Notes Written on the Bench, Not in a Marketing Meeting
Six entries so far, all of them about the parts of a build that never appear in a catalogue: how mass is distributed, what holds the shaft into the hosel, and how thick the handle really is. They are the questions clients ask after they read their first docket.
Three Subjects Keep Coming Back
Almost every question that arrives by phone falls into one of three piles. Somebody has read a swing weight figure and cannot square it with the weight of the club in their hands. Somebody has a ferrule that has crept up the shaft or split, and wants to know whether it matters. Or somebody had a set regripped somewhere else and the clubs no longer feel like their clubs.
Rather than answer each one from scratch, we write the answer down once. Everything below is what we would say on the phone, with the numbers we would quote from the bench log.
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Grip tape
Build-Up Tape and a Midsize Grip Are Not the Same Answer
Both of them make the handle bigger. Only one of them keeps the taper of the grip you already like, and the difference shows up in the trail hand rather than the lead hand.
Written by Renata Villalobos -
Grip tape
Nobody Counts the Wraps Until Something Feels Wrong
Tape wraps are the cheapest variable in the whole build and the one most likely to be undocumented. Here is what a wrap actually changes and why we log it per hand.
Written by Renata Villalobos -
Ferrules
Bore, Hosel, and the Quarter Millimetre Between Them
A ferrule has to match two diameters at once and they are rarely the two on the packet. What we keep in the drawer, and what happens when the bore is generous.
Written by Dale Ruthven -
Ferrules
A Ferrule Is Structure Wearing a Costume
People think it is trim. It is a stress transition, a moisture seal and the first thing that tells us a club was assembled in a hurry.
Written by Wes Tackett -
Swing weight
A Swing Weight Point Is Not a Fixed Amount of Anything
Two grams in the head moves a driver differently from how it moves a wedge, and the same point on the scale means different things at different lengths.
Written by Dale Ruthven -
Swing weight
Where Swing Weight and Scale Weight Stop Agreeing
One number is the mass of the club. The other is where that mass sits. A pair of clubs can match on one and be nowhere near each other on the other.
Written by Wes Tackett
If You Would Rather Have the Reference Version
The journal is discursive on purpose. When you want the flat reference instead, the shaft reference lays out weight, frequency, torque and trimming in order, and the session walkthrough shows where each of these measurements gets taken during an actual appointment.
If a question here applies to a club sitting in your garage, the honest answer is that we cannot settle it in writing. Bring the club in and we will put it on the gauges.
Have a Question We Have Not Written Up?
Send it over. If it turns out three other people have asked the same thing, it becomes the next entry.