Tip Weights and effect on Shaft Flex

[TomWishon]

12 grams put in the shaft tip or at the bottom of the hosel bore will move the center of gravity 1/8" toward the weight.

TOM

 

Does the reverse also stand true? That is, extracting 12 grams from the hosel by sawing it down and/or drilling the bore a little deeper will move the center of gravity 1/8" away from the hosel and towards the toe of the club?

 

Thx for any clues.

 

Yes, the reverse would be true IF you could remove 12 grams from the hosel. Thing is, you would find it very difficult to remove that much weight from the hosel by drilling deeper or sawing off the hosel. With a large bore diameter and relatively thin hosel walls, there just is not that much weight in the hosel itself. And in drilling deeper, there may not be enough solid metal to remove by boring before the drill bit breaks through the outside wall of the hosel due to the lower curvature of the hosel into the head. In short, it is doubtful you could get 12g off the head in this manner without ruining the head.

[BigLeftyinAZ]

I didn't not read every post. The ones I glanced at, didn't mention this, if op's heads were on the light side , then the shaft will play correct to flex. They will be softer then current.

I believe normal 6 iron head is 262ish . If he brought his 6 iron up to the 262 area, then he'll be playing shaft as it's designed, but softer then currently

[dunn]

Will start a new topic tomorrow with a poll on the advantages of hard- and soft stepping.

I believe these exist.

Sure but SS or HS one time isn't going to do a thing- you need to do it 2 or more times to produce an effect.

 

Back to topic!

agreed.......done stepping numerous times and it's minimal at best.....it's actually pretty pointless, just get right one to begin with

[MIRAMAR]

In short, it is doubtful you could get 12g off the head in this manner without ruining the head.

 

Thanks for clarifying, Tom – as always, with that distinctive Kantian quality of clearness and sobriety.

Excuse me for leaving the general for the particular: what I really had in mind was not the modern golf club, but late 1960s MacGregor Tourney Custom irons with extra long hosel length (3.45”), bore depth (1.40”) and bottom of bore to ground (2.0”).

Dead center, feel the best irons I ever hit. But they began feeling too heavy overtime.

Came up with installing lighter shafts and sawing the hosels a little bit -- at which I was rather hesitant at first. Then I read an article about the clubs Johnny Miller used to win the 1973 US Open: “After I sawed down the hosels and put some lead tape here and there, they were like magic!”. It was something possible, I thought, and got really started. I made a lot of tests, experiments, calculations, measurements and comparisons, searching a rationale to convince myself to go ahead and cut up the hosels.

Finally, when everything was ready, the project stalled. I should have taken the clubheads to the lathe today, but I invented an excuse and postponed it.

Feel is something you cannot quantify. But there are limits, and I am not certain about them.

Its not unlike the resistance of matter to the idea.

Thanks for signaling.

[painter]

Sorry for reviving an old thread but I thought I add my anecdotal “evidence”. My heads, Mizzy MP 30, felt too light (always, even when new), even with TT XP95 shafts I installed (for higher flight as I’m older and started hitting shots consistently lower). So, I pulled the shafts, installed just 5gm brass weights and soft stepped the set - a twofer. The irons felt different, certainly, in my shop but when I finally got to the course I was hitting nearly every full shot higher, longer, and dead straight, hitting the sweet spot, and taking even, flat divots. In other words, the changes gave me exactly what I sought. I also seem to be able to feel subtleties in slight club adjustments; just lucky (or cursed) I guess.

[Rapidcat]

Glad that you did. I'm using the Covid shutdown to refurbish a set of Mizuno SPL blades from 1987. They have light heads and I have soft stepped the shafts and tip weighted them (2g to 10g depending on the club) to swingweight them to a D2. The original clubs had a stack of lead powder down each shaft to get a consistent swingweight across the set.

Can't wait to hit them on the driving range when regulations (I'm in Melbourne, Australia) permit.

BTW, this forum is a God send in these horrible times.

[Howard_Jones]

Be aware of that when we debate the subject TIP WEIGHT AND EFFECT FOR FLEX, we use D2 as point zero, thats what the shaft is designed for as TRUE Swing weight, Only if we add weight and raise sW value we cant talk about it at all, so all tip weights you used to get to D2 did not really change flex, it brought you to point zero, so the set is only Soft stepped once...

[Rapidcat]

Thanks Howard, I'm comfortable with a SS1 at this stage with my parameters.

The great thing about being an hobbyist with this is that I can experiment with little consequence and take down and rebuild if it doesn't work which I enjoy doing anyway.

Being able to interact with experienced equipment guys like you on this forum is terrific - tks again.

[Ri_Redneck]

Not true. They don't make tip weights heavy enough to do that.

EDIT: CRAP! Old thread and I didn't see it.

BT

[hardpan1]

Still good advice

[joshrad_golf]

On 9/18/2012 at 8:32 AM, thomaslv40 said:

i read somewhere yesterday that adding to much weight to the shaft tip will change the club head center of gravity and cause more errant shots and a worse feeling club...I was thinking of adding tip weights to my shafts as well but didn't know how much would be to much

Weight tips do move the CG to the heel, and you will feel your sweet spot move closer to the heel. Lead tape doesn't look pretty, but it's a much better way to add weight to the club head because you can choose where you want to put the weight instead of sticking it in the heel.

 

[Stuart_G]

 

20 minutes ago, joshrad_golf said:

Weight tips do move the CG to the heel, and you will feel your sweet spot move closer to the heel. Lead tape doesn't look pretty, but it's a much better way to add weight to the club head because you can choose where you want to put the weight instead of sticking it in the heel.

 

 

Since you want to bring this old thread back to life.    Might as well repeat the most important post in the thread.   The one that's based on actual research and backed by hard data.

 

 

On 9/18/2012 at 2:21 PM, TomWishon said:

Plain and simple, Jaskanski is right. Back when I developed the hosel weight bore on all my clubhead designs, I had heard Ralph Maltby drone on about how adding weight in the heel side of a clubhead changed its performance. So I did a pretty extensive study on all of this, then repeated it several years later when some other expert in the industry began to crow about heel weighting harming clubhead performance.

The heaviest tip weight in the industry is 9 grams. I know because we make it. (or at least I have yet to hear of one heavier)

12 grams put in the shaft tip or at the bottom of the hosel bore will move the center of gravity 1/8" toward the weight. When we did robot hit testing, we saw NO drop in ball speed and no change in dispersion when hitting the ball dead center without any weight in the hosel vs a dead center hit with 12 grams in the hosel/shaft tip. (Then we went farther and found that the first indications of draw bias from weight added in the heel area of the head only began at 25 grams)

Hit testing was done with what then was my regular hit test group of teaching pros, handicaps from +3 to 7, including 2 players who were in the top ten of money winnings in the Texas section of the PGA of America every year. Not one of these pros detected any difference in ball flight from a movement of the CG of 1/8" due to the addition of 12g in the hosel vs putting the weight perfectly distributed around the head. (Then we went farther and found that the first indications of draw bias from weight added in the heel area of the head only began at 25 grams)

....

Bottom line - as Jaskanski said, none of this related to tip/hosel weighting is detectible by the vast, vast majority of golfers. Build the club, choose the right shaft to match your swing speed/transition/tempo/release, swingweight it to have the best headweight FEEL for your swing tempo, then go play and forget about it.

TOM