I added home-made butt weights to my irons so as to create the same total weight in each club, for pitching wedge through 2-iron. I added a two gram weight in my pitching wedge, a seven gram weight in my 9-iron, 12 gram in the 8-iron, etc, until a 43 gram weight in my 2-iron. They are inserted into the end of the shaft and held by the grip. The weights get heavier as the clubs lengthen because standard unweighted clubs get lighter as they lengthen. It’s a simple matter of weighing the pitching wedge and using that weight (plus two grams) as the target weight for the other clubs. Then a butt weight is calculated, constructed, and added to each club to bring it up to the target weight. The result is that the total weight or dead weight of all the irons are the same. Why did I do it?
Normal club weighting gives a faster acceleration of the longer (lighter) clubs, at least in the first half of the downswing. This means adjustments to the swing have to be made. I want to have only one acceleration rate for all my irons. I don’t want any adjustments in my swing. I’m not going to weight my driver because the butt weight in a driver would be very heavy, much heavier than the butt weight in the 2-iron and I don’t want to sacrifice distance in my driver. I’m not sure what I’ll do to my 3-wood yet; I’ll probably try a weight just to see what happens. I don’t know yet if I lost any distance with my butt-weighted irons. I don’t see why it should be more than a few yards with the longest iron, and less for each shorter iron. Actually I don’t have any exact data on the carry of my old irons other than the rough numbers I use to pick the right club for approach shots. I have only tried my modified irons on the range so far. And so far they seem to do what was intended—make the irons feel and act more alike. The true test will be in the playing when spring arrives. With a flight monitor I could do a comparison test using any normal 2-iron and then adding a 43 gram weight to my wrist and comparing the carry. But I don’t care really if I lose a few yards.
I wonder who has tried this weighting idea before. It’s seems pretty obvious as something to try. Also, why it didn’t it catch on.
(p.s. normal swingweight matching makes the longer clubs release more slowly than the shorter clubs. MOI matched clubs have the same release, so I used MOI matching instead of swingweight matching.)
(p.s. 2, Swingweight scales don't work with butt weights installed, but MOI is measured with butt weights installed.)
