KBS are a little soft feeling to me. I don’t have much experience with them, but I prefer my X-200’s.
I use Tennis Raquet leadtape… on some short Irons I have 6-8 grams leadtape…
I like heavier Swingweights in my short Irons…
Chris
TY NRG,
Interesting. How do the DG compare to ABS recommendations as far as weight. And should I even consider the S400’s, thinking that may be a little stiff for me, but not sure. Being new to the vintage clubs, which I love hitting and thinking about how the previous generations played them, it takes me back to the days when I was knee high to a grass hopper. Even though I grew up in the 60’s I knew who the King was, not Elvis, Nicklaus, Player, Snead and Hogan. I wasn’t big into golf at the time but around Masters time my dad always made sure he payed attention, so I payed attention as best I could, and if golf was on the T.V. at all, our set was tuned in.
My Hogans 1+'s are .355 Taper tip from what I understand. Looks like DG S300 with Sensicore are 130 Grams and the regular steel S300 are 130 grams as are the X100’s. Both the S300 and X100 have a high bend point and of course a Firm Tip Stiffness. I do like DG Sensicore shafts. wonder how shot dispersion or accuracy, or whatever the term would be, is between a DG’s and KBS.
I’m looking for what would be closer to an Apex shaft, but also want to remain true to ABS concepts, although I suppose I should be open minded enough to consider the best shaft for me, and my vintage set of irons. 
I do like the cost savings of DG over KBS, thats a definite plus for DG…
Its amazing how many of us are rescuing these classic irons and returning them to service.
Dadgummit, Why did the Hogan Golf Company have to be mothballed, and for that matter MacGregor as well. Our history and roots are being destroyed right before our eyes. Kinda stinks! And a whole generation of marginal golf is being left in the wake of the destruction. 
Its scary to think that no more of these irons or clubs will ever be made. On one hand I want to mount these irons and never play them again, on the other hand I know they should be played, that is their sole purpose in our lives today. But, what do we do in 20 years after we have worn our grooves down and nothing but a rusty quarter sized spot is left on the face where the groves used to be? Still its a great feeling to know that we are continuing a leagcy of great golf equipment and ball strikers! 
Apex shafts are lighter than normal DG’s. For ABS students, Dynamic Golds are typically the shaft of choice due to the extra weight. This, along with the tip stiffness, should lead to a tighter dispersion than a KBS, but that’s just as a general rule. I would avoid sensicores for the sake of wanting as much feedback as possible. I don’t want anything that will dampen vibration on shots. The main criticism I hear about Dynamic Golds from non-ABS’ers is that they feel too harsh. I think that if you’re going to take the plunge and play old blades, you want all the feedback you can get.
i’ve played dg’s for along time, mainly due to cost. i have stuff that franges from s100 up to x100. you could always buy them for 6 bucks at golfsmith.
now they have goneup to 12 or 13 but you can find used or even recently pulled shafts from new irons on ebay for very reasonable. i like saving
money, especially if your going to end up collecting 8 or 10 sets of vintage clubs, which tends to happen around here. they are
still the number one choice of oems so they are plentiful and always will be. take the money you save on shafts and buy more modules.
takes along time to wear out a shaft, why not try used? i also like just the plain dynamic steel shafts from the 80’s. although they weigh
the same, they feel heavier to me.
if i’m at a thrift store and i find a set of clubs with dg golds in them and the price is cheap, i’ll buy the set just for the shafts.
i bought a set of really bad northwesterns for $4 (3-W) just for the grips alone. old golf pride classic full cords that they stopped making
years ago. grips were were in great shape, getting ready to put them on 1953 macgregor m85’s. tossed the heads, will keep the shafts for
extensions if i ever need them. recycle baby! 
I wish DGs were just $6, they are more like $20 new over here. KBS are over $30, which is fine if you are just doing one set, but when you have 30 to do it gets a bit pricey.
I’ve been checking on DGs. Looks like the standard steel are 14.99 here in the states, not counting puring. Does puring matter? i saw some on ebay but the were all 41 inches. does that matter? I didn’t notice if they were .355 taper tip though.
I received an email that led me to a set of Wilson Staff Dynapower Fluid Feel 2 thru pw. Look pretty cool and I know 3Jack, and I believe lag also, speak highly of the wilsons staff dynapower vintage irons
I wish I could get more sets. right now I’m just struggling with getting my hogans reshafted and purchasing the ABS modules.
I have to admit, I was at first apprehensive about playing vintage irons, nut after hitting the Hogans and a persimmon I’m hooked.
I will be honest here… I could give a rats behind about new technology any longer. I used to be one of those that thought they could buy a better game. All I was doing is covering up flaws in my swing by using the gigantic headed drivers and the shovels. Been watching the pros knocking it around colonial today. Mr. Hogan must be spinning in his grave watching some of these guys play Zach Johnosn who I actually like was on one of the dog leg rights and he can’t bend a shot right. Hates the hole because it doesn’t suit his eye. So he proceeds to try and draw a 3 wood??? Draw a 3 wood on a par 3 dogleg right? 
