TexasShooter said: mongoose33, what is the thing to the right of your vise in the first photo? It looks like a hollow cylinder with a disk on one end. When I was in high school, I worked for a guy that built custom clubs and did repairs as a business. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot about using tools, then. Looks like you might have a swing weight scale on your narrow shelf on the far right.
Then you might be the only guy on THR who understands what I'm about to say.
The device is known as a "spin jig" which accepts a variety of collets for securing cylindrical stock. It allows you to rotate that stock any number of degrees. A golf club shaft, at the grip, is cylindrical.
I use it for spine alignment of golf club shafts. First I find the neutral bending point (NBP) using my spinefinder:
After marking that, I secure the shaft in the collet, then "twang" the shaft vertically in the neutral bending plane, as determined by my spinefinder. I make tiny adjustments until I achieve FLO (Flat-line oscillation) of the shaft in the spin-jig. FLO means the shaft oscillates back and forth in a plane or line, no circular or oval motion.
That oscillation plane of the shaft, when inserted into the golf club head, should be oriented toward target. So what I do then (and this is why the spin jig is valuable to me) is rotate the shaft 90 degrees, then affix the clubhead to the now-rotated shaft with the face of the golf club oriented vertically. The spin jig has reference marks/holes that allow you to rotate the stock any angle you like--and for this, 90 degress is what I need.
I'll make reference marks on both the shaft and the clubhead so when I epoxy them together I can return them to the correct orientation.
And yes, that's a swingweight scale on the narrow shelf.
The golf club business has sagged over the years, a combination of the waning of Tiger-hype, the recession, and the overbuilding of clubmaking capacity in the industry which now requires significant cutting of prices. I make custom clubs, one at a time matched to a spec which fits the golfer, but not many golfers are discerning enough to understand why that matters. I can't compete on price, but the value-added I provide isn't as clear in this era of marketing hype.
Such golfers would rather try to buy a game than develop one, and part of the "mystique," such as it is, is that they'd rather pull at "Ping" or "Titleist" or "Taylormade" iron from their bag, even if it's not matched as part of a set, than pull a "Clubdoctor" iron from the bag.
That workbench is now given over to reloading duties. I've removed the spin jig, the frequency-meter clamp, and the golf club rule, now the bench is covered with brass I'm sorting and working with.
