Your brother-in-law’s birthday is coming soon, and you are wondering what to get him. He is a golf fanatic but complains he slices the ball. He looked at drivers at his local store and most were $500 apiece. He might be your favorite brother-in-law, but he is not, well…that special. If you know how to regrip golf clubs, guess what? It is not that difficult to build him a new driver at a fraction of the cost.
What tools and supplies do I need?
If you regripped your clubs, you have most of the tools already. Plus, I’ll let you on to a little secret, regripping may have been one of the most challenging steps in clubmaking. The rest is easy peasy. All you really need more is a strip of sandpaper (120 grit) to abrade or remove the paint and polyurethane on the graphite shaft tip for a good epoxy bond and a rod saw, grit edge or non-serrated blade to cut the graphite shaft. You will also need a 48” aluminum ruler to measure the length of the club. Plus, you will need the parts below excluding grip tape and solvent you had left over.
| Driver | $89.95 |
| Graphite Shaft | $24.95 |
| Grip | $2.49 |
| Ferrules | $4.95 |
| Epoxy | $2.75 |
| Total* | $125.09 plus shipping |
*pricing at the time of writing this
Selecting the components
Since your brother-in-law slices the ball, you can get him an offset driver to help combat his biggest problem off the tee, which few name brand companies don’t even bother to make. Popular shafts you see today in drivers are in the mid 50-gram range. Prices for a good quality shaft in this range start at $24.95. Grips can run the gamut in terms of size, color, and brand. A basic grip starts at $2.49.
If you are only building one golf club, you can get by with a single epoxy packet rather than buying a cartridge or bottles of epoxy. If you decide on getting a cartridge, make sure if you don’t have an epoxy dispensing gun (which few have), to get an epoxy cartridge with a thumb plunger.
Ferrules are the little plastic pieces above the hosel. Usually those are sold by the dozen, but they are cheap and never go bad, so you have them for future projects. These are force fit onto the shaft, so they do not slide up and down while playing. We have a video showing you how to install one onto a shaft.
How much time does it take?
The first time you do something new, always takes longer until you get the hang of it. You may want to watch YouTube videos to get a peek of how others do so. The actual building time is only 15 minutes. The biggest time is waiting for the epoxy to cure. If you are using slow set epoxy (which I encourage those new to clubmaking to do), this is a two-day project.
If this is something you might like to try, now is the time to get started. It may not be just your brother-in-law that needs a new club, you might be looking to make a new putter or lob wedge to replace one you lost, broke or have no confidence in anymore. Clubmaking is a fun hobby and one that can help save you a lot of money in the future.
