Project X Rifle Tapered Iron Shaft
By Russ Ryden, Fit2Score, A Dallas Fort Worth Club Fitter & Club Maker
The Golf Center at the Highlands, Carrollton Texas
The Project X Rifle Golf Shaft was one of the first shafts I studied when I took up club making. I attended a weekend course on its history and how to build matched sets of iron with the parallel shaft. Much of that history is explained in my earlier article about the Project X Rifle Shaft. Parallel shafts have a tip diameter of .370 inches. A set is made by incrementally cutting the shaft tips. Today however, the majority of the iron heads have .355 tapered hosels. That means the club maker must secure the club head and ream the hosel to .370. With forged heads it does not take much effort providing you have a good drill press and a hosel clamp fixture. With cast heads it is much more difficult. The hardness of the cast hosel requires a mill with horse power and in many cases a cooling system to keep from burning the ream. In other words, if you tried this once on a hard casting you probably will refuse to do it again.
True Temper provides a solution. Tapered Project X Rifle shafts with precut tip. The Rifle shaft system gave the club maker the ability to fine tune stiffness by altering the length of the tip cut as he pleased. That can not be done with taper tip shafts. To remedy that problem, the taper Rifle shafts are offered in 10 different lengths for each stiffness. The club maker can hit mid flex targets by selecting shafts from that array of pre trimmed tips.
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Russ
To continue reading this section of the review, you must be registered at a higher level membership.
Russ
True Temper reintroduced the Rifle Iron Shaft in 2017. it is a parallel shaft which a True Temper Performance Fitting Certified Club Maker can trim to exacting stiffness. The Rifle shaft has a long history in the golf business and was once a popular shaft on the PGA tour.
When I was new to club making I attended what was then a weekend seminar to become a Rifle Certified Clubmaker. I learned the history of the research done by Dr. Joe Braly. That research pioneered the effort that is ongoing today to find a synergy between the golfer and the golf shaft. Quoting from my Rifle training manual, “The conventional process of determining shaft flex strictly by weight does not recognise a number of other variable that can stand in the way of producing a correctly matched set of clubs.” I am not certain that we yet fully understand that synergy. But, the research that resulted in the Rifle fitting system was a pioneering step in the history of club fitting. I know a number of golf pros that still speak fondly of their Rifle shafts sets of old.
The Project X HZRDUS T1100 is the fourth shaft in the series. The graphics are a departure from the 