Question:
Mike, Wow! Thanks for the excellent info. My present set is swingweight matched to within 1/2 point but the other variables make sense. Will follow up. aloha, jim
You’re welcome. I forgot to add one other thing: misalignment of the shaft. Maybe you have an inherently bad shaft or two in the set. Mike – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – <snip Good luck! Mike PS: You can also MOI-match a set instead of swingweight matching the set. I’m building another set for myself right now, and I’m going to MOI-match them, which I have in my current set. If you want clubs that feel the same, this is the best way to do it, IMO. Look back on Google where I’ve talked about it–Search for MOI and Dalecki and also search for Kenny Stultz. Mike Dalecki RSG-Wisconsin 2002 Info http://dalecki.net/rsgwis2002 I do not patronize spammers. Help keep RSG clean! Web Site: http://www.dalecki.net/clubdoctor/ RSG Roll Call: http://rec-sport-golf.com/members/?rollcall=daleckim
– Mike Dalecki RSG-Wisconsin 2002 Info http://dalecki.net/rsgwis2002 I do not patronize spammers. Help keep RSG clean! Web Site: http://www.dalecki.net/clubdoctor/ RSG Roll Call: http://rec-sport-golf.com/members/?rollcall=daleckim
Response:
Mike, Wow! Thanks for the excellent info. My present set is swingweight matched to within 1/2 point but the other variables make sense. Will follow up. aloha, jim <snip – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -Good luck! Mike PS: You can also MOI-match a set instead of swingweight matching the set. I’m building another set for myself right now, and I’m going to MOI-match them, which I have in my current set. If you want clubs that feel the same, this is the best way to do it, IMO. Look back on Google where I’ve talked about it–Search for MOI and Dalecki and also search for Kenny Stultz. Mike Dalecki RSG-Wisconsin 2002 Info http://dalecki.net/rsgwis2002 I do not patronize spammers. Help keep RSG clean! Web Site: http://www.dalecki.net/clubdoctor/ RSG Roll Call: http://rec-sport-golf.com/members/?rollcall=daleckim
Response:
In short, unless you *know* that the clubs were assembled to exacting specifications, IMO there’s no reason to believe they’re any better than just glue-and-stick. Because in many, perhaps most cases, they are just that. And if by random chance, you get a club with a stiffer shaft than normal but which has a lighter head than normal, it’ll play a lot stiffer just because of that, to say nothing of how the swingweight might vary.
Thanks for the great explanation of club mechanics. Sometimes though I think the difference is more about attitude and setup than the club. For years when I played with an old set I’d fight a big hook with my 6 iron. No other club in the set tended to hook even a little, but if I wasn’t real careful with that 6 iron I’d hit a monstor hook. When I learned enough about club making to understand swingweight, frequency, and shiftness I went through and did some measurements on that set. I expected the 6 would be way out of line somehow with the rest of the set, but no, while there were variations in all the parameters the 6 wasn’t extreme in any. Still, I kept hooking it. A year later I built myself a new set that I’m still playing and guess what, I still have a tendancy to hook the 6. I’ve concluded it’s got nothing to do with the club, but everything to do with the image of those big booming hooks that pops into my mind every time I see the number. (There’s a par 3 on my course that’s almost always a 6 iron for me and that big hook sails over a line of trees leaving me shooting through tree trunks spaced closer than jail bars past a cart path and a bunker to a green that slopes away from me — ugh!) Perhaps at first the hook was produced by a random chance, or a small variation in club design. More likely it was due to the fact that the 6 iron is a transition area in stance and swing from my short irons to the long clubs and as such a bit tricky for me to set up properly, but I’m sure the picture of the ball sailing over those trees is what keeps it going. The brain is a much more powerful element in hitting the ball right or wrong than the clubs or the clubmaker. — http://home.att.net/~wamontgomery )
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As usual, another fine post Mike! Thanks RJ … – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – <snip
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Been playing for over 30 years. I’ve owned many many iron sets over the years and have made a dozen or so. Been pondering on the specific reasons why certain clubs in a set of irons might fit my swing very well while the same # club in another set might not. For example: Present set of Callaway x-14 irons. PW and 8 iron work and feel perfect. The 6 and 4 are okay. 7 is the lousiest in the set with 9 not far behind. Yet in my "older" Ping i3 set, also iron shaft and also d-3 swingweight, the PW, 6, and 3 iron work and feel very consistent with the rest of the set lousy. Is this due to shaft and head inconsistencies by the OEM manufacturers?
