Would a lot of lead tape in the toe influence cog?

[teddyironboy]

I found a deal on brand new vega blades that I couldn’t pass up - $350! However from what I think I know about head weight and what I want the ball to do, a club with more weight in the toe would suit me a lot more. I also like a heavy club anyways.

 

It seems like tungsten weights that get added in the toe are roughly 15 grams. So if I were to add that amount to the toe, is that enough to shift the cog more middle? Another option is to drill out holes in the heel area, but I don’t know much about that.

 

I know half the appeal is the sleek sexy look, but it’s ok. From what it sounds like they’re pretty great to play with, and I hope to make it work even better for me.

[Valtiel]

Can you elaborate on what you want the ball to do that has lead to wanting more toe weight? Just want to make sure your intent lines up with what you're trying to do. 

An inherent characteristic of traditional blades is a slightly heel side CG, so attempting to center will take a lot of weight, and unless your strike location is consistently centered or slightly toe side then there is not a ton of value in doing this. Plus 15g of lead tape is a lot, and you'd need to concentrate it as far out on the toe as you can in order to effect any real change. 

[teddyironboy]

I like to play a straighter shot. Limit the rate of closure as much as I can and work on rotating more. I know the swing makes the most difference, but will take any help I can get.

 

Looked around more online, the Cobra mb/cb line advertises just a 6 gram weight far out in the toe, so a more spread out 15g could work. The clubs I had in mind before the Vegas were the JPX919 or Nike vapor pro combo, not sure what’s the weight distribution on those. But I think I like the idea of a toe heavy pure blade more. MOI should increase too yea?

[Righty to Lefty]

15 grams will not move the CoG any noticeable amount.  I remember doing experiments with this and it took roughly 25% of the mass of the club head to begin to move the CoG a noticeable amount.  I weight all my clubs in the toe as it will aid in helping to slow the closure rate of the club face through impact and it is very useful in that regard if that is your intent.  It will also of course increase the swing weight which is also something that welcome as I also prefer "high" swing weight clubs.  Either way you should experiment with it and see if you can find your perfect fit and then once you do look for a more permanent solution to attach the weight to the club.  I JB welded 5 gram pinewood derby weights to my irons and they came out amazing.  

 

I found these weights used to balance car tires more useful during my experimental testing phase. They will eventually pop off but you will quickly learn if the weight is getting closer to what you are searching for. They come in 1/4 oz (7 gram) and 1/2 oz (14 gram) options and that is how I figured out that it takes about 25% of the mass to be moved to move the CoG.  I put them on the extreme toe and it moved the CoG about 1 to 2mm...but that was huge in how the club performed in combination with the added weight helping to hold the club face open. Best of luck in your testing. 

 

https://www.jegs.com/p/JEGS/JEGS-Lead-Free-Stick-On-Wheel-Weights/1415966/10002/-1

 

 

Here is a pic of my permanent solution (each cube weighs 5 grams and I then filled the entire upper cavity with clear JB weld but don't have a pic of that but you get the idea):

 

[teddyironboy]

Dang, 50 grams! Really is something to heavy clubs though, James Robinson of YouTube has a video adding 24 grams and his dispersion improved. Also Moe Norman had heavy clubs.

 

You did your experiment with the extreme toe? Pictured it’s pretty spread out on the toe, plus some of them in the middle.

 

Maybe drilling holes is a solution.

Edited July 20, 2021 by teddyironboy

[Righty to Lefty]

My swing weight preference is F5 but I am a former college baseball player and always preferred heavy total weight and "swing weight" bats so I transferred it over to my golf clubs and it worked out perfectly once I got over thinking that I would "ruin" my clubs by adding weight to them. I told myself what good are they if I can't feel the club head moving around me even if they are expensive clubs. I can't believe that I was using Miura clubs as a test subject!! I did experiment with extreme toe weighting and it worked great and I still do it on my wedges but don't have any pics of that test club.  My driver, fairway woods, and hybrids are all hotmelted with all the weight in the toe section of the club all but eliminating any tendency to hook the ball.  I was going to put all of the weight on the extreme toe section of the club but that would have required putting the JB weld into the entire back cavity and I didn't want to go that route so I just put it into the top section and rolled with that as I don't have any issues with hooking my irons and there is so much weight added that it alone slows the face rotation.

