DIY Tour Striker

[cloran]

I really like the idea of the Tour Striker, but I also realize the importance of keeping your gear consistent. I contacted Martin Chuck to find out if the Tour Striker could be bent 5* flat, but being a cast club he said it would be impossible. There's not much benefit to practicing with a club that's too upright/light/long, etc... So I decided to make my own.

Here's my step-by-step guide to building your own "Tour Striker" practice golf club.

You'll need the following:

-Cavity back forged iron
-Dremel (or some other tool for grinding)
-Swing weight scale
-Lead weights
-Torch

Why a forged cavity back iron? You'll be removing a good amount of weight from the grinding and it will need to be replaced in order to bring the swing weight back up. You'll see in a minute why the cavity helps with this.

I dug through the demo bin at a local golf shop and found a Cleveland TA3 6 iron for $9.00





Having a forged iron affords you the ability to bend the lie angle to match your current set. I dropped this head by 5*. I then pulled the grip, added 4 extra wraps of tape and installed a new GP Tour Wrap grip... now the club matches the 6 iron I have in my bag.



I took note of the starting swing weight:


I then removed the badge from the back of the cavity...



You'll end up with a bunch of glue left over...


Simply take a strait edge to it and it comes off like a big ball of snot.


Next, I used a sharpie to make some general guidelines


I started grinding by using a carbide grinding stone attachment on my Dremel


I then moved up to an Aluminum Oxide Grinding wheel for a better edging


After getting a rough grinding with the stone, and some more detailed edging with the grinding wheel, I did most of the removal with a 60 grit sandpaper wheel.

Once I had all the steel removed I again checked the swing weight.


I needed to bring the swing weight back up by at least 12 points. This is why I chose a cavity back design. I can add the weight to the cavity as opposed to removing the shaft to add tip weights or pouring powder down the shaft. Lead tape would be OK if I needed to add a few grams... but an increase of 12 swing weight points is really not practical for lead tape.

I could use powder, melt it, and epoxy it to the cavity:


or I could melt lead weights and epoxy the new form into the cavity:


I tried the powder first, but there are too many impurities and extra garbage in it. It doesn't melt well at all. I scrapped that idea and melted the weights instead.



The swing weight was now set at D2, the lie angle was dropped to fit the specs of my gamer 6 iron, and the grip was built up to my liking.

All that was left was to clean up some of the dings and scratches from the grinding by using a Dremel polishing wheel... and take the final pics.









This was as fun little project. If my Dremel battery didn't keep dying I'd guess that it would take just a couple of hours to complete. I picked up the lumber today to build my new work bench and I plan on doing more golf inspired projects in the future. I have a mill on the way as well...

If you guys like this kind of thread just say so and I'll make sure to take pics of my next few projects.

Thanks.

-Cloran

[Richie3Jack]

Wow. Hope it works out.






3JACK

[walther]

Pretty awesome sir -- Have you hit it yet?

[Richie3Jack]

Martin Chuck told me that the idea for the Tour Striker came from watching Moe hit balls. IIRC, Martin said Moe's PW was sawed off at the edge and he wondered why he would need that.

I've actually had a few blog readers e-mail me asking if I could ask Martin if he was ever going to start selling an entire iron set of Tour Strikers.






3JACK

[cloran]

Haven't hit it yet. Finished it up last night and I woke up to 6" of snow this morning... it was 65* on Thursday, WTF?!

[pavaveda]

Very interesting. Nice job.

I thought it would be useful to post a couple of pics of a retail Tour Striker for comparison with your project.

This is their 5-iron.


One thing I notice about their clubs is that if they had a leading edge, the club would have quite a bit of negative offset. Did you think about this with your version? Do you think it'll affect how it performs compared to the retail version?

Also, can you tell us about what the debris coming off the grinding is like? I would imagine that it would be iron dust. How did you keep that dust from getting everywhere?

[cloran]

I looked at some pics of the Tour Striker before starting, too. There's just no way to get that kind of onset, but I think my club will ultimately have the same effect.

The debris was like a powder or dust. The first night of working on it I just wore glasses... then last night I added a mask to cut down on the dirt snots I had created the night before, lol. There wasn't much dust however.

[cloran]

Feb 21, 2011 10:30:28 GMT -5 Richie3Jack said:

Martin Chuck told me that the idea for the Tour Striker came from watching Moe hit balls. IIRC, Martin said Moe's PW was sawed off at the edge and he wondered why he would need that.

I've actually had a few blog readers e-mail me asking if I could ask Martin if he was ever going to start selling an entire iron set of Tour Strikers.






3JACK

I was thinking about Moe after I finished this actually. He hit the ball with very little shaft lean and I wonder if he would do well with the Tour Striker?

[mchepp]

Well done.