An insightful morning with a club maker... (Geek stuff)

[Alex1975]

Last Tuesday I spent the morning with Kevin from Custom Golf Stix. I was simply there for a loft and lie check but when I walked into his workshop we very quickly got geeky about golf and he wanted to talk about all things techy.

We talked on all topics and he has all the toys, pure machines, frequency machines and so on. The bit of kit he really wanted to show me was the one he said all the OEMs hated him for. He and an ex Aston Martin engineer made a machine that to my mind shows/illustrates the inside of a shaft.

He put a shaft into this machine with a head on it. the shaft floats between two ring bearings and of course the weight of the head drops it toe down. As he added load to the shaft the head worked its way all the way up to toe up. The machine does not turn the shaft it just loads it. He then has me place my palm on the shaft and roll it back and forth. You could feel the (what I would describe as) notches in the inner of the shaft. It was a PX black and he said it was sent to him by TM to have an adapter fitted, it had been hand picked as a shaft worth having and it was junk! He took several other shafts and did the same.... the best one we looked at was a UST Speedline designed for ORKA... he assured me it was totally luck of the draw. He then pulled out his ipad and showed me pictures of shafts he had cut in half and so I could see cross sections of the interior of the shaft... some of them were literally square.

He also said that one of his customers brought in a $500 shaft to him the other day. It was R flex but he measured it as XXS (clearly there is no standard but he will have his own standards). He said the customer just could not play it.

A seriously interesting guy!

It turned out that 6 if my "custom fit" irons were 61.5* lie angle.... hmmm not cool really....


Can anyone be trusted in this industry?

 

[CMAC]

Last Tuesday I spent the morning with Kevin from Custom Golf Stix. I was simply there for a loft and lie check but when I walked into his workshop we very quickly got geeky about golf and he wanted to talk about all things techy.

We talked on all topics and he has all the toys, pure machines, frequency machines and so on. The bit of kit he really wanted to show me was the one he said all the OEMs hated him for. He and an ex Aston Martin engineer made a machine that to my mind shows/illustrates the inside of a shaft.

He put a shaft into this machine with a head on it. the shaft floats between two ring bearings and of course the weight of the head drops it toe down. As he added load to the shaft the head worked its way all the way up to toe up. The machine does not turn the shaft it just loads it. He then has me place my palm on the shaft and roll it back and forth. You could feel the (what I would describe as) notches in the inner of the shaft. It was a PX black and he said it was sent to him by TM to have an adapter fitted, it had been hand picked as a shaft worth having and it was junk! He took several other shafts and did the same.... the best one we looked at was a UST Speedline designed for ORKA... he assured me it was totally luck of the draw. He then pulled out his ipad and showed me pictures of shafts he had cut in half and so I could see cross sections of the interior of the shaft... some of them were literally square.

He also said that one of his customers brought in a $500 shaft to him the other day. It was R flex but he measured it as XXS (clearly there is no standard but he will have his own standards). He said the customer just could not play it.

A seriously interesting guy!

It turned out that 6 if my "custom fit" irons were 61.5* lie angle.... hmmm not cool really....


Can anyone be trusted in this industry?

I like stuff like this Alex- there has to be a reason why one shaft just clicks with you even though it isn't supposed to on paper.
Or the guys who get fitted for 'X' shaft with good numbers on the machine etc, then when the club or clubs arrive they cant play them the same or aren't as comfortable- we've all been there. There is an element of the swing you have on the day though which can have a major effect.

What does his machine do for the customer though? is it a form of puring or finding the 'spine' to align a driver head to it etc as that always appealed to me as well.

The shaft that was R that plays XXS is quite unbelievable, what does the guy do in that circumstance?

 

[Alex1975]

I believe the machine was a project for them... The Aston Martin engineer is a poor golfer and once customer, I understand that started chatting as he and I did and later that afternoon he came back with the plans to make the machine. I think the machine is either a quality check or two geeks having fun.

I think in an ideal world Kevin and many club makers buy in bulk and match sets from what they have. The customer who cant handle his shaft... he sucks it up!

They do say... buy the actual club you tried don't they.

 

[3565]

Very interesting stuff. I have an ex engineer and vibrations expert who makes clubs up and is fantastic. He did me a set of Snake Eye blades, and had his way of Puring the shaft with the David Leadbetter putter laser thing he came out with. A few years ago He bought a pre pured shaft from Golfsmith and he questioned its integrity. He made his own loft and lie machine with an angle vice and what not and is VERY accurate. Very clever bloke and I wouldn't buy OEM ever again. It's made me think about doing the golfsmith course just for myself cos it interests me.

As to your question, he would do a better job and service to you then the OEMs. I don't have a single OEM in my bag, even the Cameron has been relegated now.