Building my first set of irons and have some questions

[BananaPepper]

I am diving into the club building waters at some point this summer. I am going to strip my ZX7 mkii's down to a raw finish and install black versions of my current shafts, KBS $-taper 130g X. As long as my sticks look sick I don't care how I play.

 

My question is regarding ordering the shafts. My current set is hard stepped once, and I would like to duplicate that. Unless there is a better site to order through, I am using GolfWorks and am unsure of the correct shaft lengths to order. I know to put the 5-iron shaft in my 4-iron, etc to hard step. Is there a resource to find the standard shaft length? The specs on Srixon's site, I'm assuming are the playing length of the clubs, and I don't want to waste time ordering the wrong shaft lengths because I didn't know what I was doing.

 

Any other advice, tips, suggestions, or resources for a first-timer would be appreciated as well!

[Nessism]

Buy a club length ruler, swingweight scale, sandpaper sleeves for prepping the hosel, epoxy, acetone, ferrules, and anything else you will need.

 

5 shaft into 4 iron, then butt trim the shaft to playing length.  Ect, through the set.

[bladestriker]

One thing to consider is, you'll be using the same shaft (39.5") for the 8, 9 and wedge. May want to tip the 9 and wedge to keep the same progression

[Howard_Jones]

16 hours ago, BananaPepper said:

I am diving into the club building waters at some point this summer. I am going to strip my ZX7 mkii's down to a raw finish and install black versions of my current shafts, KBS $-taper 130g X. As long as my sticks look sick I don't care how I play.

 

My question is regarding ordering the shafts. My current set is hard stepped once, and I would like to duplicate that. Unless there is a better site to order through, I am using GolfWorks and am unsure of the correct shaft lengths to order. I know to put the 5-iron shaft in my 4-iron, etc to hard step. Is there a resource to find the standard shaft length? The specs on Srixon's site, I'm assuming are the playing length of the clubs, and I don't want to waste time ordering the wrong shaft lengths because I didn't know what I was doing.

 

Any other advice, tips, suggestions, or resources for a first-timer would be appreciated as well!

KBS S Taper looks like this as standard



Hardstepped 1x (HS1) looks like this.


Since Hardstepping will stopp at #8 in lack of a dedicated PW shaft to use for the #9 head, we can get FULL flex progression by changing the short end FULL swing clubs like this: They wll then play a a dedicated Iron set as Hard stepped 1x included the GW.



On the paper we go up 5 grams uncut for #9 and PW, but since we actually soft stepp once, we loose about 1.5-1.7 grams, so NET cut difference up from the irons (who gain 1.5-1.7 grams by hard stepping once), is now only about 1.8 to 2 grams NET. cut wgt.

If the GW is used for full swings, it looks like + 10 grams on the paper, since we move a full flex, but HS1 irons cut 1.5-1.7 off that difference, another about 1.5 grams is lost from more butt cut due to higher BBGM, and another 1.5 to 1.7 since a GW is 0.5 shorter than a #9. Net cut difference to IRONs falls down to +/- 5 grams net cut wgt, so dont worry about how it looks like as uncut wgt.

If the GW is the first partial swing club (almost never full swings), use the same shaft as for PW in that club.

Whatever set we make, where we use more than 1x of the same shaft (example 2x #9 iron shafts), remember to weight sort them before you pick what to use for what club. Always use the lightest for the longest and opposite. That improves shaft weight match.

Edited July 12 by Howard_Jones

[Stuart_G]

8 hours ago, BananaPepper said:

Unless there is a better site to order through, I am using GolfWorks and am unsure of the correct shaft lengths to order. I know to put the 5-iron shaft in my 4-iron, etc to hard step. Is there a resource to find the standard shaft length? 

 

To figure out what to buy - you only have to know the raw uncut length of the shaft for the iron you want to install it in.   The playing length doesn't really matter for the purchase.  It only matters when it comes down to butt cutting the shaft to get the desired playing length.

 

And the golfworks web page for the $-taper explicitly tells you which uncut length goes with each iron.  At least it does on the us web site.

 

So e.g. no matter what the playing length will end up being, if you want to hard step x1,  you buy the 38" 8-iron shaft to install in your 7 iron, and then the 37.5" 9/w shaft for your 8 iron through PW.   Yes, you wont technically be hard stepping the 9 and wedges - but at that short length it usually doesn't matter.

