graphite shafts that are going to be reused. I know you mention it, but maybe bold that just before the pictures for those that peruse the words but only pay attention to the pictures.

Excellent tutorial. Very helpful. THANKS!!!

Removal is pretty easy - I just pulled the heads on a set of Mizuno MP 30s. My question is how to ensure that the head is properly aligned with the new shaft if I've determined where the spine is. I know how to epoxy it in, but I want to make sure the club faces are exactly square to the spine (90 degrees). Any DIY jigs? After going through the trouble of spining the shafts, having the head slide off square (before the epoxy sets up) defeats the purpose of the exercise. Just aligning it on the bottom of an open door frame doesn't seem enough. Any thoughts other than "eyeball it" would be very much appreciated. Thanks.

i think everyone has said it right so far. Well done. Needs to be a sticky immediately

Okay...finally getting around to completing this tutorial. About time right? Keep in mind this is merely just a "simple" install. I could write a novel when it comes to building from frequency slopes, frequency matching, blueprinting to a specific frequency, etc. That stuff alone could fill up an entire other post. This just covers the basics of taking a shaft, installing it in a head, and doing it correctly. Now, there are many different ways to skin the cat on this, this is just my way of going about it, I find it simple, and works pretty well. Hopefully, I can help some people from making the same mistakes I have at one time or another and costing themselves more money than it should. so, that being said, let's get this going...

A few items not pictured, but are used and highly suggested items for having include:

-Chop saw or some other accurate/clean way of cutting shafts(both graphite and steel)

-Sanding belt/sander or sand paper

-Heat source(heat gun, hot water, etc) for ferrule install

-Swingweight scale

-Club ruler

-Acetone

Let's start by gathering all the needed assembly items. I like to do this and lay everything out so I have it ready and available to me. Of course the club head, shaft, ferrule I'm going to use. Ferrules come in all different lengths, bore diameters, and outside diameters so it helps to do your research beforehand to know which ones you need. Many of the parts sites out there list the specs on their website on what the specs of each ferrule they sell is out there, knowing what your hosel diameter is and the shaft diameter will same you a lot of time and headache when it comes to the install. Like anyone, I get excited when I'm going to build new clubs, but patience and planning will go a long way here when it comes to having a solid fit and not sanding down half a ferrule because your's is too big, looking really abnormal because you went too small, having a ferrule that won't go up the shaft high enough, or a lot of slop that's just going to come loose down the road and leave you with that unsightly gap 6 months from now. You also notice I lay out any shims I might need(in this case I do as these are .355 shafts and the Wishon heads are a .370 hosel bore) as well as any swingweighting weights I might need. Everyone has their own options they prefer, I just pictured a few so you can get the idea. You have brass weights, lead weights, graphite lead weights, tungsten graphite weights, lead tape(not pictured), and even powder and cork. In this case, the Wishon heads have a unique design, they have a weight chamber in the bottom of the hosel that accepts a weight slug for this purpose. This is not that common, but it makes it really helpful when working with graphite especially. For this tutorial, I'll kind of go into both methods as most installs would require the standard graphite tip weight method when using graphite shafts.

Our first step here is to start with out initial cut to length. Place the shaft in the hosel and use whatever method you have decided upon to measure out your length. Now, we could spend all day arguing over what method is best, but I'll leave that for another time and just show you my way. This is were knowing your target length is important, once you cut, there's no going back without adding extensions, etc. This takes a little commitment the first couple times, but becomes easier as the experience level goes up. As that old saying goes, "measure twice, cut once". And if you are unsure, measure three or four more times before you go forward. As you can see, I have laid the club on my club ruler and have identified my final length. If I can advertise a little here, this is one of the reasons I paid out the money for a Mitchell ruler..the measuring block. It save a ton of time and has a milled 1/8" recess for marking for the cut to account for the grip end thickness. I have never regretted buying that thing, not once. End commercial. I mark, I cut and I re-verify my length is where I want it.

