Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Stock Shaft vs. True After-Market Shaft

Here's a video that I thought was interesting, discussing a stock shaft vs. a 'true' aftermarket shaft.



On another forum this was discussed and most of the clubmakers stated that they had never seen this happen with their shaft pulls before.

I actually tend to agree with this video as recently I removed a stock shaft in a Cleveland 3-wood, re-aligned the spine of the shaft and re-installed it. When I hit it, the shaft broke.

Now, I used a shaft puller and low heat from a heat gun. I've used this method on 'true' aftermarket shafts and not one of them has splintered, but the Cleveland 'stock' shaft (Fujikura) was different.

That doesn't mean that all graphite shafts are this way (contrary to the video). The reason why a $300 driver may have a legitimate $300 'true' aftermarket shaft is that the shaft company and the OEM may come to a deal where they may pay a little above cost for each shaft. Let's say Aldila does this with Adams Golf (according to clubmakers, Adams Golf does have 'true' aftermarket Aldila shafts as their stock shafts).

Anyway...Aldila knows that Adams will purchase hundreds of thousands of shafts from them, if the price is low enough. But, other OEM's may be happy with just a stock shaft that is not of the same quality, but only costs them $10 per shaft.







3JACK

2 comments:

strat said...

Your works are interesting. I wonder how their performance are.
golf shafts

Tom said...

Easy to tell what shaft that was- I have one in my 3 wd! I would be more inclined to believe if he had used a Matrix aftermarket shaft instead of the Aldila. The shaft that shattered is a 50 gram or so shaft and the Aldila is a different weight and tip. That said, I agree that the shaft in the club at retail is not the aftermarket shaft. I just wish he had compared apples to apples.