Question:
Basic club assembly is very simple. All you need is a 48 inch rule and a tube cutter for cutting steel shafts (a hacksaw will also work). A bench vise with rubber jaw pads or a rubber shaft pad is very helpful, but not absolutely required. Materials are the shaft, head, grip, masking tape, 2-sided grip tape, epoxy and some kind of solvent (mineral spirits) to lubricate the grip tape. Golfsmith, Dynacraft and Golfworks all have instruction sets for beginning clubmakers that include components and all materials. Golfsmith even includes basic instuctions in their clubmaker catalog. For more advanced work such as swing weighting and loft/lie adjustment you will need some specialized tools. Unless you plan on getting into clubmaking in a big way I don’t think it is worth the investment to purchase those yourself. In my case, I found a local clubmaker who has all the specialized tools and who was willing to work with me. Thanks for the review, Dan. It was very comprehensive. Sounds like you more than got your money’s worth. For those of us who have never assembled clubs, could you give us a brief description of the process? Is club assembly difficult to handle or could many of us here handle it? — Don Porter Newspaper Reporter & Webmaster Web Page: http://www.datacruz.com/~dporter
– Good Golf Dan For e-mail replace "nospam" with "varian"
Response:
Thanks for the informative post, Dan. I’ve been toying with the idea of replacing my old GS Tour Model IV’s – you may have helped me make up my mind!
Response:
To Dan and Steve, Thanks for this info! I’ve seen these details come and go on the group, but for one post each, this was the tightest and clearest I’ve seen the insights. I just demoed 3 five irons. I’ve taken a handful of clubs from EW before, but always a selection of different makes. This time I took only ping isi’s, but with different shaft lenghs and lie angles. This was a real education, and the differences REALLY showed me the benefits of being able to tinker with and tune a set of clubs. Since this last demo, I’ve been wondering how to get started, and lookie what I found here! Thanks guys. Steve AKA Mr. 81 Deg F. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – Basic club assembly is very simple. All you need is a 48 inch rule and a tube cutter for cutting steel shafts (a hacksaw will also work). A bench vise with rubber jaw pads or a rubber shaft pad is very helpful, but not absolutely required. Materials are the shaft, head, grip, masking tape, 2-sided grip tape, epoxy and some kind of solvent (mineral spirits) to lubricate the grip tape. Golfsmith, Dynacraft and Golfworks all have instruction sets for beginning clubmakers that include components and all materials. Golfsmith even includes basic instuctions in their clubmaker catalog. For more advanced work such as swing weighting and loft/lie adjustment you will need some specialized tools. Unless you plan on getting into clubmaking in a big way I don’t think it is worth the investment to purchase those yourself. In my case, I found a local clubmaker who has all the specialized tools and who was willing to work with me. Thanks for the review, Dan. It was very comprehensive. Sounds like you more than got your money’s worth. For those of us who have never assembled clubs, could you give us a brief description of the process? Is club assembly difficult to handle or could many of us here handle it? — Don Porter Newspaper Reporter & Webmaster Web Page: http://www.datacruz.com/~dporter — Good Golf Dan For e-mail replace "nospam" with "varian"
Response:
As promised, here is a review of my newly assembled Golfsmith Tour Cavity irons. I completed assembly last week, took them to the range a couple of times and had them on the course both days this weekend.