Next comes the initial swingweighting. Two schools of thought here. One is to use an old cut grip placed on the but end of the shaft OR taping the grip that's going to be used to the end of the shaft when measuring. Some SW scales also have a way to lay the grip on the scale to account for this as well. Now, some people will advocate always using a standard(if you wanna call it that) weighted grip no matter what will be used during the final build(midsize, ladies, oversized, etc), and some will always say to use the grip that's going to be used for the final build. This has to do with how the SW scale reacts to different grip weights and the so-called "tricking" of the SW scale. You can end up with a SW that can either be too low or too high on the finished club when being swung and feeling differently than what the builder initially targeted due to the scale being effected by the grip weight. Just remember this, if a head weighs 280 grams, it still weighs 280 grams whether you have a 60 gram grip on it vs a 40 gram grip. That's where people can get themselves in a little trouble, as they get too caught up in what the SW scale says, and not so much what's really there when the golfer swings the club. I personally measure SW using a 48 gram grip for every club that I build. Some may argue that it's wrong, and they are fully entitled to their opinion, but I look to control the head end of the club and I do not want the variable of grip weight/tape to effect that. That's just my way of doing it, if others want to go about it the other way, I'm perfectly okay with that. With whatever method you choose, I just advocate that you make it your standard and you make sure all the clubs are done the same way.

The other school of though here is to use no grip at all, place the club on the scale, and use the math of (-9)SW points to account for the grip. There again, I've seen both ways tought, I've done both, feel free to choose what works best for you here.

You'll also notice I also taped the ferrule to the head. It's a weight, and needs to be accounted for. Why have I not installed it on the club head you ask? That will make sense as this goes on.

As you can see, we have a starting SW of D1. Just so happens my build spec for this club is going to be a D2 so I'm a SW point short under where I want to be. This is where our tip weights come in. Weights can come anywhere between 2g-12g, so you just need to pick the ones that work best here. some have multiple weights, some choose to buy the higher weights and grind them down as need. There again, your choice, do what works for you. Now in the case of graphite tip weights, these to not recess all the way up into the shaft, therefor, if we add them, we also now add to the length of our club total length. This is another area where you have to be committed to what you are going. Do your math, add your tip weighting as needed, measure(twice), recut to the final target length, and remeasure. Now, someone will ask what end to cut from, and that depends. On taper tips, you are pretty much forced to make all length cuts from the butt end of the club. Some taper tips will allow up to about 3/8" of tip trim, but a lot of that depends on the club heads and their inside hosel diameters as well, and not all heads are created equal. As a general rule, I will allow myself to remove up to a 1/4" off the tip end when adding tip weights, everything else gets cut off the butt end of the golf club. With parallel tips(.370), you have a bit more leeway when removing from the tip end, and I would advocate that all the additional length from the tip weight install is removed from there to keep the shaft insertion depth the same as it was originally.

Now that we have our club specs all sorted out, it's time to prep for assembly. If not already completed, we need to prep the shaft tip to accept a good bond to the glue. We don't need to remove that much material, but we have to make sure that the glue has something to properly adhere to. For graphite and steel, you want to see that glossy top coating removed to expose your underlying material. Before moving forward(thanks Albatross for pointing this out), now is a good time to ensure both your hosel bore and shaft tip are free of dust and anything else that could hamper the epoxy bond. Using something such as acetone(doesn't leave residue behind), clean both the hosel bore and the shaft tip. Hosels can tend to rust and will do so fairly quick if exposed to moisture since it's untreated raw metal. Tools like the bore brush that I used in the removal tutorial will work well here to clean the spot rust out. You can also find pipe-cleaning wire brushes at hardware stores that can perform the same purpose. The end goal is to ensure both the shaft and hosel are clean so the epoxy will have something to adhere to.

Now it's time for our ferrule install. Start by inserting the ferrule on until it snugs up on the shaft. Add any tip weight that you used during your swingweighting process at this time as well. Now use the club head that you were going to use to seat the ferrule to the proper height on the shaft. Every head has a tolerance during manufacturing, using the proper head that goes with that shaft will ensure that the ferrule is at the proper height. As I spoke on before, every ferrule has tolerances as well, and some can be a pain in the you know what to get to the proper height, this is where a little heat(not a lot as ferrules will soften and deform at pretty low temps) will go a long way. I have used a heat gun, hair dryer, boiling water...all have worked. Just a little heat will allow the ferrule to expand and make it much easier to install, once you think it's installed completely, you can measure the exposed tip/tip weight. The length should be a match to your hosel depth of the club head. If it's short, keep working it until you get it up there.

Remember when I talked about not installing the ferrule yet when you were measure swingweight? Here's why. If we don't remove the added length of the tip weight that we needed to add from the tip end, look at where our ferrule is now. Too high. Been there, done that, and you probably aren't getting that ferrule back off there without damaging it.

Now that we have our ferule installed, it's time to add our shim. Now, many of you will never need to add these. In my case, I need to as I am installing a taper tip shaft in a .370 bore head. Now the nice thing about these is you can clip off any excess shim tabs until you achieve the right fit. In this case, I have snipped off a few as the original fit was too tight and didn't allow any room for epoxy to bond to the hosel and shaft. You want snug, but not tight here.

