Question:
Way to go, Kenny! You know what this all means, don’t you? You’ll start hanging out by the mailbox, waiting, waiting for the next shipment of component parts from Dynacraft, or Golfsmith, or Golfworks, or whomever. You’ll open that box, gently remove the shipping paper, and lovingly run your hands over those components, so sleek, so new, so…full of the promise of lower golf scores. Good luck with the new hobby!
Yes, and it is getting worse, too… The first step to doom is often regripping. Then, you build ONE club. Often a clunker. (My first club is now serving me as a lead shot-filled practice club, thanks for asking 
) Then, you build a set of irons. Followed by woods. Trying to build a putter also seems to be typical. By then, you own things like a shaft cutter, a swingweight scale, a Dremel with assorted bits plus assorted other odd stuff. You have all the clubs you need – but building clubs is fun, so you are looking for reasons to build MORE clubs. (And you dream about frequency meters or even loft and lie machines, even if you wouldn’t know where to store the monster…) Do I need to add that I am just waiting for two driver heads (from Chicago golf) to turn up in my mailbox ? ARGH ! Jens
Response:
<snipoooo! After I got them put together, I used a idea I got off the internet and "jury-rigged" a poor man’s frequency meter using my PC and some wave analysis software.
….tell us a bit more about this Kenny….!! david
Response:
David, I used a Black and Decker Workmate for the clamping device. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a portable workbench that has a clamping device built in. It’s hard for me to describe in words, but you can get a pretty good grip on items that are tapered (like a golf club grip). A week or so ago, I posted a message here asking how much of the grip should be clamped. The answer I got that made the most sense was "everybody does it differently." Then I ran across a picture of a frequency machine in a Golfsmith catalog. It looked like they were clamping about half the length of the grip, so that’s what I did. I used two pieces of software and my wife’s laptop (easier to carry into the basement than the big computer). I mounted a PC microphone (one of those long neck, lightweight mics) like it so it swung like it was on a pendulum. Everytime the club vibrated after I plucked it, it would tap the mic. I recorded the taps as *.wav files using Microsoft Sound Recorder. After I had recorded files for all the clubs, I used some Wave editing software. The software came with Midisoft Studio 4. It allows you to read in the wave file and displays it on the screen. Each tic that the club made when it hit the mic was very visible. The software allows you to define a starting point and ending point on the screen with mouse clicks and displays the time between them. In all cases, I counted 12 tics, got the lapsed time in seconds, and calculated the frequency in cycles/minute as f = 12(60)/time. In terms of absolute accuracy, the frequencies I recorded are probably low if anything because the WorkMate sitting on a concrete floor is not the stiffest base in the world. However, the fact that the frequencies plotted as a straight line made me feel good about the consistency of the set as a whole. The absolute frequencies may be off from their true values and slope of the frequency line may be off from it’s true value, but the correct trend is there. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – <snipoooo! After I got them put together, I used a idea I got off the internet and "jury-rigged" a poor man’s frequency meter using my PC and some wave analysis software. ….tell us a bit more about this Kenny….!! david
Kenny Kenny Stultz RSG Roll Call: http://u1.netgate.net/~kirby34/rsg/stultzk.htm
Response:
Way to go, Kenny! You know what this all means, don’t you? You’ll start hanging out by the mailbox, waiting, waiting for the next shipment of component parts from Dynacraft, or Golfsmith, or Golfworks, or whomever. You’ll open that box, gently remove the shipping paper, and lovingly run your hands over those components, so sleek, so new, so…full of the promise of lower golf scores. Good luck with the new hobby! Mike – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – After reading far too many posts here about clubmaking, I finally took the plunge. Over the past few weeks, I assembled some "Rescue-type" clubs for friends and family and nobody puked when they tried them. As far as I know, none of them have ended up in the trash yet. I’ve had the bug to try the new Ping Eye3 blades, but have held back because of the cost. I had my eye