Refinishing an old Bettinardi BC1

Wickdawg · August 2, 2011

I've always enjoyed DIY Projects and I love golf, so I decided to try my hand at refinishing an old Bettinardi BC1 Mizuno Putter. It's a nice putter but pretty old and has taken quite a beating. I don't use it anymore, so I figured it would be a good test pilot for refinishing a golf club.

I don't have any pics of what it looked like when I started. I wish I did so you can see how ugly it was. So here a the pics after the first step which was sanding the finish with 600 grit sandpaper and then removing the paint fill with acetone. I didn't want to sand the face of the putter too much because i didn't want to sand off too much of the Bettinardi milling on the face. Here are a few pics after the first stage of the process:

I then masked off the insert on the face and sprayed it with 2 light coats of Duplicolor Black Primer. This is an Auto Paint brand that is available at any Pep Boys. Also make sure to mask up the shaft at least half way up. Here are a few pics after the head was primed.

The primer dries fast. I then rubbed it pretty good with a lint free cloth, such as the cloth that comes with a pair of sunglasses. This get rid of any dust and smooths it out a bit.

The next step was to paint it the base color. In this instance, I used Duplicolor Metallic Black. I like the extra pop that the metallic paint gave it. I put on two coats and let it dry completely. Then used the lint free cloth to smooth it out and remove any dust. Here's a few pics of this part of the process.

After the base paint was applied, I put on the paint fill. I did this using Testors model paint available at any hobby store. The colors used were silver and the yellowish color is called chromate. I used silver instead of white because white seemed a little boring and silver contrasted well. The chromate color matched the original color of some of the paint fill, but I used it in different places than the original paint job.

Applying paint fill on an already painted surface was a little more difficult. I didn't want to use acetone to clean up any overspill because I was afraid it would start breaking down the base paint. So whatever paint that got out of the lines, I had to clean up immediately with warm water.

After the paint fill was applied, I then added 2 coats of Duplicolor clear coat, lightly wet-sanded it with 2000 grit sandpaper and then added one last coat of clear coat.

I waited 24 hours for the clear coat to dry then removed all of the masking tape. Here is the finishing product.

Again, this is my first attempt at doing anything like this, so it's nowhere near perfect, but I'm pretty pleased with the results.

I would like to try out paint fill with other clubs and possibly black oxide, but I just wanted to give it a go with this club that I never use just in case I messed it up.

What do you guys think? I would love some constructive criticism from people more experienced at this.