Lately, I’ve been using some old Hogan percussions and some old Hogan speed slots. They still have their original leather wraps on them. While swinging a 3 wood, the shaft at the grip broke due to unseen rust inside.
I’m wondering, could these be potentially dangerous on the course … like break while playing and hit someone?
I want to play them as is, but if they are dangerous, I’ll have to change the shafts … not really a bad thing, but those nice old leather grips feel real good. On a side note, can leather that’s been stuck to the shaft since 1967 still be saved?
Unfortunately yes it is dangerous more to yourself than to others, primarily for what happened; the shaft breaking under your hands. Thank your lucky stars that it was a tough leather wrap and not rubber, if it had been you could have sliced your hand open very badly and needed stitches and a series of shots. The stress points are under your hands and just above the ferrule at impact and rusty shafts can go any time, even if they don’t they change and weaken the flex dynamics and screw them up.
As for the wraps it takes a LOT of patience but most of the time hell ya you can save them! I would every time, in fact I’m just about obsessed with finding as many as I can and just using them rather than rubber. The easiest thing to do is slowly unwrap them without stretching them and then install Winn wraps on the new shafts and unwrap the crappy synthetic whatever it is and use the underlisting that remains. It costs money of course for the Winns but I’ve been looking for months for old Golf Pride underlistings and haven’t found any. But you can build it up over the underlisting with tape and get the size right and play around with it while wrapping the oldies. I always used black tape when I couldn’t find collars and it works good. If you can save the end caps from the old shafts all the better, then you can cut the rubber caps off the Winns and reuse those too, good luck finding any new end caps and let me know if you do. Also use a little epoxy when you start the wrap and let it set first to get a tight wrap.
I like the thought of keeping everything original but it ain’t worth slicing a hand open. None of the old shafts are frequency matched anyway so why keep something rusty and crappy and weak when you can put in perfect DGs for 10 bucks a club?
Hey, thanks for the advice, man. That makes a lot of sense. I hadn’t thought about the metal cutting through my hand, as I didn’t feel anything … I guess that shows how durable leather is.
I’ll try to save the leather grips in the way you’ve described. Thanks again.
No I haven’t replaced the orig shafts yet, there’s no risk of any damage from rust and I want to wait a couple months until I’m strong enough to hit x1’s or X2’s and I’ll switch then and extend the length a bit to increase the SW. If I can find them when I’m ready I’d like to put X2’s in everything, woods and irons to get consistency. For the time being the 4’s are about the right flex for my speed and they kick a little lower to get the ball a little higher so all the better. I never hit the orig Apex shafts before and I’m surprised how solid they are, I was always biased toward the DGs and it’s pretty close through the zone. I can tell they’re lighter but they flex like a stock S4 with a little higher kick.
On a side note … I’ve been playing primarily with Hogan Speedslot Woods for some weeks now, and they felt real good. Today, I tried playing with the modern (metal) woods, and they were so easy to hit. Those old woods really refine your swing, so that it makes it much easier to hit the new ones.