Help me understand length and flex

[quine]

So I play my driver at 46 inches in an attempt to tackle distance loss in 60 year with decent results. Just curious does a 46 inch stiff driver shaft play softer then the same shaft at 45.5 inches. If so , by much? Thanks in advance

[Red4282]

Yes, by how much depends on the shaft. I dont think its near a full flex tho, but i could be wrong. The main factor is the added length makes for a heavier swing weight which softens the shaft

[danman44]

dosnt make sense.. people say tipping a shaft makes it stiffer.. but shortening a shaft makes it softer.. how can both be true？

[Howard_Jones]

The planned change is so small, the answer is, we might be able to measure a change, while you will most likely not be able to feel it

 

We have 3 ways to cut a shaft shorter.

All from butt - this becomes the softest option, butt is always the strongest side, so when we make that section shorter, we go softer

All from tip - strongest, we keep the strongest section the BUTT as it was, and removed all from the softest part, the tip,

50/50 - Medium.....we keep the shaft "in line" with the manufacturers charts for how flex should change at a different play length.

 

I used the term "50/50" just to show off that we take partly from the tip, partly from the butt, while the "numbers", for how much we cutt off from each side, becomes a question of if we are adding back head weight or not when we go shorter, because thats how we "should" go about this is we wants to keep all things on the natural slope.

 

If we look at TIP TRIM instructions from the shaft manufacturers, there is NO standards, but "the norm" is that a standard head weight driver = No tip trim, while a 3W who has 10 grams higher head weight should be tip trimmed 0.5" inch, so that actually tells us that for each 2.5 grams we add back to the head, we should compensate by 1/8" of tip trim so everything becomes "as it was"

 

At the SMALL change you are planning for, only 0.5 inch, we can do the math just to make sure we know, but you will most likely NOT be able to tell if the club became softer or stronger, unless we cut all from butt, and replaced the SW balance (adding back 5-5 to 6 grams on the head), then you MIGHT be able to feel that it became a little softer, so this "worries" about changing flex is not really a issue when the numbers we take are so small. The case would have been quite different if you wanted to go from 45.50 to 44.00 and replace 10-15 grams of head weight, in thats case we cant make it right unless we involves TIP TRIM to compensate for the added weight, while in your case...No worries.

 

To figure out "how it will, feel", we simply put a mark on the grip at 0.5" like that part was already cut off. and test the club with our hands in that position.

The feel of both head weight and flex is now as close to the new "butt cutt club" to the planned play length as we can get. IF feel of head weight becomes to low, we add back a stripe of lead tape at the time until it feel right, and when we are done tuning for head weight, we ask our self, did feel become softer than we like it to be, or is it just fine? If we did feel it became softer, we can now do the math vs grams added, and pull the shaft so we take partly from the tip, the rest from the butt.

[danman44]

my logic says it has to vary greatly depending on the shaft in question.. for example if you tip a hzrdus yellow it sholud get softer as you just cut off the stiff bit.. vs say a hzrdus red which should get stiffer as you cut off the bendy bits. my 2 cents

[Howard_Jones]

> @danman44 said:

> my logic says it has to vary greatly depending on the shaft in question.. for example if you tip a hzrdus yellow it sholud get softer as you just cut off the stiff bit.. vs say a hzrdus red which should get stiffer as you cut off the bendy bits. my 2 cents

 

Butt side is ALWAYS the stiffest part, no matter shaft profile, but different profiles respond a little different, so a HIGH launch profile we go longer on the butt, actually becomes stiffer than the average flex slope, while a LOW launch profile where the butt section is "relative softer", we either "stay in flex" or would see a slight change to the softer side.

If we just follow the tip trim instructions vs grams head weight, we should be just fine no matter shaft profile, so its mostly if we deal with shafts like RIFLE FCM we have to take the profile into consideration since 1 inch on butt makes a difference of 7 CPM or 70% of a flex class if you like. (1 inch longer = 7 cpm stronger or 1 inch shorter = 7 CPM softer than the flex chart for this model)

 

Only shafts with a very stiff butt section relative to its mid and tip resond this way, so this is not the norm, most shafts dont really change in flex vs the chart for that model unless we make LARGE changes to the butt section.

