Anyone put lead tape INSIDE an iron shaft butt end?

[stuman74]

Ok, I know, I'm overly particular trying to get my irons to have the same swing weights after changing grips.  A few of them in the set for some reason have a little heavier swing weight than my target.  Just need 2-4g in the butt end to bring it down, so I was thinking of applying a strip or two of lead tape on the inside of the butt end of the shaft so then it doesn't add to the size of the grip.

 

Yes, easiest is just to apply to the outside of the butt end for sure.  But aside from being a little more tricky to apply the lead tape, any real reason not to on the interior of the butt end?  Thanks!

[Valtiel]

I'd be concerned about how well the tape would adhere to the inside of a steel shaft since they are often a bit rough. Thorough cleaning and prepping of the surface inside would be necessary since the tape coming off and falling down inside could end up being a hassle to remove. 

With regards to swingweight itself, this is fine if you're purely just trying to hit a number for the sake of particularity, but if the clubs themselves actually feel slightly heavy then this isn't the solution you want. All you're doing is tricking a scale that was never meant to give you an accurate number when handle weight is manipulated. 

[Stuart_G]

If you're really that particular about swing weight,  removing actual weight from the head is better - but not everyone has the setup to do that.  So an easier alternative is to grind down the shaft butt (shorten playing length) a small amount to get the swing weight to go down.  Maybe 1/8" or 3/16" might be what you need.

 

As @Valtiel  the swing weight scale/concept was never designed or intended to manage grip side weight changes.   Only length and head weight.  So adding weight to the butt is not necessarily going to result in a swing weight matched feel with the rest of the clubs. 

 

Unless maybe you increase the butt weight of all clubs in the set equally and go back and readjust tip weights on the set.   But then you've also increased the static weight of all the clubs - which could be good or bad or neither with respect to the overall fit of the clubs.

 

Edited December 1, 2022 by Stuart_G

[ARL67]

Lead tape has trouble adhering to the inside of a shaft - >after a few rounds it might start to loosen ( been there ).   And applying it on the outside at the bottom of the grip is very close to the SW Scale fulcrum, so you would need more lead tape than you think to make a change, and then you have now added more total weight to the club.

 

5g in the butt would be about 1 SWP and so then 2.5g is about 0.5 SWP

1" in length is 1.33 SWP , so 1/4" is about 0.33 SWP

 

If your grips are installed with single sided tape and a compressor, you could remove them and weight sort them to see if there are some heavier ones you could use, along with maybe butt trimming 1/8" or so.

 

I'd just put them in play as they are as most can't detect a 1 SWP change anyway, let alone  1/2".  Though I admit, I am very particular at getting my math ( and feel ) right, so I would rebuild a club if it bothered me if it was too SW heavy, but have no visual shame in adding lead tape to the head if it was too light.

Edited December 1, 2022 by ARL67

[ShortGolfer]

I would make tight fitting wood plugs with a 1/4-20 tapped hole in the center to allow the use of an air compressor to blow grips on and off.  The tapped hole will make removal easy.

 

It helps that I have a lathe on the other side of the long table I use for working on clubs.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 1, 2022 by ShortGolfer

[Stuart_G]

1 hour ago, ARL67 said:

1" in length is 1.33 SWP , so 1/4" is about 0.33 SWP

 

Sorry, no.  1" in length is 6 sw pts.   1/2" is 3 pts,  1/4" 1.5 pts, ....

 

Edited December 1, 2022 by Stuart_G

[stuman74]

Thanks for all the comments.  Sounds like inside may not be ideal in case the lead tape adhesive gives.  I play my irons +1/2" so they become a little heavier swingweight vs stock.  Hoping a little at the butt end can bring it back down.

[Stuart_G]

10 minutes ago, stuman74 said:

Thanks for all the comments.  Sounds like inside may not be ideal in case the lead tape adhesive gives.  I play my irons +1/2" so they become a little heavier swingweight vs stock.  Hoping a little at the butt end can bring it back down.

 

Understandable but not the best way to do it.  Just because it would bring the swing weight reading down, that doesn't necessarily mean the heads would actually feel any lighter.

[Hammer_Hands]

2 hours ago, Stuart_G said:

 

Sorry, no.  1" in length is 6 sw pts.   1/2" is 3 pts,  1/4" 1.5 pts, ....

