Iron Extensions?

[Canadan]

Has anyone ever had extensions put into their irons? Are you familiar with a fair price for parts + install?

I have a secondary set of irons (and am considering buying another set if I keep seeing such low prices) but all are standard loft/lie. Right now I'm only a half inch up, but I'd love to hear experiences about integrity of flex and cost, if anyone has such knowledge..

Thanks!!

 

[JPsuff]

Has anyone ever had extensions put into their irons? Are you familiar with a fair price for parts + install?

I have a secondary set of irons (and am considering buying another set if I keep seeing such low prices) but all are standard loft/lie. Right now I'm only a half inch up, but I'd love to hear experiences about integrity of flex and cost, if anyone has such knowledge..

Thanks!!

The rule of thumb on extensions is that an extension of an inch or so will not affect the flex of the shaft; personally, I've gone as far as 1 1/2-inches with no negative effect.

What's involved obviously is to remove the grip, add the extension and then re-grip the club. Extensions can be anything from a wooden dowel to graphite or aluminum gizmo's designed for the task or even pieces of old shafts.

I've used all of the above and they all work just fine.

As far as cost goes, I do all of my own work so I have no idea of what a shop might charge for the work. But from a materials point of view, the cost of a graphite or aluminum extension is usually less than five bucks for an extension that can do up to two clubs and then there's the cost of a new grip.
One of the nice things about extensions is that the extension and the grip can be installed at the same time, so there's no waiting for one thing to be done before the other can.

As far as performance is concerned, as long as an adequate amount of epoxy is used, the connection is like a weld and should never come loose (it's never happened to me and I've been doing them for years) and as I said, as long as you keep it down to around an inch or so, there isn't any noticeable effect in shaft performance.

One last thing is that the swingweight of an extended club will go up and the rule of thumb for that is about 3 swingweight points for every half-inch in club length. So a club that swingweights at D-2 will go up to about a D-5 if you extend the club 1/2 an inch and around D-8 if you go an inch. This can be compensated for by back-weighting the club (adding weight in the butt end) and there are a variety of ways to do that but doing so will increase the overall club weight.



-JP

 

[Canadan]

Thanks JP. I figured as much considering (my +1/2 diff) is really only the difference of holding the club above the top line on a standard length, which I had done for half of a decade before getting properly fit.