Building irons to specific Swing weight.....

justasgood · December 22, 2020

I know there are topics about building irons and I have read most. But I have a question for the club builders:

I blow my grips on so is it ok to grip the shafts, Slide ferrules into place and dry fit the heads, then use a swing weight scale to determine any tip weighting needed? Also, is there a way to determine the SW of each club if I don't have a SW scale? To date, I builld my irons and then add Lead tape to get to a D3 SW(Confirmed at my local golf shop.

Thanks in advance for your responses and guidance and. I'll hang up and listen.......

rexroh · December 23, 2020

I have always built my clubs without a grip and generally to a swing weight of E1 and that will equate to a D2 with a 50 gram grip on. I rarely use a standard grip. In the past I used I’d size with two to four papers under the grip. Then I went to various jumbo and now I am using jumbo ax which weigh 120 grams. I still use E1 without grip as a starting point when I build.

As you do not have a scale this could be hard to do. There are some so called swing weight calculators but they require ver accurate weighing and measuring.

A cheap swing weight scale is better than none, particularly if you intend to do more work.

Bad9 · December 23, 2020

I follow the same process as rexroh, sw match ungripped(using a scale) and put whatever grip on I want after and don't bother with what the number is once the grip is on.

Golfrnut · December 23, 2020

Same as above. If matching up a set, measured ungripped. The sensitivity to length with the butt caps can drive an OCD person crazy (I'm not one of those and build to +-.5 PT), so just using the cut length without gripping is much easier. The effects that a grip can have on the SW scale (cap thickness, weight, etc) is way less important than the MOI/feel set by the rest of the golf club, IMO.

J.Bex · December 23, 2020

Just a hobbyist here, but never needed a real SW scale for what I do. Online calculators as mentioned like this: http://www.leaderboard.com/swingwt.htm

Or this Excel sheet I tote around in posts once in a while, below (first tab in the sheet). Just need a gram weight scale, a 4 ft ruler or tape measure, and some patience to measure the club's balance point accurately. Preferably balance like Howard's method on a knife edge marking a piece of masking tape. For most accurate measurements, the ruler should measure in millimeters, and the gram weight scale measures to 0.1 g. SW scale baseline is off D0 = 213.5 oz-in which is what the calculations are going by. Should be dead on to a real scale (could even be better depending on mfg tolerances), and calculates to 0.1 SW. An actual scale is faster and simpler but not always necessary.

Edit: I'm in the camp of using SW calcs as data collection only after I like the feel and performance of a club after testing physically.

Swingweight_Torque_Calculator_20201223.xlsx

Edited December 23, 2020 by joostin