Quick shaft swap with the help of water.

[RoverRick]

Well, I have done this a couple of times and it has worked out pretty well so I thought I would share it with my fellow spys. I have been putting together two complete sets of clubs, one for traveling and one for staying here. I am planning on shipping the "traveling clubs" to Europe next year because of it is believed that I will spend at least 75% of my time there next year. That was supposed to be this year but it did not happen. So I had two sets of irons. I had them with pretty much the same specs. I discovered that I need two different specs because I want more forgiveness when traveling and I do not swing as hard when traveling, This is not really germane to the story but it suffices to say that I needed to change the shafts in my travel clubs. Once that happened, and swap the C Tapers I had in them for some Rifles I had in the garage. I decided once I did that to change out the DG X100's in my stay at home set for the C Tapers.

 

Of Course I also needed to change grips. Since I do not use double sided tape on my grips, I use the air gun I got from Pure Grips. I use regular masking tape under them to build up, and make them quite fat. I have a set of Pure Grips and a set of Golf Prides. Both of these work equally well with out tape. But both can be a real bear to get on, and if you are not careful you can ruin a grip really fast. So to ease putting these grips on I have found a little trick I will share. I wet the outside of the tape, and the inside of the grip with water. This makes it slide on much easier. Then once the but of the grip is all the way down, I give it a couple of more shots of air and it blows any residual water out of the grip. I ruined a few grips before I did this, but since I started doing that it is great. Of course, if I wanted to change shafts again tomorrow, something not entirely unheard of with me, I can blow the grips off and replace them. I can do a whole set of clubs in less than 10 minutes and be on the range a couple of minutes after that.

 

But here is another trick I have learned with water. To remove a shaft from a head all you have to do is heat the hosel up enough to get above the melting point of the glue. Typically, this is 150*F. Some OEM's, Ping and Titleist I know of, use a higher temperature glue. Here is the problem, the ferrules melt at a temperature below that of the glue. So you almost always lose the ferrule. I had some colored ferrules that I did not really want to replace so it occured to me, water boils at 212*F. The glue melts at 150*F. I studied engineering in college, and actually some how got a degree, so I got out my calculator and did some advanced math and finally figured out that 150* was less than 212*. So then all I had to do was wait until Lady Jane, the ruler of all I own, left the house and I was ready.

 

I took a big pot full of water and put on the stove and stuck the irons in there. I propped them up with a box to hold them, long before the water boiled I pulled them out and checked the ferrule. The original goal was to get the ferrule hot enough to break loose the epoxy and move it back out of the way to apply the torch if needed. Well, that worked, I was also able to do remove a couple of heads this way also. I was so impressed that those that I could not., I stuck back in the water. I did end up using the torch and vise and puller on some last week. But I did not loose any ferrules. This was with the "traveling irons."

 

Then I decided to swap out the other ones. So in this case I used just boiling water. I was able to remove the ferrules and all the heads, with just boiling water, and then with the shaft removed, I dropped the head back into the boiling water. This caused all the glue build up inside the head to come loose. Then all the required was a quick in and out with the hosel brush and drying off, and cooling down to remount. Also, while the ferrules were still warm and pliable, I put them on the "new" shaft and positioned them appropriately.

 

Most importantly, I cleaned the pot really well to get rid of any evidence that I used the cooking pots, while the heads were cooling. Then is was a simple matter of mixing the new epoxy and installing the heads and ferrules on the new shaft. Start to finish for 7 irons was 40 minutes. Plus another 10 or so to install the grips.

 

I do not recommend trying this with a graphite shaft. Ferrules are cheaper than shafts and graphite shafts are made using fibers and epoxy. Typically, this is higher temperature than the epoxy, but you can screw up a graphite shaft in a hurry. Trash the ferrule and save the shaft. Use a traditional torch for that, and be careful. I have a bunch of 3 wood shafts that started out life as driver shafts because I tried to save a $0.30 ferrule and ruined a $200 shaft.

 

I hope this helps someone, and those of you who do it right feel free to weigh in with opinions.

[RookieBlue7]

One thing I'll say about pulling graphite. You're better served using a heatgun. It's really easy to get it too hot and cause delamination of the graphite. Heatguns are at a lower heat and work much better.

[Shambles]

Check out those ferrules. I'm pretty sure a few of them will have become larger if you heated them too long.

 

 

 

Shambles

[GolfSpy WD]

Here's a similar discussion this topic reminded me of:

 

http://forum.mygolfspy.com/topic/4147-titliest-910-adapter-removal-and-install/

 

So instead of boiling the water, can you nuke the water in the microwave to move the ferrule out of the way for graphite shafts?

[RoverRick]

Check out those ferrules. I'm pretty sure a few of them will have become larger if you heated them too long.

 

 

 

Shambles

 

True, but I did not heat the ferrules too long. As a mater of fact, I had most of this completed before the water started to boil. However, I should also say that these were Mizuno and Hogan forged heads. They did not have plastic on them. I would not do this past the point of moving the ferrules if they were an iron with some type of plastic decal or vibration stopper or whatever. Like I said, ferrules are $3 per dozen, so unless you are like me and simply did not have ferrules and did not want to wait to get more than it is safer to go the traditional way.

 

Never twist a graphite shaft.

[Shambles]

True, but I did not heat the ferrules too long. As a mater of fact, I had most of this completed before the water started to boil. However, I should also say that these were Mizuno and Hogan forged heads. They did not have plastic on them. I would not do this past the point of moving the ferrules if they were an iron with some type of plastic decal or vibration stopper or whatever. Like I said, ferrules are $3 per dozen, so unless you are like me and simply did not have ferrules and did not want to wait to get more than it is safer to go the traditional way.

 

Never twist a graphite shaft.

 

 

Heating the water just enough to make a cup of coffee and pouring it on the ferrules ought to be just about enough heat to break the adhesive, after which you could tap a knife edge between the ferrule and hosel and tap the ferrule up the shaft safely away from the real heating. If, regardless of the caution, the ferrule becomes a bit over size, you can still epoxy it back into place and shave it down to size with a bit of 120 grain and a wipe of acetone to shine again.

 

Club makers here have learned many ways to preserve the ferrule because it was difficult to acquire or bring in. These days supplies are becoming more available but the knowledge and skill is not yet lost.

 

 

Shambles

[RookieBlue7]

I usually just apply cool gel to the ferrules then wrap in a cold wet rag and heat the hosel when I must save a ferrule.