Restoring Irons – 5: Ferrules

Assumptions

I'm assuming you won't be reusing the old ferrules. Most of the times they are damaged and new ones are very cheap. The best thing to do is to replace them with new ones. If you are rebuilding vintage clubs you can buy great looking replica's of various well known models.

Ferrules (taken from eBay listing)

 

Preparation

Before sliding the ferrules up the shafts you must fit them to the width of the hosel. The ferrules are usually made too wide in order to accommodate the varying widths of the different hosels. The ‘professional’ way is to use a ‘buffing’ wheel, but since my French isn’t that good I like to just cut away the part that is too wide with a razor knife. If necessary I’ll grind it straight (by hand).
Alternatively you could just skip the cutting and grind it all the way. I'd advise against using a motorized sander for this as the generated heat could melt the ferrule. Just hold down a piece of sanding paper and move the ferrule back and forth by hand .

 

Installation

Now that you are ready to slide the ferrules up the shafts you should decide on using epoxy or not. From my experience the ferrules will stay in place without epoxy so you should only use it if they slide up the shafts too easily.
First start by measuring how far the ferrule should go up the shaft. You can do this by measuring hosel depth and adding this to ferrule length. Put some tape on the shaft at the calculated position so you know exactly how far to push the ferrule. This is important, because if you push it too far up the shaft it's very difficult to push it back down without damaging the ferrule... Then you’ll be left with an ugly gap between hosel and ferrule.
Push the ferrule up the tip of the shaft by hand until this starts to become difficult. Because we are not using epoxy, we need to get creative. Take a marker and color the part of the shaft between the ferrule and the tape. The ink serves as a kind of lubricant which allows the ferrules to slide up the shaft a little easier.

You can use a block of wood with a hole in it or a metal plate (above) to hammer the ferrules in place.

There are a couple of ways to hammer the ferrule the rest of the way; see the pictures for some examples. The proper way to do it is probably to drill a hole in a block of wood and hammer the ferrules down using the block to protect the ferrule from damaging.
If you want to make absolutely sure that there won't be a gap between the head and the ferrule, you should probably not hammer the ferrule all the way. You should instead place the butt end of the shaft on the floor, slide the head over the tip and hammer the ferrule in position using the weight and momentum of the head. This is a good way to ensure a tight fit between hosel and ferrule.
In the next post I’ll show you how to join the head to the shaft.