Again I like Zach, not picking on him, just pointing out that the real shot makers are few and far between these days , and Zach may be one of the better shot makers in the game.
Could I bend a shot right on a dogleg right? NO, but I ain’t no pro.
One has to think, if today’s good touring pros had grown up playing the same irons and persimmon woods as their predecessors, maybe they would all be better ball strikers.
Puring is more of an issue for swingers, if you are holding shaft flex to impact then its not something you need to worry about.
If they are all 41", they will be .370 tips, stay away.
Dynas can be great clubs, but not all old blades are necessarily going to be good for ABS speccing, unless you are going to spend some cash on them, its pot luck really.
I think lag likes the Hogan 1+ irons. he posted that he thinks they are great heads. I need to go pull up that post and see if he mentions shafts.
NRG you’re making my life much easier, I would have let my club guy pure my shafts. 
You just saved me some bucks… And I do truly appreciate it all your help and of course everyone else’s help as well. 
Thank you so much!
Jesse, you may want to think about working on your own clubs. most of it is pretty easy and it’s fun (at least for me) alot of abs’ers do
their own work so you have a wealth of knowledge at your access. there are some folks in here who are really good at club building, lag being
one of them. find a couple of cheap old sets to practice on and your off to the races…
i’ve gripped and reshafted my own stuff for 20 plus years but since joining abs i started bending them too.
i can find an old set of blades at a garage sale put used modern dg shafts in them with used nice grips for well under $30 (all in) and then bend them to my liking. not as precise or near as pretty as lags specs but pretty close enough for me. i do all my bending in a standard vice i modified and i bought a nice bending bar.
lag said something to the effect that working on your own gear really helps you understand not only your gear better but also your swing. i totally agree with this. all the great players knew how to work on their own gear. palmer was a notorious tinkerer. i’ve seen pictures of norman grinding down irons.
on friday nights when the family goes to bed i’m in the garage listening to tunes, drinking cold beer and working on clubs.
I’m pretty mechanically inclined so doing my own work is an option. I’d just hate to ruin a set though. I do know of a thrift store that has some older Wilson Dynapower irons Fluid Feel with the Red Dot on where the shaft comes through the head, not a complete set, about 4 or 5 of them, I could practice on those. Maybe not those, they’re pretty sweet. I need to go get them, I can get the 4 or 5 clubs, think its 5 for $20.00. I can still find a few irons to work on to gain some experience. I don’t think I could really ruin one, it may not turn out great but I could do it I reckon.
In the Hogan 1+ irons they have pins, I’ve read how to get those out. Only problem would be on how to fill the hole. And I’ve seen re-gripping done enough so I could probably do that as well.
One thing is concerning me, maybe I’m a bit confused. I was reading in the Shaft Technology thread that its not easy to change shafts in an iron head from a regular shaft to a stiff shaft. maybe the technical talked scared me a bit and I just didn’t quite understand all the details. I know the shaft will fit, but there was just all this discussion of head weight, swing weight and how the heads for regular shafts may be lighter than what a stiff shafted head may weigh. And all this stuff must be considered before you just plunk a stiff shaft in to a head that has a regular head. I think the final solution was to replace the regular shaft with an S400 and then tweak the swing weight. I don’t know!
Still I think you came up with a brilliant idea, I have always wanted to work on my own clubs.
Although I may let lag do my Hogans, I’d cry if I messed them up. 
on the hogans i don’t refill the holes, the epoxy just fills it up. not pretty but still functional.
some people fill it with some kind of metal to make it match.
also check garage sales, just in the past couple of months i found a set of 61 hogan power thrusts
for $8 with 3 wilson staff woods and an almost new set of 1982 titleist square toe blades for $20.
This may have already been discussed…
I don’t know if all vintage blades are like this, but, when hitting my hogans the leading edge is sharp and the sole is not anything like modern day crappola irons, they dig if you’re steep or hit fat. I’ve always had a steep swing and I can lay the sod over a ball with the best of them. Its certainly taking some getting used to on how to best hit these irons. Even on what I think is a crisp shot, results point out I am still to steep and still hitting down too much. 
.
Those irons are WADs. They Work As Designed. Those blades are giving you the feedback you need to improve your swing. Listen to what they tell you. The modern “game improvement” clubs are just bandaids that try to mask any swing flaws and when you hit it well, you never can quite tell if you really did hit it that good.
As for the regular to stiff shaft switching, there really is no problem doing that. It’s no different with a stiff or regular shaft as long as you get the right shaft type. For irons, there are mainly the .355 tapered or the .370 parallel shafts. Most of the older clubs will be .355 tapered. Just make sure you get the right one for you club head. Don’t worry so much about swing weights etc for now. That’s for more subtle tweaking down the road. You can always add lead tape to bring up the swing weight.
As for the Wilson Dynapower clubs, they will probably be a pain to do any shaft switching with. The shaft doesn’t actually come all the way through. It has a rubber insert plug to allow them to take weight out of the hosel but they use an unusual shaft diameter. I would suggest not using them for trying club rebuilding with. If they are already the stiffness you want and you get them bent to the flatter lies, then they are great clubs and worth getting. If you want to reshaft them, don’t waste your time on them there are other classic clubs that are easier to work with.
