Shaft Removal redone

This is an addendum to the ‘restoring irons’ series I did last year. Separating the head from the shaft can be a difficult task, and some of the older sets need a different treatment than the one described here.

While reshafting a set of Ben Hogan 1953 Precisions I found that the conventional way of removing the shafts did not work as expected. I had removed the shaft pins and torched the hosel until it was red hot. The head would not move at all. If this happens it means that the epoxy is not the reason that the head does not come loose. I could think of only two possible reasons.

The first assertion is that corrosion has formed a bond between the shaft and the head; not implausible after 58 years of use.

The second assertion is that the shafts have been hammered into a very tight hosel, thus forming a mechanical bond that simply can’t be broken by heat.

Either way, I knew I needed to resort to a different way of getting the shafts out of the clubheads. What I did was this:

1. Cut the shaft an inch above the ferrule.
2. Insert a solid metal rod into the shaft. The tighter it fits the better it will work.
3. Clamp the shaft (with the rod inside) in a vice and make sure that the shaft can’t twist.
4. Grab the head with two hands and try to turn it loose.
5. Once it gives in you can start to pull it off.

It turns out that the shaft tips weren’t abraded at all and that little or no epoxy had been used for these clubs. Epoxies weren’t very strong those days so I figure they just made sure that they also secured them with pins and the mechanical bond by hammering the shafts into a tight hosel.

 

 

As described above, you must put a rod inside the shaft before clamping it in a vice. If the rod is too small in diameter the shaft can break due to the twisting of the head.

This happened to me but fortunately I managed to fix it by removing the ferrule and repeating the process with a better fitting rod. (see below pics)…

 

Restoring Irons

Here are the links to my posts about restoring vintage irons:

Part 1 - Materials and tools

Part 2 - Shaft Removal

Part 3 - Shaft Preparation

Part 4 - Head Preparation

Part 5 - Ferrules

Part 6 - Assembly

Part 7 - Grip Installation

Part 8 – Lie Adjustments

Enjoy!

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.