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Forged vs. Cast irons


slpgolf08

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Well if your a 5, you should prolly go with forged. Forged offer much better feel and workability. Cast irons are a little more rough feeling. Forged irons due tend to get a little more dings in them. You just got to take care of them better. When you hit it pure w/ forged irons, it feels so great and you get that "woosh" feeling. I used cast irons right now, but I plan on getting some Mizuno Mp-30's or Nike Pro Combo Tour's.

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For about a 5 hcp how big of a differance is there between the forged and cast irons

 

 

A lot of people will tell you forged has better feeling then cast clubs. Personnaly I think this was very true in the '70's-80's. In this day and age of technology, I think there have been major strides made by companies in getting cast clubs to have feeling. Perfect examples would be some of the clubs currently out by Cleveland, Callaway and Ping. The metals they are using as well as the techniques they have been using are leaps and bounds ahead of the past.

 

I don't think handicap has anything to do with using forged or cast irons. Try them all out and judge for yourself which ones appeal to you. It's almost like putters....it's all personal feel.

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Given the exact same raw materials.

 

The forged and the Cast will feel and perform exactly the same.

 

However, Being forged, the dimentional tolerance, density tolerance, weight tolerance = tighter. Which explains why forged is of "better" quality.

 

Forged generally feel better than Cast for a simple reason that Investment cast usually uses cheaper materials and forged usually use slightly better material

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I'm in agreement with Reid. A few years back it was probably true that forged felt better than cast. But with recent advances in club technology cast irons such as the Ping S59 feel great and opting for cast is over forged is no longer classed as opting for second best.

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Titleist TS2 16.5° w/ Tensei AV 65 Stiff
Titleist TS2 21° w/ Tensei AV 75 Stiff
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I will second Reid ( pitbull ) also on this issue.

 

Yes, Some feel players can feel the different, especially on a deep cavity back design if we comparing it to the same category type of head design.

 

Investment cast are easier, faster and cheaper to produce and a lot easier also for manufacturer to pin point the final spec they need to be Versus Forged club accuracy are relying on the guy who are doing the final stage grinding and polishing. Yes, Now a days they do have a better technique of forging...grinder's job are a lot faster and simpler because of a better forging technique w/ tighter tolerance but from one master grinder to another has their owned unique character if you look at it closely. This is why those guys always keeping their owned batch to keep the consistentcy of their quality control.

 

Joe (cool)

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I totally disagree. Yes companies have been striving toward making a cast club have the same feel as a forged club but they can never make it feel the same. It's like comparing apples to oranges. They may use the same metals but they making of the clubhead involves 2 totally different processes.

don't be took quick to judge. going along with reid you have to look at the technology that manufactuers are producing their cast clubs with. ping s-59's (which i play) feel very nice and having played mizuno mp-33's before these i really experienced little lose of feel. the best example would be cleveland's cmm line of clubs, cg 1, 2, 4, 10 and 11's are all cast clubs yet they feel just as soft and workable as anything forged right now. it doesn't matter what handicap you are, it matters what feels best in your hands. some people need to have a good miura forging where others can still play clubs like titlest 990's as well as todays cast clubs.

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I've tinkered with many sets in the last few months to get ready for '06. I've played forged all my life but if I had to buy a set right now it would be the Ping i5's. To me, they feel better than any other iron I've tried, forged or cast. Just a soft, solid feel with great feddback. On chips and pitches they put others to shame.

PING G400 Max 10.5° (+)
PING G430 fairway 18° (F-)
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There really is no diffrence in the feel between cast and forged. The major diffrence is the sound that comes off the club face. Cast clubs tend to be more of a click or harder sound. Forged clubs come of with a softer sound. Put some ear plugs in and try both. Let me know what happens.

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When struck pure I can't feel any difference between cast and forged. I would agree with the above poster in that I think most people that say they can "feel" the difference are actually hearing a difference. Cast clubs have a different sound than forged but they both feel equally good on a purely struck golf shot. I also disagree with the statement that forged clubs offer better workability. There are cast clubs that I find just as workable as any forged iron. The 962B/990B's are a good example of this along with the more recent S59's.

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There really is no diffrence in the feel between cast and forged. The major diffrence is the sound that comes off the club face. Cast clubs tend to be more of a click or harder sound. Forged clubs come of with a softer sound. Put some ear plugs in and try both. Let me know what happens.