 

Thanks Stuart!  I was screaming "NOOOOO" after I read that.  Hope no one followed that advice and cut an inch from their shaft butt before they read your reply.

 

Joel

[ARL67]

2 hours ago, Stuart_G said:

 

Sorry, no.  1" in length is 6 sw pts.   1/2" is 3 pts,  1/4" 1.5 pts, ....

 

 

Yup, I had a brain-fart. I was thinking of my MOI builds.

 

[TwistedSister]

*

Edited December 1, 2022 by TwistedSister

[Valtiel]

4 hours ago, stuman74 said:

Thanks for all the comments.  Sounds like inside may not be ideal in case the lead tape adhesive gives.  I play my irons +1/2" so they become a little heavier swingweight vs stock.  Hoping a little at the butt end can bring it back down.

 

4 hours ago, Stuart_G said:

 

Understandable but not the best way to do it.  Just because it would bring the swing weight reading down, that doesn't necessarily mean the heads would actually feel any lighter.

 

3 hours ago, ARL67 said:

 

Yup, I had a brain-fart. I was thinking of my MOI builds.

 

Speaking of MOI, @stuman74 I believe the way to elaborate on Stuart's point above is to look at the actual MOI changes between these two methods since that is a much more accurate measure of the heft of a club, something that the swingweight scale 90 years ago was only ever intended to roughly approximate within a fixed set of variables.

If you add weight to the grip/handle, MOI increases, but by a very small amount. If you subtract weight from the head then MOI decreases and much more noticeably, the ratio is nearly 10:1 here. Both these methods can produce the same measured swingweight but with two completely different feels. I like to use the extreme example to make the point. Adding 50g to the handle of the shaft will produce the same swingweight "decrease" as removing approximately ~20g of weight from the head. This however will produce WILDLY different feeling clubs with MOI numbers to support that change, with the 20g lighter clubhead build feeling worlds lighter than the 50g added grip weight build. Hopefully this illustrates how increasingly inaccurate swingweight measurements become when you start mucking with parameters it was never intended to account for. The moment your grip no longer weighs 50g or your shaft weighs 130g, every swingweight measurement has a big asterisk next to it. 

Edited December 1, 2022 by Valtiel

[5hort5tuff]

Don't bother doing this. I don't believe In adding/removing weight on the grip end. All of these techniques to end up with a perfect swing weight are really just tricking the scale.  Just wear a watch when you golf, maybe the head will feel a bit lighter 😜 

Edited December 2, 2022 by 5hort5tuff

[Stuart_G]

7 hours ago, 5hort5tuff said:

Don't bother doing this. I don't believe In adding/removing weight on the grip end. All of these techniques to end up with a perfect swing weight are really just tricking the scale. 

 

I agree with this.

 

7 hours ago, 5hort5tuff said:

Just wear a watch when you golf, maybe the head will feel a bit lighter 😜 

 

But this isn't really a good analogy.   We can be very sensitive to changes to the weight feel of the club because we are holding the club in our hands - which have a very high level of touch sensitivity.  So we can feel details and small subtle changes about how the club resists being moved that we would not feel with the watch worn on the wrist. 

 

Take the watch off your wrist and tape it directly onto the club near where we grip the club - and it will likely make a very noticeable difference in what we feel.

 

Another part of the problem is that what happens to the head feel when the butt weight is increased is actually very subjective and therefore very unpredictable.    For most, the head weight feel doesn't seem to change much but there are some people for which the it might reduce the head weight feel.   For some others it might make the club feel heavier.

 

The main point is that the swing weight scale is not a reliable predictor of how the feel will change when the butt weight changes.   Although the difference is subtle, that's not the same as saying it's always inaccurate or wrong.

[stuman74]

Thanks again for the tips and comments.  I elected to not add any lead tape nor butt weights to the grip end.  Just did the old grip sort by weight and match to try to offset the high/low ones where possible.

 

5i: D1.6

6i: D1.5

7i: D1.9

8i: D2.5

9i: D2.7

PW: D4.1

AW: D3.9

 

[T Creer]

Add lead tape to the "light" clubs to get D2.7 for the 5i-9i.

The PW and AW swingweight should not be a huge deal due to the playing length. Most manufactures weight the PW and AW heavier than the rest of the set anyway.