One of the things my clubmaker did for me at my request, which was told to me to request it by a gentleman by the name of David Sneddon in here, was to match the frequency of the clubs _after_ the clubhead was put on. All the shafts are supposedly frequency matched, but that’s without the clubheads on them and can behave erractically once those things are attached. How could I go about creating a set of irons matched to the same "feel" as the 8 in my Callaway set or the 6 in my Ping set? Despite matching swingweights, is it shaft frequencies that change the "feel" and balance of a club?
There you go, you were suspecting it also. Is there some other way to "graduate" a set other than the "standard" 1/2" increase per club? mike? FWIW I’ve recently made a set of irons for my son with the "matched" Rifle shaft set and he loves them.
Oh, I guess you already know all about it then. So, you matched them after the clubheads were put on, right? If so, have you done that with your current set as well? I don’t pretend to be a clubmaking expert at all, however, my current set is the best feeling set I’ve ever had by far. That’s why I mentioned matching the clubs once the clubheads were on. Anyway, hope your search ends soon and all your clubs feel good to you. Best, Steve K. Lee
Response:
Been playing for over 30 years. I’ve owned many many iron sets over the years and have made a dozen or so. Been pondering on the specific reasons why certain clubs in a set of irons might fit my swing very well while the same # club in another set might not. For example: Present set of Callaway x-14 irons. PW and 8 iron work and feel perfect. The 6 and 4 are okay. 7 is the lousiest in the set with 9 not far behind. Yet in my "older" Ping i3 set, also iron shaft and also d-3 swingweight, the PW, 6, and 3 iron work and feel very consistent with the rest of the set lousy. Is this due to shaft and head inconsistencies by the OEM manufacturers?
Could be several reasons. – I had a Callaway Big Bertha driver and 2 wood. Both had Callaway stock shafts labeled "Firm". I had them frequency tested. The driver was 7.0, the 3 wood was 4.5. – I had an 8 iron that I apparently bent (by hitting a root or something?) so that the loft was altered. It was between a 6 and 7 iron. Until I checked it, I’d hit it funny distances. Then I’d start altering my swing, ad nauseaum. – All my irons had about 6.0 frequency, except my 7 iron, which was about 7.2. It also had a swingweight of C6 compared to D0 of my other irons (these 2 things might have been related). The bottom line is you have to have these things analysed by a golf shop (or you if you have a freq meter).