 

 

7 hours ago, bladestriker said:

One thing to consider is, you'll be using the same shaft (39.5") for the 8, 9 and wedge. May want to tip the 9 and wedge to keep the same progression

 

I would not recommend that for the OP.   Messing with tipping on taper tip shafts is a bit advanced for such an inexperienced club builder like the OP.  To do it properly involves some risk if you don't understand how to figure out the limit for how much it can be tipped and a need to bore out the hossels if you want to tip it enough to actually make a difference.

 

There is a reason they don't bother making separate 9i and W shafts.   It just doesn't make much difference to most when the clubs get that short.

 

 

Edited July 12 by Stuart_G

[Howard_Jones]

39 minutes ago, Stuart_G said:

 

To figure out what to buy - you only have to know the uncut length of the shaft for the iron you want to install it in.   The playing length doesn't really matter for the purchase.  It only matters when it comes down to butt cutting the shaft to get the desired playing length.

 

And the golfworks web page for the $-taper explicitly tells you which uncut length goes with each iron.  At least it does on the us web site.

 

So e.g. no matter what the playing length will end up being, if you want to hard step x1,  you buy the 38" 8-iron shaft to install in your 7 iron.

 

 

 

I would not recommend that for the OP.   Messing with tipping on taper tip shafts is a bit advanced for such an inexperienced club builder like the OP.  To do it properly involves some risk and and a need to bore out the hossels if you want to tip it enough to actually make a difference.

 

There is a reason they don't bother making separate 9i and W shafts.   It just doesn't make much difference to most when the clubs get that short.

 

 

You overlooked that Bladestriker suggest using a 39.50 #5 iron shaft for #8 #9 and PW
Thats soft stepping 3X, not hard stepped 1x

Having that said, since hard stepping mostly is a feel issue, we both could and should give the short end more attention than just saying the shafts is so short it does not matter....because it does matter, for some more than others. If HS1 feels better than strait in, softstepping the short end will not improve feel for this player.

Ive posted my suggestion for how this player can get a FULL HS1 SET included the GW if he use it like a #11 iron/full swing club.

[Stuart_G]

58 minutes ago, Howard_Jones said:

You overlooked that Bladestriker suggest using a 39.50 #5 iron shaft for #8 #9 and PW
Thats soft stepping 3X, not hard stepped 1x

 

It's no so much that I overlooked it (I did) but I was only really concerned about "addressing" any ideas of tipping that might have been planted in the OP's head.

 

58 minutes ago, Howard_Jones said:

Having that said, since hard stepping mostly is a feel issue, we both could and should give the short end more attention than just saying the shafts is so short it does not matter....because it does matter, for some more than others. 

 

I wont argue against the fact that it might be important for some.  And I don't doubt those included a good percentage of your previous (high level playing) customers.   As to what percentage of average Am's it might make a difference - I certainly can't say and wont try to guess.

 

But what we do know for sure is:

 

1) that it doesn't matter to enough people to make it worth it for KBS or TT to manufacturing a separate wedge shaft from the 9i for many of their popular shafts.   TT originally designed a separate W shaft for the orignal AMT's but ended up scrubbing it from production based on feedback from the players.

 

2) and if it did matter to the OP, there would be a decent chance he'd know about it based on his experience with his current set of hard stepped shafts. And the best guess is that no special treatment would be the most likely way to get the new set to match the old set - especially if they were factory ordered as hard stepped.

 

3) he also said

10 hours ago, BananaPepper said:

As long as my sticks look sick I don't care how I play.

🙂

 

So in that regard, I'll tend to err on the side of recommending no special actions for a beginner doing his first build and waiting to see if there really is a problem before trying to fix it.   

 

But regardless, I still think it's great that you will post alternative views and options.   I never hurts to provide different perspectives and let the OP decide how important it might be for their case.

Edited July 12 by Stuart_G

[bladestriker]

13 hours ago, Howard_Jones said:

You overlooked that Bladestriker suggest using a 39.50 #5 iron shaft for #8 #9 and PW
Thats soft stepping 3X, not hard stepped 1x

Having that said, since hard stepping mostly is a feel issue, we both could and should give the short end more attention than just saying the shafts is so short it does not matter....because it does matter, for some more than others. If HS1 feels better than strait in, softstepping the short end will not improve feel for this player.

Ive posted my suggestion for how this player can get a FULL HS1 SET included the GW if he use it like a #11 iron/full swing club.

Yeah that was a pretty apparent typo, I meant 37.5” which is the pw/9i shaft which would include the 8i when hard stepping.

I wasn’t suggesting it either, I was mentioning it as something to take into consideration 

39.5” would be pretty random number 

Edited July 12 by bladestriker