Using Shims?

[Richie3Jack]

My C-Taper shaft has arrived. For those who don't know, the C-Taper is .355 tip, but the Wishon heads are .370. So I have to use a shim to make up the difference.

Wonder what other people's experience with using shims has been like?

I've talked to a couple of people and they say it's pretty easy, although I will probably have to trim some of the wings from the brass shims to get it to fit into the club. I was told to not use shafting beads and use a strong epoxy







3JACK

[mchepp]

My friend has a set with them in. Personally I don't think they feel the same with the shim in there. It could be a mental thing, but they just felt different. Not necessarily bad, just different.

[cloran]

I've never used the brass shims... always just made my own. I imagine using the brass ones is much easier.

I'd use the Tour Van epoxy w/ granulated sugar thrown in.

[Richie3Jack]

I was told to *not* use gran. sugar or shaft beads. You really don't need to since the shim will help center the shaft.

I was also told to use a higher shear strength epoxy.

I just did it and here are some impressions:

1. The C-Taper is very smooth. I bought a .355 ferrule and it could slide on the entire way, without issue.

2. I was told by 1 clubmaker that he only leaves his shims about 3/8" high and puts them on. I decided to use the full shim. It takes a bit of twisting and elbow grease, but I got the shaft in and it's very firm.

3. It is messy because you have to coat the shaft, hosel, ferrule and the inside and outside of the shim. I would recommend a regular, strong epoxy that is black because it will take a little fiddling around and the epoxy will get all over the place and you'll need to clean it up and black is easier to pick out.


We'll see how well it works tomorrow.









3JACK

[Richie3Jack]

I removed a shaft with a shim and installed 2 more shims last night.

I had a KBS C-Taper shaft with a brass shim in a Wishon 6-iron. I used the 18-hour epoxy which has a very strong sheer strength. I was told use epoxy with a strong sheer strength for installing shafts with a shim. I never had any issues when the shaft was installed.

However, it was a real pain in the ass to remove. I torched that sucker for a long, long time and it finally didn't come off until I turned up the heat quite a bit. The epoxy never even really bubbled out of the hosel like it normally does. So that 18-hour stuff is 'strong like bull.'

And I would take that into consideration if you use that epoxy with a graphtie shaft because it may be too hard to remove the graphite without splintering the shaft.

The shim did come out a little bit and I just took a knife to help get it all out. I actually *think* I could still use the shim if I wanted to.

With the C-taper, I just used the entire shim.

However, I had heard that with other shafts clubmakers would often trim 1/2 the wings off the shim in order to get it to fit because the entire shim would often be too big.

I used a KBS Tour 90 and a KBS Tour taper tip shaft and the entire shim was too big for both. So, I trimmed the shim 1/2 off on each of them and the fit in there pretty well and pretty snug. I'll see how they work tomorrow..









3JACK