 

I noticed that the heavier the club got the better I levered the ball. Most think that swinging a heavier club is more difficult, yet I found it to be the opposite in that I became much more efficient as I used the momentum of the club to execute the shot.  In my opinion a golfer should swing the heaviest club that they can as any speed losses will be minimal yet leverage and purity of strike were greatly increased and it was quite eye opening. As long as your personal limit of what you can handle isn't breached then I only found the added weight to be a benefit.  The problem is that the industry basically feeds the masses the same clubs with different logos on them  and James Robinson likely had his eyes opened to the specs of the club that matter the most and that is total weight and swing weight. He initially thought that it would be horrible and then quickly found out that it was actually better.  

Edited July 20, 2021 by Righty to Lefty

[joostin]

 

[teddyironboy]

In a test I saw, prob on golfwrx, you’re right weight does slow down rotation. I think there was one golfer where it didn’t, probably because it was too heavy and they felt forced to close it with all their might.

 

What’s crazy to me is that even with data to support it, pretty sure James is still playing normal clubs. He gained something like 8 yards with a straighter flight. What you lose in swing speed, you make up with better strike and higher smash factor (to a point). I think people are just not comfortable with things that are different. Like how people will try armlock putters, do better, but still go back to normal ones.

[North Butte]

I just can't get my head around wanting to buy a set of clubs you know you're not going to be able to hit worth a darn, then trying to figure out some way to modify them so they are more like the type of clubs you are actually capable of playing decently with. No amount of lead tape is going to make a little low-MOI blade with heel-biased weighting play like a modern high-MOI iron with the weight all out in the toe. 

 

Nothing wrong with playing clubs that don't suit your swing, of course. There's more to golf than just shooting the best possible scores. If you want to be a blade player, then man up and own it! Get the Vegas and go figure out a way to keep the ball between you and the hole with them. But you're not going to turn them into P790's by swaddling them in lead tape.

[Stuart_G]

4 hours ago, teddyironboy said:

MOI should increase too yea?

 

Not appreciably.

 

2 hours ago, teddyironboy said:

Dang, 50 grams! Really is something to heavy clubs though, James Robinson of YouTube has a video adding 24 grams and his dispersion improved. Also Moe Norman had heavy clubs.

 

it's the weight, not the location or what it might do to c.g. or MOI that is really is the important part and going to have the most effect.

 

 

28 minutes ago, teddyironboy said:

In a test I saw, prob on golfwrx, you’re right weight does slow down rotation. I think there was one golfer where it didn’t, probably because it was too heavy and they felt forced to close it with all their might.

Not everyone has a lot of face rotation going into impact.   The effect of the extra weight (really the rotational MOI of the club) is only going to potentially play an part when there is enough rotational acceleration in the swing.

 

But it's also true that if the club feels too heavy, that can have a detrimental effect on grip pressure and cause excess muscle tension and slow down the release or cause the rhythm, tempo, and sequencing to change or fall apart.    

 

That's why if there was a test that compared the results before and after  adding weight - it was a horrible test if the point of the test had anything to do with c.g. location or moi of the head.   All it really did was test how good or bad a fit the head weight might have been for each configuration for each player.    The only way to effectively test the how the c.g. location or MOI effects the results for any individual would be to first fit each player for head weight then use 2 heads that have the variation in the properties of interest but also are the exact same static weight (adjusted to fit the player).

 

 

 

 

Edited July 20, 2021 by Stuart_G

[teddyironboy]

Yea it was on how head weight affected shots, not anything about cog or moi. And I remember results favored heavier heads.

 

45 minutes ago, North Butte said:

I just can't get my head around wanting to buy a set of clubs you know you're not going to be able to hit worth a darn, then trying to figure out some way to modify them so they are more like the type of clubs you are actually capable of playing decently with. No amount of lead tape is going to make a little low-MOI blade with heel-biased weighting play like a modern high-MOI iron with the weight all out in the toe. 