Response:
- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Been playing for over 30 years. I’ve owned many many iron sets over the years and have made a dozen or so. Been pondering on the specific reasons why certain clubs in a set of irons might fit my swing very well while the same # club in another set might not. For example: Present set of Callaway x-14 irons. PW and 8 iron work and feel perfect. The 6 and 4 are okay. 7 is the lousiest in the set with 9 not far behind. Yet in my "older" Ping i3 set, also iron shaft and also d-3 swingweight, the PW, 6, and 3 iron work and feel very consistent with the rest of the set lousy. Is this due to shaft and head inconsistencies by the OEM manufacturers? How could I go about creating a set of irons matched to the same "feel" as the 8 in my Callaway set or the 6 in my Ping set? Despite matching swingweights, is it shaft frequencies that change the "feel" and balance of a club? Is there some other way to "graduate" a set other than the "standard" 1/2" increase per club? mike? FWIW I’ve recently made a set of irons for my son with the "matched" Rifle shaft set and he loves them. The shafts don’t fit my senior swing so the whole set doesn’t work right for me. thanks to everyone, aloha, jim
Jim, the short answer is that such clubs are not matched on one or more parameter that affects feel. Anyone who’s made a lot of clubs and actually taken the time to examine the parts before assembly knows that parts vary, sometimes a great deal. If you’ve ever looked in a component catalog next to a clubhead’s specs, they’ll usually show you the weight in grams along with a tolerance plus/minus. Usually those are about 2 grams plus or minus, but sometimes they’re 3 grams. And I’ve come across heads that are even more out of spec than 3 grams. Suppose you have a 6-iron that’s 3 grams under nominal, and a 7-iron that’s 3 grams over nominal. Instead of a normal 7-gram progression from head to head, what you have is a 4-gram progression from the 5-iron to the 6-iron, a 13 (!) gram progression from the 6-iron to the 7-iron, and a 4-gram proression from the 7-iron to the 8-iron (this assumes the 5 and 8 irons are nominal). Jim, that can affect playability a lot! Every 2 grams you add to a clubhead (or subtract from a clubhead) is equal to about one swingweight point. So in the example above, you would have a noticeable difference in feel between the 6- and 7-irons just based on swingweight (they’d be about 3 SW points apart instead of the normal expectation of being equivalent in a swingweight-matched set). Those variations in head weights also affect frequency or flex. Lighter clubheads equal stiffer, heavier clubheads equal more flexible, everything else being equal. And I haven’t even talked about the shafts yet. Shafts are just not as consistent as everyone thinks they are. They can differ by half a flex within a set of pretty decent matched steel shafts. Here is the data from a set of Dynamic Gold S-300 shafts (these are in my own irons): http://dalecki.net/clubdoctor/images/dgs300.jpg The numbers in the cells are CPM (shafts were examined in their raw form), with shafts turned at 30 degree intervals in the clamp and examined again (that’s why 12 observations for each shaft). [One other thing: It's generally accepted that a 10 cpm difference between two shafts is considered equivalent to a flex, i.e., the difference between a "stiff" and a "regular."] So look at those CPM readings. The shafts vary from about a 306 cpm reading to a 310 cpm reading. This is equivalent to 40 percent of a "flex grade" in these supposedly identical iron shafts (and remember, these are True Temper Dynamic Gold shafts that have already been weight sorted for consistency). And these aren’t bad shafts. It’s just that you have inconsistencies that should be accounted for. In my case, I sort the shafts by frequency (in the hitting plane) such that the lower frequency shafts go in the long irons, the higher frequency shafts go in the short irons. Here’s a set of much cheaper iron shafts (Raven Excelsior Platinum): http://dalecki.net/clubdoctor/images/ravenex.jpg Note first of all how much heavier they are. I spoke w/ the company, they said sometimes that happens with excess chroming (these are *economy* shafts, so you’re not getting the sorting that True Temper does). Second, note the two crossed off shafts. They’re very much out of spec, aren’t they? Shaft "B" is 5-6 cpm stiffer than shaft "F". Shafts "B" and "G" didn’t make the final cut. This, BTW, is why I almost always buy extra shafts so that if I get a bad one or two I can toss them from the mix. I just ordered 22 more of these shafts (they’re really very good for shafts that cost $3.50) for two sets of nine clubs I’m making. Yes, I’m building in the expectation that I’ll have a few less-desirable shafts. [Side note: Much of frequency adjustment can be done by weight sorting. The two "bad" shafts are out of line in terms of weight, so if someone only has a gram scale to help