[Red4282]

> @danman44 said:

> dosnt make sense.. people say tipping a shaft makes it stiffer.. but shortening a shaft makes it softer.. how can both be true？

 

Shortening usually makes it stiffer, unless its all butt trim then usually plays about the same.

> @danman44 said:

> my logic says it has to vary greatly depending on the shaft in question.. for example if you tip a hzrdus yellow it sholud get softer as you just cut off the stiff bit.. vs say a hzrdus red which should get stiffer as you cut off the bendy bits. my 2 cents

 

Howard is on the money. When you hear tip stiff its relative to others shafts tips not in relation to the other parts of the shaft

[Howard_Jones]

> @Red4282 said:

> > @danman44 said:

> > dosnt make sense.. people say tipping a shaft makes it stiffer.. but shortening a shaft makes it softer.. how can both be true？

>

> Shortening usually makes it stiffer, unless its all butt trim then usually plays about the same.

> > @danman44 said:

> > my logic says it has to vary greatly depending on the shaft in question.. for example if you tip a hzrdus yellow it sholud get softer as you just cut off the stiff bit.. vs say a hzrdus red which should get stiffer as you cut off the bendy bits. my 2 cents

>

> Howard is on the money. When you hear tip stiff its relative to others shafts tips not in relation to the other parts of the shaft

 

On example of 2 different profiles is PL BLUE AXIS vs RED AXIS

Blue is "high launch" and Red is "low launch", so we should expect BLUE to have a "softer tip section" than RED.....

NO, both tip and mid is about the same, while the BLUE got a BUTT section almost 1 full flex stronger than RED, so the RELATIVE strength at BUTT makes mid and tip section "relative softer" on the Blue. (no chain is stronger than the weakest link, and her we force the weakest part deeper down on the shaft by reinforcing the butt section, so the Blue is "forced" to bend more on tip and butt since the strong butt the blue got want flex much. We call this relationship Tip to butt deflection, so we can measure how much each end is willing to bend, and by that see the "profile" The stronger the butt side is compared to the tip, the higher launch will this profile has, so its not always a "soft tip" who makes a high launch profile, but a stronger butt section.

 

When we are working with shafts like this, we get to see that if we go longer, the RED will get more bias against LOW, and the Blue gets more bias against HIGH, while if we go shorter on the butt section, this 2 profiles gets closer to each other since mid and tip is almost equal to start with, and the difference came from the butt section, so the shorter butt becomes, the less bias will this shaft have against high or low launch.

[Adam C]

I just did this experiment in my shop. Took a driver shaft, 75 grams, measured the butt frequency in my machine, then clamped it down 1/2 inch and measured, then returned it to length and tipped it 1/2 inch. Butt trimming increased cpm by 5 cycles, tip trim increased it 6 cycles. Tipped it another 1/2 and went up another 6 cycles. And I know butt frequency isn't accurate blah blah blah but I still think it's perfectly useable in this setting.

[Howard_Jones]

> @"Adam C" said:

> I just did this experiment in my shop. Took a driver shaft, 75 grams, measured the butt frequency in my machine, then clamped it down 1/2 inch and measured, then returned it to length and tipped it 1/2 inch. Butt trimming increased cpm by 5 cycles, tip trim increased it 6 cycles. Tipped it another 1/2 and went up another 6 cycles. And I know butt frequency isn't accurate blah blah blah but I still think it's perfectly useable in this setting.

 

You did not tell what shaft it was, but your numbers is as expected, but dont forget we need a flex slope chart to judge it since the flex slope the shaft has as nature is different. (2/8" is typical needed of tip trim to gain only 1 CPM on graphite woods)

 

If we used Kaufmanns chart, a shaft thats 1 inch shorter should measure 7.3 CPM more, and if we used RIFLE FCM we have 8.5 >Cpm on the new model pr inch, and compared to DG X100 we should see 10 to 10.5 as difference pr inch, so when we judge if we went softer or stronger, we need a reference point from a chart or knowledge of how THIS shaft model by nature should be.