 

Nothing wrong with playing clubs that don't suit your swing, of course. There's more to golf than just shooting the best possible scores. If you want to be a blade player, then man up and own it! Get the Vegas and go figure out a way to keep the ball between you and the hole with them. But you're not going to turn them into P790's by swaddling them in lead tape.

I guess Tiger wasn’t good enough for blades too cause he had extra weight put in the toe 😉

 

 

1 hour ago, joostin said:

 

Thanks for the link, interesting stuff. It seems encouraging for what I want to try? Because it looks like only 4g almost moved it to the center of the club, I’m ok to try 15g or more.

 

I dunno how much weight is in the toe for the jpx919 but their equipment guy says they were able to move it 1.2 mm, or .047 inches. I assume it’s a longer face than the model in your experiment.

 

Also in rightytolefty’s Miuras, that’s quite the chunk of lead, and if it was steel it’d be 50% bigger. Definitely looks like more weight in the toe vs the 919s, so cog must have changed.

 

[Itiwhetu]

I have recently regripped my clubs the new grips were 9 grams heavier. I then didn't hit my irons as well as I had been. I measured the swing weights and noticed they had all moved to around C7. I have added 3grams on to the heads and now have the swing weights back to D0. And I'm hitting my irons better than ever

[teddyironboy]

Mizuno MP20 MMC...12g tungsten toe weight.

[teddyironboy]

On 7/20/2021 at 3:18 AM, Righty to Lefty said:

15 grams will not move the CoG any noticeable amount.  I remember doing experiments with this and it took roughly 25% of the mass of the club head to begin to move the CoG a noticeable amount.  I weight all my clubs in the toe as it will aid in helping to slow the closure rate of the club face through impact and it is very useful in that regard if that is your intent.  It will also of course increase the swing weight which is also something that welcome as I also prefer "high" swing weight clubs.  Either way you should experiment with it and see if you can find your perfect fit and then once you do look for a more permanent solution to attach the weight to the club.  I JB welded 5 gram pinewood derby weights to my irons and they came out amazing.  

 

I found these weights used to balance car tires more useful during my experimental testing phase. They will eventually pop off but you will quickly learn if the weight is getting closer to what you are searching for. They come in 1/4 oz (7 gram) and 1/2 oz (14 gram) options and that is how I figured out that it takes about 25% of the mass to be moved to move the CoG.  I put them on the extreme toe and it moved the CoG about 1 to 2mm...but that was huge in how the club performed in combination with the added weight helping to hold the club face open. Best of luck in your testing. 

 

https://www.jegs.com/p/JEGS/JEGS-Lead-Free-Stick-On-Wheel-Weights/1415966/10002/-1

 

 

Here is a pic of my permanent solution (each cube weighs 5 grams and I then filled the entire upper cavity with clear JB weld but don't have a pic of that but you get the idea):

 

 

 

Did you consider using Scotty Cameron weights instead (or knockoffs on ebay)? I see that they go up to 40g, and could look better on those Miuras. Also more weight would be concentrated on the toe.

 

Edited September 16, 2021 by teddyironboy

[Cwebb]

On 7/19/2021 at 11:48 PM, teddyironboy said:

I like to play a straighter shot. Limit the rate of closure as much as I can and work on rotating more. I know the swing makes the most difference, but will take any help I can get.

 

 

You should take a look at the Maltby MPF data and select iron designs that have a longer "C-dimension" or horizontal COG.

 

This can help "limit the rate of closure", when compared to a head design that has a significantly shorter horizontal COG.

 

It's a lot easier to select a design that has this in the first place vs trying to modify one that does not.  There are lots of options with a longer COG

[Billfitz]

Consider that the average weight of an iron head is 250 grams, with the long irons being lighter, the short irons and wedges being heavier. It's going to take a lot more than 10-15g to significantly move the CG.

[mogc60]

To the op…in my opinion COG won’t move much at all. Typically face rotation isn’t the issue it’s face angle. I’ve found that moving weight toe side or heel side can seriously affect the feel of the club as we swing it which can help or hinder depending on what feels best to the player. For me I prefer more weight in the toe if anything. I don’t know what it is but it feels better swinging the club. For the record my ballflight is very straight, so it’s not to change flight, it’s feel only. 