 

 

There ya go...essentially it. I'm using forged MacGregor M565's. They use a weird variable hardness face.......cool technology-it makes forged feel like 17-4. LOL

 

A good forged club though....it's a thing of beauty as it pleases all the senses.

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When struck pure I can't feel any difference between cast and forged. I would agree with the above poster in that I think most people that say they can "feel" the difference are actually hearing a difference. Cast clubs have a different sound than forged but they both feel equally good on a purely struck golf shot. I also disagree with the statement that forged clubs offer better workability. There are cast clubs that I find just as workable as any forged iron. The 962B/990B's are a good example of this along with the more recent S59's.

 

I agree...have a set of TA7 Tours that when struck on the sweet spot, you can't feel the difference...

Most people are under the impression that when they hit a club (forged or cast), the sound they get is the "feel" which is not true.

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At the risk of being the geek here, technically there's a huge difference between castings and forgings. Investment casting, the process used to cast heads can shape molten metal into very complex shapes. In forging, the metal being shaped is heated but not molten and is pounded by a hydraulic hammer with a die that creates the raw shape. The forging process gives the fabricator more control over the alignment of the grain in the metal and that allows the resultant piece to be very strong. In a high-performance car engine, you'll find that many of the high-stress parts are forged (crankshafts and pistons for instance) rather than cast, and I don't think that's a coincidence. Of course, a Porsche engine is a lot stronger than Tiger, Vijay or even you, so I think this is probably a case where the extra strength may not be an issue.

 

Because the forging process is basically a hammering process, this really limits the kinds of shapes that can be made without a lot of additional machine work. You can easily forge a blade head or a shallow "player's cavity" head like a Titleist 690CB or 704CB. But a deep cavity head like a Callaway X-18 or Ping G5 would have to be forged, then a milling machine would have to do the final cut of the cavity. Because of the cost to make the super hard dies that wear with each piece produced, it's probably much more expensive to forge heads than cast them, and that's without extra milling operations which would lead to a prohibitively expensive head.

 

The tooling costs for investment casting should be much lower. Normally, they have to make a mold that generates a wax replica of the head. They take that wax piece and stick it in a mold filled with fine sand or ceramic material, then pour the metal in, which melts the wax and forms the final piece. Making wax clubhead forms is pretty easy on the mold vs the forging die, so it doesn't have to be as expensive a tool. You can make a very complex shape like that X-18 head in a single shot, then you finish it and it's done.

 

Multiply the tooling costs times all the different sets of clubs and all the individual clubheads and it's probably getting to be a really big difference.

 

But it's not just a matter of being cheap. The club designer intentionally wants to have a deep cavity with undercut, or a port to put weights in for performance reasons and you really can't do that practically with forging. Casting makes that $150 set of Target clubs possible, but it really is what makes an X-18 or Slingshot possible. If you play better because you had a perimeter weighted club, then casting is good. Skilled players want to work the ball which leads them to shallow-cavity or blade clubs which often happen to be forged, but Vijay seems to be doing pretty well with the CG1 which is cast.

 

And there's also clubs like the Callaway X-Tour which has a forged face joined to a cast, undercut body.

 

In the end, at least for "player's clubs", I think the question of whether forged or cast clubs are better mostly come down to the design of the heads rather than the fabrication process.

 

My 2 (or more like 10) cents worth,

 

David Fung

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its interesrting how people perceive forged to cast. the most popular wedges on tour for some time seem to have been cast (eye 2, cleveland, vokey) and i think ram changed the tour grinds in the 80's to a similar process as the stainless forged titleist without telling anyone. its interesting how weve gone to a wedge shfts for more feel in shorter clubs just like we went to inserts for putters

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Not only is "what feels best" of huge importance, but for me "how good are my misses" with a particular cast or forged iron is also a biggie. Recently a Golf Digest article contained average-distance-from-hole stats taken from tour pros hitting irons in tournament rounds. From 150 yards (I may a bit off on these figures, but I'm close) the tour pros averaged about 25 feet; from 175 yards, about 37 feet, and from 200 yards, about 50 feet. Since there is no way I can better those figures, my best route to lower scoring (when considering what irons to play), was to choose irons that left me the best chance of "turning three shots into two." In other words, no matter what my ego may tell me, or how cool/hip/exclusive some forged blades might look in my bag, the raw truth is that I need more forgivness when hitting irons from the fairway.

