Shaft spines

[brownman]

Hi all,please forgive my ignorance but I have only recently discovered that clubs can in fact have a "SPINE".
Can you guys give me some info on it.
1...Where they are aligned in relation to c/face
2...How do the big producers in fact "find" the spine
3...Are they in all clubs
4...How important are they to the week-end golfer.

Any info would be grateful..Thanks again.

[Toolish]

Hi all,please forgive my ignorance but I have only recently discovered that clubs can in fact have a "SPINE".
Can you guys give me some info on it.
1...Where they are aligned in relation to c/face
2...How do the big producers in fact "find" the spine
3...Are they in all clubs
4...How important are they to the week-end golfer.

Any info would be grateful..Thanks again.

1. Personal preference, some say top of the club, some say target side.
2. They don't. Spine alignment in OEM clubs is non existent. Some shaft manufacturers do it on their graphite shafts and set up the graphics on the shafts to the alignment they prefer.
3. Pretty much, the severity of the spine varies though.
4. That is the million dollar question...I have considered getting my clubs flo-ed but no one in my area does it so I am thinking of doing it myself to see how it affects me.

[RickPinewild]

http://clubmakerschoice.com/

[Jim.Cook]

Hi all,please forgive my ignorance but I have only recently discovered that clubs can in fact have a "SPINE".
.........
4...How important are they to the week-end golfer.

Any info would be grateful..Thanks again.

I tried to answer this question. I made two clubs that had exact characteristics except that the spine one one of them was set at 45 degrees to the target line and the other was set exactly on the target.

I gave the 45 degree one to my pro and asked him to hit a few and give me his opinion of it. I told him nothing else. He noticed it immediately. As he hit each ball he commented "I'm not hitting well today."
I then gave him the other club. Immediately he said "AH, it's not me, it's the club!".
That weekend, I took the two clubs to the driving range and asked as many people as I could to try each club and tell me what they thought. No one commented on the difference in feel. I'll bet there wasn't one person that weekend that had a single digit handicap.
Spining and subsequent flowing takes so little time I do it to every club I make or repair.

[brownman]

Thanks Guys for your helpful replies,Toolish and Jim,Rick,tha site you gave us is a real eye opener,adds a whole new dimension .A man just cant get enough information ,I just have a feast on it,thanks again guys...Brownman

[golfguru]

If you have a shaft at home sitting about doing nothing, clamp the butt end of it in a vise and the skinny end of the shaft wrap a few layers of lead tape as evenly as possible around it to weight the head end. I know this is not perfect as we use a proper weight but you will get the idea. Now "ping" the shaft and watch it oscillate. It will probably wobble all over the place. Now just clamp it again 90 degrees to the original orientation. Wobble again. Keep doing that until the shaft wobble straight up and down as it slows down. Now you have found your "spine" orientation. Scarily this is present in both steels and graphite shafts. If you have a spine stress tester, you can find which side of the spine is the stiffer line still.

People with educated hands have better feel. SST Puring is the ultimate in spine finding and a robot swinger has massive differences in the impact decals from hitting tests between unspined and spined shafts.

[ThinkingPlus]

Some shafts have less "spine" or variation than others. I was at a Max Out golf in LA and saw a demonstration on a spine finder of Aerotech Steelfiber shafts. There was no discernible spine found for the Steelfiber shafts using their machine whereas other shafts showed very distinctive spines. It was a real eye opener. I play the Steelfiber shafts in my irons and they are very stable and a very nice alternative to lightweight steel shafts.