Making Your Own Golf Clubs
April 17th, 2009
For the amateur golfer, making your own set of golf clubs or just that one special club can be a lot of fun, and it could help your game.
You may ask why you would ever want to build your own golf clubs. Well, a big reason is that when you buy clubs off the shelf you are stuck with the sizes and fits that are in stock. There may be one size for men; another for the women; and another for children who need junior golf clubs. For someone with a 6′ 2″ height, buying off the rack can cause one’s golf game to suffer and cause annoying back aches because the clubs that was picked were too short. By learning to make your own golf clubs you can help your body and save some cash at the same time.
You really don’t need much to make your own golf clubs. You just need a head, shaft, grip and some materials to hold it all together.Browsing through the net will give you many great options to buying your components and make clubs that match your game.
Club heads — iron and wood heads are available from many suppliers. One can buy club heads that resemble popular brands or designs unique to the manufacturer you buy them from. Different vendor offers their own line of clubs.
Shafts – you can buy the same shafts that most of these branded golf club companies use.
Grips – there are a variety of sizes and types of grips.You can find them in different prices and even get the same ones the pros use..
Ferules — That’s the little plastic piece that goes on the end of the shaft above the club head you’ll find on some clubs. These are purely decorative except on graphite shafts, where they are needed to absorb some of the stresses where the shaft joins the club head.
The beauty of finding the components to make your club is the fact that you can mix and match components to match your game.
Some of the tools needed are:
Grip tape – two sided tape is needed
Grip tape solvent – very cheap and you can recycle the excess
Epoxy – you will needs an epoxy with a drying time of 2-3 hours
Pipe cutter for cutting steel shafts, a plumbing cutter will work fine
For graphite shaft use a hack saw
Grip cutting knife – one with a hooked blade works nicely
Sandpaper for roughing up shaft tips to epoxy them
Shaft clamp – a thick piece of rubber in a vise works well
Making a golf club consists of measuring and cutting the shaft to length, abrading the tip to make sure the bond to the head is as good as possible. You then push the ferrule over the thin end of the shaft and glue the head to the shaft with an epoxy. Waiting for the epoxy to dry is the worst part of the job… take the newly made golf club to the course and try it out. Once the epoxy has settled, you wrap the butt end of the shaft with grip tape (double-sided sticky tape), get it wet using one of a wide range of solvents, slide the grip over it and let dry. Now you clean your new golf club, polish the ferrule and end up with something better then you can buy at a store.
So get to your computer, find some great websites and order your components. In no time you will your own homemade golf club or clubs. So, go and have some fun.
Those who have played golf knows that it’s addicting. Building your own club can be addicting as well.
