RAW IRONS POST YOUR PICS

[miz-zou]

Newest addition…Haywood 100 Raw

 

[rbpwrx]

Don't think I've posted these before, they are my backups. Cobra KF MBs, RAW, w/ DG X7s, straight in. Been playing them the past couple days, and MAN do I love em. (Not really fair to call them my backups, more my gamers once the swing gets dialed in.) SM8s also have X7s. Only shaft I can do that with. SSx1 in the 56. No 60.

 

 

[jjzee]

I am always on the prowl to find a set of raw irons that I can actually game on the course

[Ted2]

Fresh back from Oughtons

[jjc034]

5 hours ago, Ted2 said:

Fresh back from Oughtons

How are your grooves so clean? I'm very jealous!

[Ted2]

1 hour ago, jjc034 said:

How are your grooves so clean? I'm very jealous!

I honestly have no idea. Have to thank Doug for that one

[autronicdsm]

13 hours ago, Ted2 said:

I honestly have no idea. Have to thank Doug for that one

 

Did you ask for re-groove? They look painted black almost.

[Ted2]

4 hours ago, autronicdsm said:

 

Did you ask for re-groove? They look painted black almost.

The only think I remember asking for was the chrome stripped. 

 

They do look regrooved which I think we look great once they start to rust. 

[Hammer_Hands]

17 hours ago, Ted2 said:

The only think I remember asking for was the chrome stripped. 

 

They do look regrooved which I think we look great once they start to rust. 

From my experience with having irons stripped by Doug, it seems that most of the groove wear is actually the chrome wearing off.  So when you take off the chrome, the grooves are usually pretty sharp.  I don't think Doug does any regrooving as part of his standard stripping/refinishing process.

[ToughasNails]

On 12/21/2023 at 10:26 AM, FestivusMiracle said:

Finished up my oil can half set this morning. Pretty happy with them.

 

Those are classy.

 

When turning the ferrules is there any extra care needed not to mar the raw finish?

Also, those of you that used a rusting solution did you have the heads mounted first and then sprayed? or spray and mount?

 

cheers.

[jjc034]

1 hour ago, ToughasNails said:

 

Those are classy.

 

When turning the ferrules is there any extra care needed not to mar the raw finish?

Also, those of you that used a rusting solution did you have the heads mounted first and then sprayed? or spray and mount?

 

cheers.

I just put masking tape around the hosel while I turned down my ferrules. Worked fine.

 

With regard to rusting solution, you can spray water displacer (e.g. WD40) on them if you want to give a dark metal look without the rust. This will need to be done fairly regularly though. I just let mine go and they look good!

[ChristopherMcDonald]

On 12/21/2023 at 10:26 AM, FestivusMiracle said:

Finished up my oil can half set this morning. Pretty happy with them.

hey man these look great. Fellow 902 OS user here. Do you have any photos of them totally raw before the oven/quench?

[CTG77]

From the Toura Build and Review process I've been a part of for MGS...love the way these look, and mostly the way they're playing.

 

[Orchardist]

 

Sunday baggers

[joshfisher]

Geom Lee blades with a custom forced patina. 3 rds old now and look great.

[Valtiel]

I've been working on the perfect "pretty" raw finish on my gamer 4-iron which is a J15CB stripped by Flanigan Golf:



After playing it raw for a while and generally being unhappy with how it was naturally oxidizing I decided to play god a little bit. I steel wooled the whole head and scrubbed out the back cavity with white vinegar. I then experimented with a bunch of different steps in different orders to induce the right kind of oxidation in just the cavity, shooting for that smooth "patina" look. Once I got something I liked (lots of trial and error) I figured I could sort of polymerize an oil finish like you would on a cast iron skillet to lock it in. We'll see how it actually holds up on the course, but i'm digging it. 

Edited June 7, 2024 by Valtiel

[jmck]

Just finished putting these little guys together.

 

 

 

@Valtiel - I'd love to hear what your process was on those J15s.  They came out great, that smooth patina in the cavities is lovely and locking it in like seasoning a cast iron skillet is brilliant!

 

[Valtiel]

9 hours ago, jmck said:

Just finished putting these little guys together.

 

 

 

@Valtiel - I'd love to hear what your process was on those J15s.  They came out great, that smooth patina in the cavities is lovely and locking it in like seasoning a cast iron skillet is brilliant!

 

Cheers! I'll describe what I went through as best I can. One main caveat is that I don't have the kind of working knowledge to know exactly what I was doing in terms of chemical reactions here, I was just approaching this intuitively knowing I could always strip back and start again (which I did a few times, hah). 

I started with attempting a few of the various "quick rusting" methods e.g. spraying mixtures of vinegar/salts/peroxides and while they did create rust fast, it was often superficial surface rust that came off quite easily, basically zero durability. I assume this is because it creates a rapid surface level reaction. After messing with that for awhile and having nothing really "stick", I ended up with the following steps:

1) Make sure the head is extremely clean. Steel wooling off all surface oxidation and then soaking in white vinegar for several hours. Any and all surface contaminants, especially oils from your skin, will impact oxidation and create inconsistent splotchiness. I can literally see your fingerprints on the toe of the iron in that last picture so that gives you a clear idea of what oils will do, hah. 