on them because I’m a long time (happy) Ping user and as I approach "geezerness" if I don’t try some blades soon, it may get to the point that it’s too late. I won’t get into the discussion of whether these are really blades or not, but the propaganda is that they play like blades. I got a Dynacraft catalog which has some new heads for 2000 and the PC3 caught my eye. They look striking similar to you know what <g. So I decided to use Dynacraft’s shaft fitting procedure on myself and see if I could make a set of irons. I won’t go through all the gory details but I settled on the Grafalloy Pro Logic graphite shafts (regular flex). The only real criteria I set for the clubs (rightly or wrongly) was I wnated a D-2 swingweight (that’s what I have on my present Zing 2’s). By some miracle, I was able to assemble the set without screwing anything up. I used John Baima’s swingweight calculator to plan the clubs. So before I assembled anything, I has a good idea of how much weight I was going to have to add to each club. The software did a pretty good job. It was right on the money for the longer clubs and close enough for the shorter clubs (within a gram or so). It also gave me a "heads up" that I was going to have trouble with the 6I. That head was light in relation to the others and I could tell I’d never be able to get to D2 on that club. I could get it to D1 and figured that was close enough. The Grafalloy shafts come as a matched set. You leave the tips alone and cut the butt ends to final length. Since this was my first attempt at a set of clubs, this idea appealed to me and figured into my decision to use those shafts. It gave a rookie one less thing to screw up (proper tip trimming). After I got them put together, I used a idea I got off the internet and "jury-rigged" a poor man’s frequency meter using my PC and some wave analysis software. I clamped the clubs in a Black and Decker Workmate, plucked them, made some recordings and measured the frequency of each finished club. I was totally shocked at the result. When I plotted the curve, it was pretty damn straight. I ended up with the 5I at 295 cpm and an average of about 5.1 cpm between clubs. So basically, the clubs looked good on paper. The swingweight was pretty constant and the frequency curve was a straight line. Tonight I took them to the range and was very pleased. No heads flew off and they are at least a club longer than my Zing 2’s. I learned one thing, though. I’ve been getting away with murder with those cavity back clubs. With those, a little mishit here or there is no big deal. With the new clubs, I could really feel the mishits – and they really looked ugly. But when I hit them like you’re supposed to, it felt real good and the ball carried forever. Before I started on this, I read a lot of stuff on the internet about club building and even bought and read a couple of books. But reading posts here on RSG was invaluable. I picked up a lot of good tips on this newsgroup that made this little project possible for a rookie to complete. Just wanted to say thanks. I’m going to hit the new ones for a while and see how they pan out. Who knows which set will end up on alt.golf.forsale? Kenny Kenny Stultz RSG Roll Call: http://u1.netgate.net/~kirby34/rsg/stultzk.htm
– — Mike Dalecki I do not patronize spammers! Help keep R.S.G clean. Join us: http://www.mynetcentral.com/rsgnospam/ RSG Roll Call: http://u1.netgate.net/~kirby34/rsg/daleckim.htm
Response:
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – David, Everytime the club vibrated after I plucked it, it would tap the mic. I recorded the taps as *.wav files using Microsoft Sound Recorder. After I had recorded files for all the clubs, I used some Wave editing software. The software came with Midisoft Studio 4. It allows you to read in the wave file and displays it on the screen. Each tic that the club made when it hit the mic was very visible. The software allows you to define a starting point and ending point on the screen with mouse clicks and displays the time between them. In all cases, I counted 12 tics, got the lapsed time in seconds, and calculated the frequency in cycles/minute as f = 12(60)/time. In terms of absolute accuracy, the frequencies I recorded are probably low if anything because the WorkMate sitting on a concrete floor is not the stiffest base in the world. However, the fact that the frequencies plotted as a straight line made me feel good about the consistency of the set as a whole. The absolute frequencies may be off from their true values and slope of the frequency line may be off from it’s true value, but the correct trend is there.