[BREWMASTER95060]

Add lead to the toe

is the only way to go.

Is that a haiku?

drilling? I’ve never done it before it’s a way of removing undesirable weight in areas that don’t help you so maybe that’s for youI’ve never done it before it’s a way of removing undesirable weight in areas that don’t help you so maybe that’s for you..

These have a ton of lead mostly in the toe

 

 

Edited September 17, 2021 by BREWMASTER95060

[BREWMASTER95060]

More lead in toe
1 hybrid
grip 65 grams
shaft 85 grams
club 386 grams

Edited September 17, 2021 by BREWMASTER95060

[Valtiel]

3 hours ago, BREWMASTER95060 said:

Add lead to the toe

is the only way to go.

Is that a haiku?

🤣

[teddyironboy]

On 7/20/2021 at 4:58 AM, Righty to Lefty said:

My swing weight preference is F5 but I am a former college baseball player and always preferred heavy total weight and "swing weight" bats so I transferred it over to my golf clubs and it worked out perfectly once I got over thinking that I would "ruin" my clubs by adding weight to them. I told myself what good are they if I can't feel the club head moving around me even if they are expensive clubs. I can't believe that I was using Miura clubs as a test subject!! I did experiment with extreme toe weighting and it worked great and I still do it on my wedges but don't have any pics of that test club.  My driver, fairway woods, and hybrids are all hotmelted with all the weight in the toe section of the club all but eliminating any tendency to hook the ball.  I was going to put all of the weight on the extreme toe section of the club but that would have required putting the JB weld into the entire back cavity and I didn't want to go that route so I just put it into the top section and rolled with that as I don't have any issues with hooking my irons and there is so much weight added that it alone slows the face rotation.

 

I noticed that the heavier the club got the better I levered the ball. Most think that swinging a heavier club is more difficult, yet I found it to be the opposite in that I became much more efficient as I used the momentum of the club to execute the shot.  In my opinion a golfer should swing the heaviest club that they can as any speed losses will be minimal yet leverage and purity of strike were greatly increased and it was quite eye opening. As long as your personal limit of what you can handle isn't breached then I only found the added weight to be a benefit.  The problem is that the industry basically feeds the masses the same clubs with different logos on them  and James Robinson likely had his eyes opened to the specs of the club that matter the most and that is total weight and swing weight. He initially thought that it would be horrible and then quickly found out that it was actually better.  

 

 

So I'm just about to start experimenting with adding the Scotty C weights to the head, and I got some questions:

 

- With that much weight added, your club must be quite a bit hotter. Any side effects because of that? 

- Is there a reason you put the weight on the high side of the toe instead of lower? Do you notice a lower ball flight and less spin? Maybe thinned shots are punished more?

 

 

Right now the plan is to try and make a higher MOI blade. Not really doing it for moving cog or for limiting rate of closure anymore, though I will still put the weight in the toe. I may mess up the balance points and make the club feel weird. But I did purchase some blades with steelfiber x flex counterbalanced shafts, and maybe using jumbomax or adding extra weight in the butt-end could make the club feel normal to swing or at least easy to get used to. Using an MOI calculator, adding 30g should increase MOI by 10% which seems significant.

Edited September 18, 2021 by teddyironboy

[EddieEdwards]

If only there were blades out there with weight removed from the heel and a tungsten weight in the toe.

[Cwebb]

7 hours ago, teddyironboy said:

 

 

So I'm just about to start experimenting with adding the Scotty C weights to the head, and I got some questions:

 

- With that much weight added, your club must be quite a bit hotter. Any side effects because of that? 

- Is there a reason you put the weight on the high side of the toe instead of lower? Do you notice a lower ball flight and less spin? Maybe thinned shots are punished more?

 

 

Right now the plan is to try and make a higher MOI blade. Not really doing it for moving cog or for limiting rate of closure anymore, though I will still put the weight in the toe. I may mess up the balance points and make the club feel weird. But I did purchase some blades with steelfiber x flex counterbalanced shafts, and maybe using jumbomax or adding extra weight in the butt-end could make the club feel normal to swing or at least easy to get used to. Using an MOI calculator, adding 30g should increase MOI by 10% which seems significant.