Thanks for the review, Dan. It was very comprehensive. Sounds like you more than got your money’s worth. For those of us who have never assembled clubs, could you give us a brief description of the process? Is club assembly difficult to handle or could many of us here handle it? — Don Porter Newspaper Reporter & Webmaster Web Page: http://www.datacruz.com/~dporter
Response:
As promised, here is a review of my newly assembled Golfsmith Tour Cavity irons. I completed assembly last week, took them to the range a couple of times and had them on the course both days this weekend. The heads are on FM Precision Rifle Lite 6.0 shafts, cut 1/4 inch overlength (38.25 inch 5 iron). The grips are standard .600 Golf Pride Tour Wraps over 4 layers of buildup tape. I have not had them swingweighted yet, nor have I measured the assembled shaft frequencies. I expect to do that later this week. I was very disappointed in the performance of the clubs after 2 sessions on the range. They proved more difficult to hit than I had anticipated and the distance very notably less than with my 855’s. They were hard to control and I had a lot of trouble with pushes and pulls. I should note that I was hitting off of mats, not grass. I attributed the problems to my lack of experience with performance oriented clubs and anticipated a long learning period. So imagine my surprise when I got to Tony Lema GC (par 72) Sat. morning and flew the 6 iron OVER the green of the 1st hole from 160 yards. On the 3rd hole I flew the PW off the back of the green from 140 yards. On the 8th hole, a 180 yard par 3 playing 185 to the pin, I landed the 5 iron 3 feet right of the pin and it only bounced once. I made the birdie from 5 feet. I accidentally spun the PW back off the green twice during the round. On the backside I duffed my tee shot and then a 5 wood 2nd shot on a par 5, leaving me 220 to the green, which I hit with the 3 iron. I left the course with perhaps the happiest 92 I have ever shot. I lost at least 8 strokes because I underestimated how far the irons would carry on almost every hole on the front and several more on the back. I went 49/43, and hit only one green on the front side, the par 3 8th. On Sun. I went out again, this time to Spring Valley GC (par 69) and shot 81. This time I went 38/43, but the front par is only 33, so it is not as lopsided as it looks. A cartpath bounce OB cost me on the back and my putting was terrible the entire round. I definitely had a better idea of the iron carry distances and I hit 8 greens, had 11 pars and a birdie. It should have been more, but the greens were EXTREMELY slow and very bumpy. I left almost every putt longer than 10 feet short and slow putts couldn’t hold the line. But my irons put me in scoring position a lot and gave me at least 4 more legitimate birdie opportunities that I squandered. To say that I am happy with the performance of these irons would be an incredible understatement. The on course distance of the long and mid irons is as much as 10 yards more than with my graphite shafted 855’s and the accuracy is much better. One of the things that I noticed right away was the feedback. I could tell exactly where on the clubface I made contact, except when it was on the sweetspot, where I didn’t feel anything at all. And either the sweetspot is quite large or I nailed it a very high percentage of swings this weekend. And the amount of backspin generated is impressive. I reached the point where I was playing the 4 and 5 iron to hit and bounce once on the greens. I started playing the PW past the flag because it was spinning back on almost every shot. But the greens were very soft at both courses. I don’t expect the same results at Poppy Ridge or San Juan Oaks. Possibly the only thing I am disappointed with is the trajectory. I had hoped for a lower, more boring ball flight, but if anything, it seems higher than it was with my old irons. It was noticeable enough that 3 of my playing partners this weekend asked me how I hit it so long when the ball went so high. There were several holes where I missed the green because the ball got up in the wind. After comparing my old irons and the TC’s, it was obvious that the TC’s have a somewhat lower COG, which explains the trajectory. I can see that knock down shots are going to be a necessity with these clubs for windy days. I would strongly recommend that any mid/low handicapper looking to upgrade their irons give serious consideration to the Tour Cavities. And I haven’t even gotten to the cost yet. So far I have paid just under US$250. That has included all materials, components, shipping charges, shaft prep and swing weighting (not done yet) by my clubmaker. I saved US$50 by assembling them myself. It will cost me an additional US$3.00 per club if I want to have the lofts or lies adjusted. This is considerably less than half the cost of my old Tommy Armour 855’s with graphite shafts. — Good Golf Dan For e-mail replace "nospam" with "varian"
Response:
I should also add that these are very good looking clubs. They have a thin top line that provides a very blade like appearance at address. The head is smaller than my 855’s, but not so small as to be intimidating. With the RL 6.0 shafts, they don’t feel whippy at all, which is a distinct improvement over the graphite shafted 855’s. Another point is that the Rifle shafts are very intolerant of slow swing speeds. By that I mean that if you deliberately slow your swing speed you will lose more distance than you anticipated and it will almost certainly push your shot. But if you do swing in or over their rated speed range the results are excellent. I attribute much of the feedback to the shafts. They also seem to be very good at damping the worst of the vibrations resulting form a very poor shot. I hit several very thin shots and one off the hosel and while I definitely knew I had hit bad shots, my hands didn’t feel like I had hit an ironwood tree with a baseball bat. The Rifles aren’t quite as good at vibration damping as graphite shafts, but the added feedback is well worth it, IMO. — Good Golf Dan For e-mail replace "nospam" with "varian"