Wonderful…fine bit of lateral thinking! I hadn’t thought about the ‘binary’ approach in using the ‘tics’…..and providing your software time base is accurate then the absolute values should also be accurate. You are info. contained in the ‘Flexmaster’ website interesting..look at http://www.yesflex.com …..the ‘Flexmaster’ static system allows you match a set of shafts by clamping the tips and pre-cutting the shafts from the butt-end to a required standard load/deflection reading…and then simply cutting each club to required length from the tip!…looks like a very simple approach to me…and also lends itself to a simple ‘backyard’ jury flex relationship between all clubs in the set is obviously very important in matching the set. I often suspect the readings given by commercially available ‘frequency meters’……one error that always seems to build itself into the cheaper ones are those that base their time reference on line frequency (50Hz or 60Hz)…or have some DC voltage dependant feature in the timing circuitry. david
Response:
After reading far too many posts here about clubmaking, I finally took the plunge. Over the past few weeks, I assembled some "Rescue-type" clubs for friends and family and nobody puked when they tried them. As far as I know, none of them have ended up in the trash yet. I’ve had the bug to try the new Ping Eye3 blades, but have held back because of the cost. I had my eye on them because I’m a long time (happy) Ping user and as I approach "geezerness" if I don’t try some blades soon, it may get to the point that it’s too late. I won’t get into the discussion of whether these are really blades or not, but the propaganda is that they play like blades. I got a Dynacraft catalog which has some new heads for 2000 and the PC3 caught my eye. They look striking similar to you know what <g. So I decided to use Dynacraft’s shaft fitting procedure on myself and see if I could make a set of irons. I won’t go through all the gory details but I settled on the Grafalloy Pro Logic graphite shafts (regular flex). The only real criteria I set for the clubs (rightly or wrongly) was I wnated a D-2 swingweight (that’s what I have on my present Zing 2’s). By some miracle, I was able to assemble the set without screwing anything up. I used John Baima’s swingweight calculator to plan the clubs. So before I assembled anything, I has a good idea of how much weight I was going to have to add to each club. The software did a pretty good job. It was right on the money for the longer clubs and close enough for the shorter clubs (within a gram or so). It also gave me a "heads up" that I was going to have trouble with the 6I. That head was light in relation to the others and I could tell I’d never be able to get to D2 on that club. I could get it to D1 and figured that was close enough. The Grafalloy shafts come as a matched set. You leave the tips alone and cut the butt ends to final length. Since this was my first attempt at a set of clubs, this idea appealed to me and figured into my decision to use those shafts. It gave a rookie one less thing to screw up (proper tip trimming). After I got them put together, I used a idea I got off the internet and "jury-rigged" a poor man’s frequency meter using my PC and some wave analysis software. I clamped the clubs in a Black and Decker Workmate, plucked them, made some recordings and measured the frequency of each finished club. I was totally shocked at the result. When I plotted the curve, it was pretty damn straight. I ended up with the 5I at 295 cpm and an average of about 5.1 cpm between clubs. So basically, the clubs looked good on paper. The swingweight was pretty constant and the frequency curve was a straight line. Tonight I took them to the range and was very pleased. No heads flew off and they are at least a club longer than my Zing 2’s. I learned one thing, though. I’ve been getting away with murder with those cavity back clubs. With those, a little mishit here or there is no big deal. With the new clubs, I could really feel the mishits – and they really looked ugly. But when I hit them like you’re supposed to, it felt real good and the ball carried forever. Before I started on this, I read a lot of stuff on the internet about club building and even bought and read a couple of books. But reading posts here on RSG was invaluable. I picked up a lot of good tips on this newsgroup that made this little project possible for a rookie to complete. Just wanted to say thanks. I’m going to hit the new ones for a while and see how they pan out. Who knows which set will end up on alt.golf.forsale? Kenny Kenny Stultz RSG Roll Call: http://u1.netgate.net/~kirby34/rsg/stultzk.htm