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)…

 

Removing offset

I recently found out how to remove the offset on irons.

Offset means that the front edge (left side) of the hosel is in front of the leading edge of the club when looking down on it at address. It places the center of gravity further back, which 'helps' us to close the clubface in the impact zone.

Onset means that the front edge of the hosel is behind the leading edge of the club. The amount of offset or onset is calculated by measuring the distance between the front of the hosel and the leading edge.

Face progression is different in that it is defined as the distance between the center of the hosel and the leading edge. This can be both a positive or negative value.

If you strengthen the lofts on your irons you will typically increase the amount of offset because the hosels will be bent a bit. So when I heard that there was a way to remove the offset on a club I decided to give it a go.
Even though the process is fairly simple I found that it might take some time to get the hang of it. The longer the hosel of the club, the easier it will be to remove offset.

 

1. First you need to bend the loft of the club about 5 degrees weaker. This bend operation must be performed by placing the bending bar at the top of the hosel (where the shafts meets the hosel).
   
2. Then after that you need to perform a 'regular' bend operation, just above the clubhead. Bend the loft back to its original strength.
   
3. Now have a look and see if the amount of offset is less than before. You will probably have to repeat these steps a couple of times before you will get good results; but it will be well worth it in the end.

 

Here are the before and after pics of a Hogan pc5 3 iron: