Nessism

17-4 is harder, stronger than 431, but both are way stronger and tougher than carbon forging steel. It sounds like you are typical, in that you are judging the surface finish, not the ultimate durability of the club. Look at S55, and the older Ping's, made from 17-4 and chrome plated. People were whining about how bad they were, when in truth, no iron ever made was more durable than those.

Thanks for your time putting this thread together. If I'm ever in the market for colorful grips, I'll consider these. And sorry for this comment, but one of my golf club pet peeves are unfinished ferrules, and yours need some work! Again, sorry.

Those heads are stainless steel. The "browning" that some people reference, is really the yellow shade of the nickel layer showing after the outer skin of chrome has worn through in places. When forged carbon steel heads wear through the chrome, the "brown" is RUST. These heads will never rust. People applaud the old Ping irons as being "indestructible", because the stainless base metal is so durable. Those heads had no chrome, unlike these. The chrome & nickel provide an added layer of protection, not to mention more "gleam", for showroom appeal. These heads, even if the chrome is beginning to wear through, on one head, are miles more durable than the older unplated "indestructible" Ping's. And even further ahead of any forged club, made from carbon steel.

Tip 3/8". They will insert fine. Not a full hard step, but close enough. BTW, you can still get new sets of those 125 Recoil Proto's for a great price. Don't pay a whole bunch for used. Search ebay if in doubt.

Sounds like the X100 was bringing out swing problems, because ballooning means too much spin. Try DG120 in X100 and see if that fixes that problem. It's not the shaft, it's how you swing them.

Time to learn for yourself, how to build clubs.

Shaft fitting won't do a "High" handicapper a whole lot of good. Wait until you are at least breaking 90 with regularity, and preferably, breaking 80. At that point, small differences in shafts may help you.

I recently bought one of these Harbor Freight Doyle's, and it's a beast. 68 lbs. Another good option is a Yost. Amazon has these. A good sturdy vice will be an heirloom. Gift it to your grand children in your will.

One of these on a bench grinder will transform those heads. Before starting, use sandpaper cloth with a wood paint mixing stick to sand out the scratches. Start with 100 and finish with 220 before using the wheel. Final touch, mask the face, and bead blast. There should be someone there that could do that for you. Just do all the masking for them, it only takes 2 minutes per head to blast the face, and maybe the cavity. The Ping's shown below looked worse than your head's before the work started.

Selling these irons... Built with True Temper Dynalite 100 shafts, trimmed half way between S and R. Recently cleaned up the grips, and they feel great. $50 + shipping. Great clubs for a new golfer, or someone that appreciates their history.

Showing my bias...but if you have a nice sturdy workbench, and matching sturdy vice, you can clamp that bending machine in the vice, and save having another monument in your garage taking up space. I've bent 17-4 Ping's in my similar setup many times, and it works just fine.

Sorry for your loss... I'm still playing my 400 Max. My new favorite shot, since I'm aging and losing distance, is driver off the deck. I've used a bunch of different drivers over the years with success, but none that worked like the Max off the fairway. I's going to be a SAD day when mine dies.

Seems perfectly fine to post about this. If people started coming out of the woodwork sharing stories about cracked '25 ProV1X balls, then the discussion would spike interest. That's what happened with the Titleist irons, where the backplates were falling off. Good on Titleist for wanting the ball back, for analysis. It's curious that the inner core busted as well as the outer; you can see a chunk of purple (inner) core trying to get through that crack.

Did you pull the shaft already and measure .370"? If so, why don't you think a .370 shaft will fit? And regarding that .382 shaft, for the money, it's a low risk trial. Going back to .370, you could always sand down the head a smig, assuming just a slight bit needs to be removed. That head is 17-4 stainless, which is hard metal. Not easy to sand away more than a couple thousands without power tools.

Ordering +1.5" should automatically put you into the lightest possible head. I agree with others regarding exploring further regarding available shafts. Only the most common shafts are listed on the Ping website, they have many more available.

Just a guess, but most of the newer Ping's have a bigger BBTG dimension, because they have a space in the bottom of the hosel for a weight. If pulling from iE1 and installing into i525, you likely will be okay. i525 playing lengths are longer, though, at least in the longer irons. That may be something to contend with.

Get a swingweight scale, and add tip weights as required to get the proper weight throughout the set. All products have a weight tolerance, both heads and shafts, and swingweight adjustment for each club is just part of clubmaking. Further, small length errors add up, to effect swingweight also. Get a proper club length ruler to go with your swingweight scale.

Love me some G's, but the lofts on the newer 430 and 440 irons jumped the shark. I'm greatly disappointed, being a dyed in the wool G-man, but I just don't want to use two gap wedges. To each their own, though.

Used Google and found a link to the list for you...https://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/equipment-standards/conforming-club-ball-lists.html Before you spend time looking for DCI's, realize that the USGA never fully implemented "the groove rule". What I mean by that is that clubs that are NOT on the conforming list, are still perfectly fine to play, for handicap purposes, and even in tournaments, the exception being tournaments requiring "CC grooves". Regarding DCI Black triangle clubs, I had a set. They had offset, but less than Eye2, or the gold triangle DCI's. I liked them, but hated the shafts. The Titleist Tri (something or the other shafts) were soft, and low bend point. I kept hitting ballooning moon shots with the shafts, so I traded the clubs away. This was before I learned clubmaking, and changing shafts. For people that want a forgiving, solid feeling GI iron, these are high up the list. Modern irons have stronger lofts, so the distance is greater. But that's a fake positive. For many of us, solid feel and predictable performance trumps the need for distance.

Agree. On the other hand, how many times are these guys hitting into the junk, and ball spotters, TV cameras, everyone points to where the ball went. It works both ways.

Get both! G30's are really solid, but the G's have a lower CG and more pop (stronger lofts, spring faces). A man can't have too many G irons!

S59 are before Ping started chrome plating their heads. While the chrome increases durability overall, some people freak when they start to see the chrome wear though, and the base metal show through. One nice thing with Ping's, is you can buy a set, and sell them later and not lose a whole lot of $ if you don't like them.

I built a set of irons with Steelfiber 95S shafts and Mizuno MX25 heads, and took them to the range. Stroked those bad boys SO GREAT! High, straight, long! Unicorn stuff! Reality set in on the course a few days later. The clubs felt too light. Swingweight was D4, so that wasn't it. I was typically playing heavier shafts in those days. I didn't like the feel of the shafts either. I played like crap. The difference in weight between these new clubs and my typical clubs was just too much. Around this same time, at the range, they had a Tour Edge demo day. Dude handed me some sort of hollow head iron with Recoil 660 shaft. Just like the Mizuno's, I was stroking those irons so great. Amazing. I just got done hitting my regular clubs, and hitting them quite poorly. One of those "bad days" at the range. Anyway, here I was, just killing shot after shot, perfect strikes, and I shrugged. Just knew it can't be real. Those two events proved to me that demo's can be deceiving. At least for me, they can't be trusted, and likewise, any fitting done over a short time couldn't be trusted either.

I use a cut-off disc on one side of my bench grinder. Quite often, though, I'm too lazy to install it, in which case I just use the corner of the regular grinding wheel. Rough grind above the cutting line, then the flat part of the grinding wheel is used to dress the cut down to the line. Makes a ton of dust, but oh well.

Perform a lie angle test. Guidance on how to do this yourself is all over this forum. Do some research, then test. As needed, afterwards, you can take appropriate action.