Homemade heavy higher MOI putter - ultra custom ;)

[chemclub]

Just thought I would pass along some pics regarding my first experience of increasing the weight and MOI of an old putter.

 

If you have a friend who is a machinist, guess what? They will have a lot of free tungsten carbide sitting around for you to use. Tungsten is expensive, but machinists cut steel using hard tungsten carbide bits. When those bits break, they are useless for milling steel so they just get thrown away.

 

 

Lucky for you, those old heavy bits are your prefect, free, cylindrical source of tungsten. Now, you need a diamond blade saw to cut them. We tried to cut the bit with a regular steel saw and it barely made a scratch. After we cut them with the diamond saw, we weighed them and just needed to mill out the heel and toe of the putter head to insert them

 

Tungsten carbide is 2x as dense as the 17-4 steal that the putter is made from.

 

A hat tip to PING customer service for digging up the specs on that old PING Ally (circa 1999).

 

I wasn't there for the milling out of the putter head since I had to leave to do the job I actually am paid to do. Turns out my buddy in the machine shop is not paid to modify putters for me so he moved pretty quickly to get the job done.

 

 

As you can see, he was not perfect with boring the holes for the plugs (Even though I did calculate the correct volume of cylindrical plug that would fit—like I said, he doesn't get paid to make custom clubs for me… yet). He cut the cylindrical hole a little too far back from the face and you can see in the pic where he cut into the head and through the steps of the bumpers. You can see that the tungsten plugs are a little exposed. I should note that in the pic below, this is not very visible at address.

 

 

The result is that the toe plug is 1 millimeter back of from the face than the heel plug. You can even make out in the pic above that the toe plug is more exposed because the 1 mm discrepancy with the heel plug. From a physics stand point, it could be argued that this difference means the MOI and degree of twisting might be different for toe hits versus heel hits. Whether this is perceptible is debatable. 

 

At the end of this little experiment, I increased the weight of the head from 332 grams to something around 360 grams.

 

And the performance. She is smooth. I must confess I don't have many rounds with it because a PING ZING TR has been on fire this season for me and I can't switch or jinx it, but I love the heavy head. Older models are much lighter than the used to be. I would imagine that the thicker putter grips that are in style now are heavier, necessitating higher head weights than 20 years ago.

[RookieBlue7]

Just curious, why did you elect to go through the sole instead of through the face like Ping does in the WRX department?

[chemclub]

Just curious, why did you elect to go through the sole instead of through the face like Ping does in the WRX department?

 

First, my apology to the mods. I meant to post this in DIY - oops

 

Good question.

 

Reason 1: I was a little inspired by the putter Freddy used in the Masters—got me think about going through the sole. Wanted to try it. Fred used to play Bettinardi - not sure if that is still one.

 

http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/ac976d342a9a4811a0fc124cd4021db1/fred-couples-of-the-us-putts-on-the-eighth-green-in-third-round-play-j01p3f.jpg

 

Reason 2: The intent was that the plugs would not be visible. The stepped bumpers on that putter are not high enough or go far enough back. So milling out a hole in the face would have cut through all the way and you would see the tungsten plug on the back side too.

 

Now, as you can see it didn't really matter since my buddy cut through going through the bottom anyway. In retrospect he wasn't as devoted to the precision and craftsmanship as I was since he was doing it for free and I wasn't there either.

 

The other issue that was that the bottom of the blade has a slight heel to toe radius. This was the big problem since he was milling into a curved surface and it was difficult to position the tool perfectly. In hind sight, the face is flat so would have made for an easier job and a more precision cut.

 

Live and learn - can always pick up a PING Ally for $6 and try again.

[jayjay0808]

Looks good and great way to fool around to try something