 

My own experience (current index of 2.2), is that mishits on blades are much worse than with cast, perimeter-weighted irons. After much experimentation -- trying demo clubs, trying friend's clubs, even buying a few individual irons off Ebay -- I ended up with Taylormade cast 5-PW, then Mizuno Fli-Hi 24* and 21* for long irons. Not as "showy" as a 2-PW set of blades, true, but this set make-up seems to do its part to help me lower the 'ol handicap.

 

For what it's worth..

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Couldn't agree more! (cool)

 

I LOVE the look of forged blades, grew up playing them, and played them until a couple of years ago. Then bit the bullet and went for cavity backs. Dang if I didn't start hitting the ball better and scoring better. Built up my confidence, went back to blades--and game went down hill. So I got a set of Titleist 981's - got my game back on track. Had a nice traditional look at address, but a bit more forgiveness. They actually had a very nice feel, but I bought into the "forged is better" and moved on to Titleist 704.cb. (I realize many don't consider them forged, since they are stainless steel.) They felt terrible, which I attributed to the shaft (DGS300) being different than the 981's (Tri-Spec). So I reshafted the 704's with Rifles - and the clubs have a whole new feel: soft, light, and responsive!

 

So I say its the WHOLE club that makes up the feel. The interaction of the head, shaft, and grip contributes to the sensations (both vibrations and sound) that contribute to feel.

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I totally disagree. Yes companies have been striving toward making a cast club have the same feel as a forged club but they can never make it feel the same. It's like comparing apples to oranges. They may use the same metals but they making of the clubhead involves 2 totally different processes.

 

I would like for you to take a blind test: Titleist CAST 962 v. Titleist FORGED 704CB. If you do this and you say the 704CB's are still softer, then I must say that you have best feel of any golfer I have ever met. But i believe you will find that although the 704's are forged and should feel softer they are not any marginal amount softer than the CAST 962 because they are both made out of Stainless Steel

 

Kevin

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I would like for you to take a blind test: Titleist CAST 962 v. Titleist FORGED 704CB. If you do this and you say the 704CB's are still softer, then I must say that you have best feel of any golfer I have ever met. But i believe you will find that although the 704's are forged and should feel softer they are not any marginal amount softer than the CAST 962 because they are both made out of Stainless Steel

 

Kevin

 

Exactly..

 

Forged Process itself doesnt make the material feel softer. It just yield better dimensional tolerance and less void, thus less weight variance.

 

Its true the quality of casting had improved tremendously. ...

 

Let me ask you guys a question . Is CMM the softest head ever created , are they forged?

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CMM is cast, not forged. Cleveland doesn't make any forged irons in their current line up, except for the 900 series wedges.

 

I have CG10 and 588 sand wedges in similar configuration. A full wedge shot with the CG10 definitely has a softer feeling of contact than the 588 to me. Both these clubs feel softer on impact than my Vokey 256 (which is cast carbon steel, similar to the 588). I have been carrying the Vokey lately as I feel like I prefer it's feel on the shorter swings.

 

For what it's worth, Cleveland talks about CMM having much lower density than regular steel, which would tend to make you think that it would feel lighter to swing. In fact, the CG10 feels significantly "head heavier" than the 588 and the Vokey. Of course, this is probably because of club static weight (sorry, don't have data). They all have the same shaft (TT Dynamic Gold Wedge), so that's probably not the issue.

 

I'd be curious about comparisons between CMM and other clubs, particularly CG1 vs. TA1 (CMM vs. forged) and CG2 vs. TA2 (CMM vs. cast carbon steel).

 

David Fung

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Forged or cast is only a process, don't forgot other things that will determine how the club will feel:

 

What metal they've use? Carbon steel, soft stainless or 17-4 stainless. ( Cleveland use a soft carbon steel on their cast clubs )

 

Club design :

 

Now a days club design is more and more combine w/ a high tech material such as polymer or basically rubber substance. Ex: Ping S59, This club w/ the rubber insert right by the muscle area makes the club much softer ( almost to soft IMO ). Check out Callaway patent at patent office site, Their emblem and double tape behind it make the feel softer, especially the fushion iron. You'll be surprise what they wrote on their patent.

 

Cavity back or Mucsle back design will provide different feel also, especially if they are made out of soft stainless ala 735cm, 704, 755, etc.

 

I've played the 735 stainless. The reason i played this iron because up to 5 iron i can hardly feel the different and for me to tell the different, I have to hit it side by side. The other reason is that I can grind the top line thinner and refinish it without any body notice what i did. It juts suit my eyes better w/ thinner top line.

 

Just my other 2 cents!

 

Joe

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