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Head feels loose in shaft


Cforselius

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Hello lads

I bought a Onoff Type S driver here on the BST a week or two ago and I took it out to the range for the first time today.

After about ten hits a feint click was heard at impact and when I twisted the head a little it started clicking all the time. I could not see the head move but it felt a bit loose.

Anyone experienced this? Do I have to rebuild it or am I screwed?

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A "click" is usually a loosened shaft from hosel.

It's probably tight enough that the head will not fly off or anything , but you need to get that re-epoxied.

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that could also be air bubbles in the epoxy.....if it is pretty fresh epoxy, i would reheat the hosel lightly, even a hair dyer will work or a cigarette lighter and then let it cool again, that should take care of it......conversely, you can just pull the shaft and redo it

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I will try to heat it.

Cheers mates

Simple heating is a bad idea. The heated epoxy will not cool to original strength.

Best would be to pull out the shaft and examine the parts for defects. If all proves good, you can safely re assemble and feel safe and confident in use. Your cost should be a new ferrule, a bit of sand paper and a touch of fresh epoxy if you do your own. Your win is confidence in the equipment you use.

Shambles

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Simple heating is a bad idea. The heated epoxy will not cool to original strength.

Best would be to pull out the shaft and examine the parts for defects. If all proves good, you can safely re assemble and feel safe and confident in use. Your cost should be a new ferrule, a bit of sand paper and a touch of fresh epoxy if you do your own. Your win is confidence in the equipment you use.

Shambles

Sorry Shambles but i think you are seriously mistaken about the heating application...im not telling the guy to torch it to failure but warm the epoxy so it can dispel the air bubbles. I absolutely agree that taking it apart and checking out everything is your best option but if you want to try a quick fix, the heating is an alternative method and certainly not the best method but the easiest.

The most commonly used and misunderstood term is heat deflection under load (HDUL), often shortened to simply the heat deflection temperature (HDT). This shortened name helps to breed some of the confusion. HDUL is a standard test (ASTM D-648) used industry- wide to characterize the thermal behavior of a resin system. The test determines the temperature at which a bar or coupon of cured epoxy (without reinforcing fibers) 1 8" thick× ½" wide × 5" long and under a point load of 264 psi will deflect 0.1" (~7 64"). The test sample is loaded in the test apparatus and simply supported at both ends, on edge, and the load is applied in the center—a typical three-point bend test (Photos 1 & 2). Then the sample is lowered into an oil bath that heats slowly up from room temperature and stops when the sample deflects the 0.1" (Photo 3).

The misconceptions are that above this temperature the epoxy no longer has any structural integrity, adhesive strength, and/or that it even begins to return to a liquid state! None of these correctly characterizes what is happening. With an understanding of how HDUL is measured, it should seem obvious that the epoxy becomes more flexible as the temperature rises above room temperature (typically 72°F), but the epoxy is still quite strong. Although it is true that there are epoxy systems on the market formulated to have an HDUL lower than room temperature, these epoxies are for specific, non-structural applications.

Here’s an example which demonstrates that epoxy retains its structural integrity and adhesive strength after exposure to high temperatures.

Edited by robbie
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Hi Robbie,

There was a time only a few years ago that I encountered a Driver that had been badly assembled. Bits of excess epoxy had fallen into the body and repeated impact from the Driver's use broke those bits off so that it rattled about inside. A very minor noise but distracting and an irritant. I watched a club maker try to fix the noise by working the bits to a gather near the hosel and heat them so that they blended together and reformed as a larger piece in what we guessed was a quiet corner of the club head with hopefully a bit more walls and corners for the epoxy to stick to. Same failure regardless of where we gathered the epoxy.

I tried mixing a bit on the side of a hammer, let dry and melted it so I could see it harden again. Banging the hammer on a piece of wood, a table actually, caused the epoxy to come loose and fall off. I'm not dedicated enough to go any farther looking for instances of failure. It might work in some instances but I'm satisfied it is far from foolproof and applying the safer solution is not a lot of added trouble. Besides, I'm suspecting a cracked shaft tip as the source of the clicking and you're not going to see or feel it until you pull the shaft and stress it a bit to find out if and what's moving. I alsodoubt the air bubble. There just isn't enough space as epoxy is stronger when it's applied as an adhesive not as a filler. If it was applied as a filler in quantities large enough to make an air bubble that could click, that would be a pretty bad assembly.

Shambles

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i totally agree with you shambles, i was offering a alternative quick fix method but the preferred method is to definitely check out the entire shaft for fractures and loose epoxy .......but mild heating with a blow driver will often get rid of a few small creaks....

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I've heard this type of noise in four situations on glued heads:

1) epoxy gradually shearing off the hosel in the joint as a result of poorly prepared surfaces, poor gluing or glue mixes that are too unbalanced (particularly too brittle). This can happen in the hosel or where the ferrule meets the hosel

2) epoxy cracking further up the shaft, just above the hosel - ie when too much epoxy has been used and the epoxy is forced up inside the shaft forming a core that extends higher than the top of the hosel

3) the tip of the shaft gradually delaminating in or near the hosel, or even general shaft delamination further up the shaft

4) a crack in the shaft that is slowly propagating (and this is not always visible on the outside of the shaft)

With a new quality shaft and a quality build, 1},2} & 3} should not happen. 4) tends to be as a result of some abuse of the shaft (even minor). 3) is most often seen (when near the tip) on shafts that have been poorly pulled before reuse - eg too much heat or some twisting of the shaft during extraction - or on low quality shafts.

Best bet is absolutely to get a good club guy to split the combo, investigate and rebuild.

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