There’s plenty of people on this board that do their own club repairs/replacements so don’t feel as though you are alone. We can give you all the advice you need on club modification. It all just depends on what tools/skills and willingness to work on things how much you can do with them.
Ironsmith - Yeppers, they do Work As Designed. 
I am learning its a lot harder to hit vintage irons than I first thought, even though its not really that hard, I’m just learning how to swing the club properly after years of band-aids and improper technique. So not having a great swing does not help when hitting these things that work as designed. I’m not afraid of them though. I’ll work until my hands are gone and nothing but bloody stumps are left if I have to in order to build an ABS swing, dadgummit!
I had been doing okay working on my swing until yesterday. My swing fell apart at the range and I couldn’t get it back, combination of poor technique and 90 something degree heat at 3:00 in the afternoon, right after cutting the yard with a push mower was part of the challenge I needed to overcome, along with poor technique is my edumacated guess. I knew I was coming too steep and OTT but couldn’t stop no matter what. Its a shame too, I had found some old Wilson Dynapower Bulletbacks 3,4,6,8 irons that I wanted to try out, regular shafts I think, they have a black band. I started out hitting the 6 and 8 irons well but the more shallow I tried to get the worse I got. LOL I did manage to hit an old MacGregor Tourney 3 wood well, until my swing crashed and burned.
I also had found an old Wilson Staff 1976-1977 model in a 7 iron stiff shaft that I was hitting well yesterday, though not consistent, again until swing fell apart. But I still couldn’t stop the OTT pull left. Man oh man, Did I ever lay some, can’t take credit for this, some beaver pelts over the ball! 
I do actually kind of like the 1976-77 Wilson Staff, kind of simple looking but feels great when you make solid contact. Which I did manage to do once or twice, I think? 
I had always discounted Wilson as a golf club until now. I have to admit they used to make a danged fine golf instrument! I never would have thought about Wilson vintage irons if lag hadn’t taken the time to reply to an email I sent him. I really like the '69 Dynapower Bulletbacks and it seems I like the looks of most of the pre 70’s Wilson Dynapower irons.
One thing I’m also noticing is I must still be flipping, I seem to hit the 7 irons and above quite high, kind of a ballooning effect. Could this be due in part to flipping and regular shafts or flipping, regular, weak shafts or any combination/number of things I can be doing wrong.
I have to admit I’ve been bitten by the vintage blade bug and am now looking to sell my Wishon 550C/555M combo set. I don’t think I want to hit an iron newer than 1969 anymore. I like the looks of the vintage irons and love the way the feel on good shots. I think I can hit one or two out of a thousand balls correctly.
To me there is nothing like playing these old clubs.
I’ll never hit another metal wood or hybrid again in my life! I don’t care if I have to play the red danged tees. I’m not a pro and won’t ever make a living beating a golf ball to death so i’ll play the red tees if I have to! As long as I’m having fun at golf again - who really cares?
Keep at it Jesse. There’s lot of info around here to get your started you’ll just have to dig it out.
Once you get things going you will find out that your persimmons aren’t as short as you would think they would be especially with the modern ball. I hit my persimmon driver about 260 and my titanium cheater stick about 300. You can easily play a 6800 yard course only driving the ball 250 yards. You will also find that you can hit your 4iron as accurately as you would your 8 iron and feel like it’s no big deal to hit them with this rotational swing.
As for the higher shots. The lofts on the older clubs will probably be higher, so your 7iron may play more like a modern 9 iron in height and distance. The shafts probably aren’t as much to blame although they may be about an inch shorter than modern “standard” length.
I don’t know if you got any of those irons bent down flatter but I bent mine 6 degrees flat from the start. I thought it would be tough since the golf shops makes moving a degree upright or flatter sound like a major change. As soon as I set up to them, they felt perfect and I have no problem at all adjusting to them. It really shocked me how natural they felt from the get go. I guess it was because I always set up with the toe off the ground because they always felt too upright to me. Now I know that they were.
Just curious as to what you guys are using when replacing grips on your vintage irons? I’ve looked at the Lamkin Perma Wrap Classic grips and they look pretty traditional and not bad. I put a Golf Pride Red and Black multicompound on one of my Hogan 1+ irons and I DO NOT like the look at all. Maybe just black ad blue or black and white. To me the multicompound still looks too busy and just not right for a vintage iron. Plain Golfpride cord while good, theGolfPride logo is over the top in my eyes, for me at least.
I put a Lamkin Crossline Black and White on another and its okay looking but not great. Maybe all black would have been better.
Maybe a full cord? But it would be nice to have something with a touch of color to it, maybe. 
I’m open to suggestions at this point, looking for a good grip, very traditional looking that has a subtle look to it. that shouldn’t be hard to find. right? right? 
Just got a set of hogan bounce soles . They have the green writing instead of blue, maybe early 60s. Nothing like new blades. Heavy, sharp, flat, short.
do they look like this? 1969 Hogan Bounce Sole 1+