Now, as I get ready glue, I get everything out in front of me and ready to go once again. I use pretty quick setting epoxy and the work time is not very long, if I'm not ready to go, I will lose the work time that I have before the epoxy starts to set. Not so much with only one club, but more so when doing multiple clubs/set. I'll also measure out my epoxy and any shafting beads(as necessary). Now for this build, no shafting beads were used as I already had a snug fit, bit I will use them in cases where there might be just a little play where a shim is not warranted. I'll pretty much use whatever I have available to mix/apply the epoxy so long as I can coat the inner walls of the club head with it. In this case, an end off a q-tip and the handle end of a small paint brush.

Now for this one, I need to add the tip weight into the hosel bore before I install the shaft. I do so by applying a little epoxy to the end and installing. Now, for most other tip weights, they are going to install into the shaft, but I use the same process, little dab of epoxy on the weight and install into the shaft tip. You would be surprised, but any free-play in that weight after it's in the head and it can cause vibration and an annoying sound that can actually be heard. Nothing like ruining a good build, so better safe than sorry in my opinion.

Now, for me, I will install a very very thin coat to the shafts when installing shims. Thin coat, then add the shim to ensure there is epoxy on the underside of the shim tabs. For every install, I use my applicator to coat the hosel walls. Here is where many go overboard, and less is more a lot of times. You just need to evenly coat the hosel wall, that will be more than enough to secure a good bond. No goups, no pouring of epoxy down into the bore, just coat the walls of the hosel.

Once you install the shaft, give it a good turn to ensure good coating of the epoxy all the way around the shaft. Line your shaft how you want it to set(logo down, spin aligned, whatever suits you) and give it a few taps on the ground while holding the grip in your hand using the butt end of the club against the ground to seat the shaft in the bottom of the hosel. That doesn't mean you have a 20lb sledge hammer in your hand driving a stake into the ground, a few taps will be more than sufficient. A little cloth with some acetone to clean up any excess epoxy around the ferrule area and your done(take care as acetone will also eat the ferrule as well, less is more in this case, just need to clean up the excess epoxy at this point). Sit someplace upright to dry(against a shelf, wall, etc).

I highly suggest you putting your stir stick into what you have left of leftover epoxy. This will allow you to check the cure down the road, when you can no longer remove the stick from the epoxy, you know that your epoxy is well on the way to curing. This will limit the chances of having an epoxy failure without you knowing about it until it's too late. Curing failures can happen so it's best to do what you can to prevent it.

Congrats, you just installed a club head. Go have a celebratory beer, a smoke, or whatever you choose while the epoxy cures up. After that, you can install your grip, add any finishing touches to the ferrule, and be on your way.

I think you missed a step on cleaning the shaft prepped area and the inside of the hosel before you apply epoxy. Cleaning theses surfaces (acetone) is a must to get a good bond.

Part 2... Finally!! I've been waiting nearly 4 years to put my irons back together.

Great job. There will be a lot of people who will/should use this to get into doing their own work.

Part 2... Finally!! I've been waiting nearly 4 years to put my irons back together.

 

 

Great job. There will be a lot of people who will/should use this to get into doing their own work.

Haha!

Fantastic stuff. How about a how to on pull/install shaft adapters?

Fantastic stuff. How about a how to on pull/install shaft adapters?

Slow down! Took me 3 years to get both parts done :)

Kidding aside, I have thought about it. The removal is going to require some type of puller to do it correctly, be it a hydraulic one or the screw-type puller, but the overall process is generally the same. The process for the install at least isn't a whole lot different for adapters either, other than the head weighting for swingweighting is treated differently. I guess, if you really wanted to, you could use a tip weight in the adapter. Doubt I would though as it cuts into the bonding area that the shaft has to the adapter, and being as though this is in a club with a higher swing speed, I would want all the surface area I could get.

Excellent tutorial. I am very close to doing this in my learning curve. Thanks.

Can you recommend a torch. Will any butane or propane torch from Lowes be adequate?

You are very welcome, hoping it helps some folks out there bypass some of the mistakes I've made over the years.

As far as recommendations, you'll hear lots of differing opinions on what's best. If you see my first post, you'll see exactly what I use. I have both a propane torch with trigger control and a heat gun. The heat gun, propane nozzle, and the canisters all came from Lowes. Some like the smaller butane torches, some do the same as me, some have others they prefer. I use the torch for iron heads and the gun for anything that is painted, like a driver head for example.

I use a micro butane Torch. Very easy to control and doesn't overheat things