Repairing a Hickory Wood Face
brinkley | October 8, 2010(This article was originally published November 19, 2009 on my old site hickory webpress site. I’m reposting it here as the information is still valuable.)
The weather turned nasty starting last Friday and was going to remain that way for the next few days making golf impossible so I decided with a good three days of non-play to head to the shop and repair in my beloved Jack White brassie.
I’m not sure where I picked this jewel of a club up but it’s certainly one of my favorite clubs in my bag and one that if I could duplicate would do so without hesitation. The club has 13° loft , a 56° lie, and with the 43 1/4 inches Jack White stamped stiff shaft it is about as close to a modern a 3 wood as you can get in hickory. In fact it looks amazing like my Tom Wishon 515 3 wood. Both clubs have a similar sole radius so it’s great to hit out of the fairway or off the tee and I can get a good 230 yards with it when struck well.
But the problem was that after two years of hitting balls, and not practice balls either, the face was starting to deteriorate and I was pretty sure it was affecting my shots to some limited degree. I had fixed the face once using a weatherproof Titebond II Dark Wood Glue. It filled in the cracks and missing chunks well enough but the effects only lasted one season and the same problem was back as you can see in the pictures below. Something had to be done on a more permanent basis. This was just to good of a club to not be in my bag.
After talking to Paul Dietz, an expert club repairman from Canada and a playing partner at the Mid-Pines Hickory Open, I decided to go with an epoxy insert. His driver with it’s epoxy insert had a factory level look to it, flush and well formed. In the past I had done a replacement insert with some plastic inserts I got from Golf Works. But I wasn’t able to get a black color and quite honestly it’s a real pain trying to fit the plastic into the slot. Paul said that with a 48 hour drying time the insert was as firm as plastic, maybe more so, and could easily be shaped. I was concerned that in the past when I had sanded dried epoxy it would turn white or at least grey. Paul said that while this was true when you put the top coat on it turn back to black. With Paul’s assurance I decided to go the epoxy route.
In the next couple of articles I’ll go over the procedures that I used to create a form fitting epoxy insert. If you’d like additional information on the process used by professionals I suggest reading Carl Paul’s “Golf Clubmaking and Repair” Chapter 11 on “Epoxy Inserts” and Ralph Maltby’s “Golf Club Design, Fitting, Alteration & Repair…The Principles & Procedures” Chapter 4 “Replacing Old Inserts with Epoxy Pour-in-Place Inserts and Repairing Damaged Faces”.
I’ve enjoyed your articles. I look forward more to your articles than those from more prominent source. I haven’t seen follow up articles on club face restoration. What is the source for the recommmended epoxy and dye. Thank you very much, Chris.
The epoxy used was shafting epoxy from GOLFWORKS (Newark, Ohio), which happens to be black when the two parts are mixed together.
No dye is required.
Any other colour of insert would certainly not be of the period.
Paul Dietz
Roger
I have just completed six wood reshafts with the replacement shafts recently purchased from your company.
I must say it was a real pleaseure to work with a product that was uniform in both tip and butt dimensions.
When doing a “batch” of clubs, the uniformity makes the work a lot easier.
Obviously you have put a lot of thought into your shaft turning process.
I will let these sit for a few days before hitting them to allow the urethane finish to cure.
Once I have had an opportunity to test the finished product, I will report my findings.
Keep up the good work
Paul Dietz
Tournament Director
Golf Historical Society of Canada
Director
Ontario Hickory Tour
Thanks so much for the positive comments. Sometime you’ll have to try our new splice neck wood shafts. I’ve got two club makers in MO and Tasmania who have tried them and find them easy to work with when fitting splice neck models.