2) Once out of the vinegar and dried the bare metal will want to start oxidizing/discoloring in minor ways pretty quickly, like what we see on your pics above, so this is the crucial time to start putting down a base layer of the oxidation you *want*. All I did was simply evenly coat the cavity with water, just surface level coverage, and let it evaporate. You won't see much after this first "layer", you have to be patient with this process like applying very thin layers of finish to wood. Easiest to just use a small paint brush to just apply the water; brush on, let dry, repeat.

3) After a dozen or so "layers" here you'll start to see some color creeping in. At this point I kept going while occasionally scrubbing it under warm water with a plastic bristle brush between layers and wiping it down to remove the superficial top layer of oxidation. Once the oxidation starts to build up enough you'll start to get a mixture of the deeper more durable "patina" that you want, and light surface level rust that comes off when you touch it that you don't. The more you scrub that top layer off between applications of water the better the ratio of patina to surface rust became as I built it up.

4) After several rounds of this I switched to applying a salt water mixture, then more rinse and repeat as above. Occasionally I tried heating the head from the opposite side to "dry" the liquid. Not sure if this helped or not. 

5) After several rounds of *that* I went back to lightly applying the white vinegar/salt/water mixture. The vinegar will want to strip the surface level rust so be careful here, no scrubbing with the vinegar on the club. I would apply, let dry, rinse with warm water, then lightly scrub. The vinegar mixture definitely darkened the oxidation at this stage and started filling in some of the gaps. After enough back and forth with the above I got to something that looked like this:



You could leave it there honestly if you wanted the club to continue to naturally age/patina from this point, but I wanted to experiment with "sealing" it which is where the cast iron skillet seasoning approach of applying and then heating an oil to create a polymerized protective layer came in. I simply wiped it down with olive oil, scrubbing a little bit to remove any last bits of light surface rust, then heated the head with a heat gun while protecting the hosel since the shaft was still installed. Ideally to create the full and more uniform finish you'd have the heads removed here and you'd pop them in the oven with the oil applied at around 350-400* for an hour or two, removing and reapplying small amounts of oil throughout the process. This was just an experiment though and I didn't feel like pulling the shaft, but it turned out well enough for a first attempt that I will likely try the oven method if I do it again. The oil definitely darkens the patina and adds a satin, almost semi-gloss layer, like a properly seasoned pan.  

Folks more familiar with the chemical kinetics at play here would likely have a more efficient way of getting to the same ends, but this really didn't take that long. The thorough cleaning at the start is definitely the most important step though, followed by the light incremental build up of patina "layers". Everything else was just messing around to see what would happen, hah. 

Hope that helps!

 

Edited June 7, 2024 by Valtiel

[jmck]

Great info--thanks for taking the time to write it out!

[Valtiel]

I continued messing with it a bit, had some ideas.
 

 

You can get this darkening vignette sort of effect if you do everything I listed above, then strip it all back with steel wool. The darker edges will tend to want to remain when doing this unless you go out of your way to really aggressively scrub along the edges (which you don’t do here). Then repeat all the steps above again to rebuild the rust, which will further darken the edges, and you can rinse and repeat until you get the desired look. 

 

[FestivusMiracle]

On 6/5/2024 at 5:16 PM, ChristopherMcDonald said:

hey man these look great. Fellow 902 OS user here. Do you have any photos of them totally raw before the oven/quench?

Found a few

[FestivusMiracle]

On 6/4/2024 at 12:31 PM, ToughasNails said:

 

Those are classy.

 

When turning the ferrules is there any extra care needed not to mar the raw finish?

Also, those of you that used a rusting solution did you have the heads mounted first and then sprayed? or spray and mount?

 

cheers.

so i dont have turning belt or anything but i just use some very fine sandpaper but to protect the iron i just wrap it in a little painter's tape.

[ChristopherMcDonald]

On 6/18/2024 at 10:55 AM, FestivusMiracle said:

Found a few

oooooof those are sweet. Not making it any easier on me lol

[03trdblack]

So these aren't officially raw now but they were stripped of the chrome and nickel layers in order to apply the composite diamond coating that they have now. 

 

Now they just look raw without ever rusting 😁

 

The BB&F ferrules are each named after the holes at Augusta and I matched up the club number with the hole number that corresponded with that ferrule. 

 

[autronicdsm]

On 6/21/2024 at 9:07 PM, 03trdblack said:

So these aren't officially raw now but they were stripped of the chrome and nickel layers in order to apply the composite diamond coating that they have now. 

 

Now they just look raw without ever rusting 😁

 

The BB&F ferrules are each named after the holes at Augusta and I matched up the club number with the hole number that corresponded with that ferrule. 

 

 

How do these Avians feel?

[03trdblack]

7 hours ago, autronicdsm said:

 

How do these Avians feel?

 

Absolutely incredible. They are premium s20c Japanese forgings and are soft and smooth as they come. 

[ToughasNails]

Here’s some ZX7 progress pics. Should have them back in hand by the end of the week.

Courtesy of @nikscustomshop

[AdamMH]

I know this thread is mostly for rust lovers, but these are too fresh for that... Give em a season.

 

[PeanutsDaddy]

1 hour ago, AdamMH said:

I know this thread is mostly for rust lovers, but these are too fresh for that... Give em a season.

 

Drool

[jmck]

On 7/3/2024 at 9:12 PM, AdamMH said:

I know this thread is mostly for rust lovers, but these are too fresh for that... Give em a season.

 

Those look great!  They from Don White?  Where'd you hide the loft/number stamping?