 

Any concerns about getting the swing-weight close to what fits you?  Because just increasing the MOI won't help anybody, if the the swing-weight doesn't end up as a good fit

[teddyironboy]

Meh, I could potentially accomplish the same thing in a prettier club with 1020 carbon steel. These are actually higher in MOI. Lower playability rating just because vcog, but I swing pretty fast so shouldn't affect me from what I've read.

 

Would a club like this be playable? I Could possibly position it lower in the face because there's plugs that are more like screws than a fat quarter. Should affect spin more than trajectory right? These are strong-lofted at 33 degrees for a 7 iron, so more spin would be good. So it sounds higher cog could be good but worried if too high is a bad thing.

 

[teddyironboy]

Just now, Cwebb said:

 

Any concerns about getting the swing-weight close to what fits you?  Because just increasing the MOI won't help anybody, if the the swing-weight doesn't end up as a good fit

 

Yea, that will be priority in figuring out which suits me the best, then how much weight I can add to the head and shaft butt without making the club swing weird.

[Cwebb]

6 minutes ago, teddyironboy said:

 

Yea, that will be priority in figuring out which suits me the best, then how much weight I can add to the head and shaft butt without making the club swing weird.

 

Always keep in mind that using counter weight to hit a swing-weight number, is not even close to the same as getting the head weight where it needs to be for that swing-weight.  It's correctly referred to as "tricking the scale".

 

Use counter-weight as a separate fitting variable.  Not for swing-weight scale numbers

[teddyironboy]

i'm wondering how to match it then? say as long as all the clubs say "D3" on the scale, it should work out, even though it's not a true D3?

[Cwebb]

3 hours ago, teddyironboy said:

i'm wondering how to match it then? say as long as all the clubs say "D3" on the scale, it should work out, even though it's not a true D3?

Match what?  Swing-weight scales have limitations.  Counter weight is one of these.

 

The point is that if you're planning on adding ~30g of weight to iron heads, you're going to have a tough time creating anything other than a "sledge hammer", unless you make them really short and with really light weight shafts

[teddyironboy]

So that each iron feels like the same weight.

[Righty to Lefty]

17 hours ago, teddyironboy said:

 

 

So I'm just about to start experimenting with adding the Scotty C weights to the head, and I got some questions:

 

- With that much weight added, your club must be quite a bit hotter. Any side effects because of that? 

- Is there a reason you put the weight on the high side of the toe instead of lower? Do you notice a lower ball flight and less spin? Maybe thinned shots are punished more?

 

 

Right now the plan is to try and make a higher MOI blade. Not really doing it for moving cog or for limiting rate of closure anymore, though I will still put the weight in the toe. I may mess up the balance points and make the club feel weird. But I did purchase some blades with steelfiber x flex counterbalanced shafts, and maybe using jumbomax or adding extra weight in the butt-end could make the club feel normal to swing or at least easy to get used to. Using an MOI calculator, adding 30g should increase MOI by 10% which seems significant.

It was a weird dynamic because I didn't necessarily hit the ball further, but I could have. Basically what happened for me was that my body was better coordinated with the weight of the club increased so I achieved my stock yardages with lower perceived, and probably actual, effort.  The ability to better feel the club moving in space around me allowed me to lever against the weight of the club much more effectively and thus I had less wasted effort. This the biggest benefit of total and swing weighting a club in my opinion.  Yes there is a point of diminishing returns but that has to be figured out by each individual and it is well worth the effort because it will reduce or eliminate wasted effort in the swing. The frustrating thing for me is finding a permanent solution on my Miura irons.  My JB Weld solution held for months but eventually the bond fails. Of course the remedy is playing hollow body irons but I was really enjoying my Miura short irons prior to the weight popping off so let know if you find something that will hold permanently. I have a buddy that used rare earth magnets and JB Weld and I don't think he has had a weight pop off yet so I may go that route. I do play Jumbomaxx grips also but I still play my swing weight at F5 with those on there as I still prefer "high" swing and total weight.