Nice job NRG
What do you use to hold the head? I don’t think I have ever seen the “driver attachment” that JH described for iron bending machines. Also are you able to do it by yourself or do you really need someone to keep torching it? (I know CC prefers the latter)
Thanks
Yeah nice job NRG, you really have got a lot of strings to your bow now!
Cheers, Arnie
NRG made me a great 48 degree 975D ABS driver, its heavy, flat, stiff, well made, solid feeling…and an all round good job.
It was very well finished, feels very solid indeed especially compared to the latest titanium offerings.
Mashie,
I just used my vice lined with some scraps of leather to protect the head. And used a 2nd vice to hold the torch to keep the heat on whilst bending, the heat transfers into the bending bar and escapes really fast if you don’t. Make sure the head is in there nice and tight before you heat it up, you don’t want it pulling out half way through.
Aiguille,
Let me know how you get on with that, I found it a bit flat which was suprising cause I’ve got persimmons at 46 degrees which are fine.?? I’ve made one now at 50 degrees to try out too.
Cheers
Just curious NRG:
How did the paint hold up just below the stainless neck…did it burn or discolor a little and how far down did it, if it did.
Nice job. How much did you bend it in total from the original lie. 
I also see what looks like a shaft puller with two range balls on the handle. Shame on you for taking range assets 
Ok I’ve got 3 of these heads & wanted to mess around with them haven’t had the balls to do it. Questions…
How do you get the shaft back in? Do you just insert it to the bore & fill the rest with something?
I think if I remember the steel & graphite are both .350, what shafts were in before and what are you reshafting with? If it’s a .350 X100 what length do you finish at, they were built stock mostly 44" steel & 44.5" graphite so what swingweights are they coming out at if it’s shorter length?
I think I’d like to try chopping the hosel off completely and insert a .294 and use the free space to set it a touch open & flat, that was my best guess for what could work. I don’t really worry all that much about the lie on these kinds of heads with low dynamic loft and the rounded sole, especially at 7/5° & 8.5°. Any thoughts on trying that instead?
Interesting stuff. Thx.
Ratter, (or the Black Superman as I will call you from now on)
You can’t really avoid trashing the paint finish. So you have to strip, sand and respray them. And use a belt sander to remove the burn mark from the neck that isn’t painted.
I bent Aiguilles down to 48 degrees which is about 11 degrees flatter than they start off at.
lcdv,
The shaft only goes in an inch and half or so up to where the bend starts. I just epoxy the end off an old graphite shaft in the bore through hole with a bore through pin glues in the middle and file and sand it down level with the sole. You can get a really professional finish if you take your time.
They have .335 shafts in so i am just replacing graphite with steel. The additional weight of the steel shaft brings the deadweight up nicely to about 13.25 ounces and the swing weights too. Been doing them at about 44 inches, think they come out something like D7 at that length.
I guess you might be able to shim it open a bit, but not too much. Was suprised to see you with some interest in this, I remember you saying that lie angle isn’t important on anything longer than a 5 iron, or something like that.
Very nice pics. I like your torch holder idea.
Also when you strip on a cold day, do you do it from a well ventilated/heated shop or just wait for for a warmer day?
I went to strip a wood today and nothing happened. The can read 65 degrees after my failed 50 degree attempt
Thanks
Aiguille,
Is your distance with the NRG club more than a persimmon and less than the latest frying pan? or is about the same as the persimmon?
Ok that’s what I figured the protocol would be, I like changing the shaft line closer to the impact zone but I wonder how stable it would end up changing a head that was designed for a bore thru into a hosel bore only, whether that would lose more stability than is made up by the flattened lie. Weird, I’d have to try it and see I guess but 90% of the reason I would mess around with this would be to retrofit a taper shaft and the thought of this protocol with a shim & a bunch of glue wouldn’t work at all. That’s why I was thinking of losing the hosel altogether. I’ve got one now with a parallel X300 tipped to the step and it’s terrible, like a rubber band; if I flattened it this way it’d be 10X worse. A shim in a bore thru is a little more solid I would think, that’s what I did with the persimmon and it’s good.
With the lie angle its just the driver I don’t really care all that much about. Fairway woods have always driven me crazy because they’re so upright and tend to have so much face progression, that has bugged me even more even though intellectually I know it has to be there with a metal head. I just hate looking at it. But with the driver I’ve just gotten used to it. I’ve been playing 5 flat for twenty years and I don’t think it’s an issue on a club with 7-9° of loft that never touches the ground what the lie angle is to a certain extent. In fact after all these years if I didn’t set a driver up with the toe flung up in the air it’d probably look pretty bizarre to me. It’s just the way it is, I can hit a cut from my knees so who cares. Plus there’s more toe dip with a driver than anything else so that has to be accounted for to some extent I suppose plus every great driver of the ball I’ve ever seen has the toe up at address with the possible exception of Moe and I’ve seen him do it too sometimes so I personally think it works as long as it doesn’t get too out of control. What I’d like this method with a lot I think would be the PT fairway woods. I’d like to do that with a bore thru 15° but with the shaft in so I could keep it a bore thru. It would be a nightmare and then some but to get it flat, open and delofted would be worth the work.
Good stuff NRG.
I stirp at room temperature and don’t ventilate, but a little bit on a golf club is not exactly the same as coating a full wall with the stuff. I bought some of the new paint stripper which is low in VOCs and it didn’t even take the shine off the varnish, so I took it back and bought all the old stuff that they had. Just another example of modern stuff being rubbish.
lcdv,
I suppose if you were to pull down slightly to the right, then this would open the face up a bit, de[pendas on how you set it in the vice.
I understand that its less important with just 9 degrees loft compared to say 50 on a wedge, but don’t we hit a driver 2 1/2 times further?, so its still important. I can hit an upright driver fine, but i know i am allowing my arms to pull straight when I do this and that just messes with my head, especially when you are hittitng a driver so often.
Mashie,
I have only hit a handful of balls on the range so far, but the early impression is more than a persimmon and less than a frying pan. Much lower trajectory so would be great in very windy conditions.
Thank you for your responses NRG &
Glad to learn that I’m not the only one with a cheap stripper
I don’t get it, how does that happen when the club never touches the ground?
It doesn’t really matter if the club doesn’t touch the ground, if a club has loft, then lie angle is important. The more the loft the more important it is.
To visualize this hold your putter in a traditional position with the club shaft hanging vertically, now raise the shaft up to a horizontal position at shoulder level – notice that the club is pointing towards the target regardless of the club being vertical or horizontal. Lie angle is not important if there is zero loft (I know putters have loft)
Now do the same with a wedge. With a vertical club shaft the club points way right, horizontal way left - lie angle is really important with wedges.
Lie angle on a driver with less loft is less important than a wedge - 5 times less assuming 10 degrees loft compared to 50 on a wedge. But you hit a driver 2 ½ times further, so half as important really.
NRG
Agreed but we also need to factor in that despite our intentions, very few can pull off an orbit pull type hit with a driver. So inevitably it will have some degree of dumping (for most golfers).
Aiguille
Have u noticed the ball going more to the right??
That makes sense but what if theoretically instead of flattening it 10° you just opened it like a degree & a half? Where’s the clubface pointing?
Fair enough Macs, but i think we will be able to incorporate the swing changes faster if we try to keep our intentions pure across the full set. Scores might suffer short term, but long term i think the improvements will be faster.