sort shafts, weight sorting isn't a bad way to go--just use the lighter shafts in the long irons, and the heavier ones in the short irons. ] [BTW, look at the Raven Graphite shafts on the right. Great shafts for under $8, very nice spine pattern, and pretty consistent. But even so, shaft "C" is significantly less stiff than "A" and "B". I was building a driver and 3-wood here, so I left myself some room for error by getting the extra shaft. This pattern, BTW, is no different than what I've seen in UST Proforce 65 shafts, for instance--in fact, I consider these shafts to be approximate equivalents to the -65, except they're not tip stiff like the -65 is] When you start coupling variation in head weight with variation in shaft weight with variation in frequency, well, you can see how you can much how a club plays from one to the next can vary. The stiffness may vary due to the shaft or due to the clubhead being too heavy or too light. The swingweights can vary due to shaft weight variation or clubhead weight variation. In short, unless you *know* that the clubs were assembled to exacting specifications, IMO there’s no reason to believe they’re any better than just glue-and-stick. Because in many, perhaps most cases, they are just that. And if by random chance, you get a club with a stiffer shaft than normal but which has a lighter head than normal, it’ll play a lot stiffer just because of that, to say nothing of how the swingweight might vary. This has turned out longer than I intended, but hopefully I’ve been clear enough that you can see what affects feel. The components I use are no better and no worse than the OEMs use. Mizuno has often used TT Dynamic Gold S-300s in their irons. Others use Rifles (which, BTW, I’m not sold on–I bought two Rifle shafts recently for testing and demo purposes, a 5.0 and a 5.5, and when I analyzed them they were *exactly* the same). A place to start in learning what "works" and what doesn’t is to determine what it is about the clubs you like that makes them different. Get their frequencies analyzed. See if they’re on the same slope (I bet you 75 cents they’re not). Examine the swingweights. Find out what’s good about the good clubs, and different about the ones you don’t like. In the case of the Raven clubs I built above, I had the guy send me his old 5-iron (which he loved), and his 3-iron (which he hated–it was lighter in SW and stiffer). I found the frequency and swingweight for the 5-iron, and matched them. You can see how such frequency matching is done here: http://dalecki.net/clubdoctor/images/ravenexfreq.jpg The "target" was his 5-iron (which was 37.25 inches long). We made a standard set, with the frequencies matched on the slope line. [Disclaimer: Usually they don't match quite *this* closely :]. But if you have clubs that don’t feel right, I’ll bet they’re not on a straight slope like these are, and they may vary considerably. Get someone to find out what makes your favorite clubs your favorites, and what makes the others what they are. Maybe your unfavorites can be adjusted, perhaps as simply as adding some weight down the shaft. But even if not, you’ll have a set of parameters you can use to get your next set. Good luck! Mike PS: You can also MOI-match a set instead of swingweight matching the set. I’m building another set for myself right now, and I’m going to MOI-match them, which I have in my current set. If you want clubs that feel the same, this is the best way to do it, IMO. Look back on Google where I’ve talked about it–Search for MOI and Dalecki and also search for Kenny Stultz. Mike Dalecki RSG-Wisconsin 2002 Info http://dalecki.net/rsgwis2002 I do not patronize spammers. Help keep RSG clean! Web Site: http://www.dalecki.net/clubdoctor/ RSG Roll Call: http://rec-sport-golf.com/members/?rollcall=daleckim
Response:
Been playing for over 30 years. I’ve owned many many iron sets over the years and have made a dozen or so. Been pondering on the specific reasons why certain clubs in a set of irons might fit my swing very well while the same # club in another set might not. For example: Present set of Callaway x-14 irons. PW and 8 iron work and feel perfect. The 6 and 4 are okay. 7 is the lousiest in the set with 9 not far behind. Yet in my "older" Ping i3 set, also iron shaft and also d-3 swingweight, the PW, 6, and 3 iron work and feel very consistent with the rest of the set lousy. Is this due to shaft and head inconsistencies by the OEM manufacturers? How could I go about creating a set of irons matched to the same "feel" as the 8 in my Callaway set or the 6 in my Ping set? Despite matching swingweights, is it shaft frequencies that change the "feel" and balance of a club? Is there some other way to "graduate" a set other than the "standard" 1/2" increase per club? mike? FWIW I’ve recently made a set of irons for my son with the "matched" Rifle shaft set and he loves them. The shafts don’t fit my senior swing so the whole set doesn’t work right for me. thanks to everyone, aloha, jim