Does spine alignment make a difference?

Has anyone tried spine alignments on graphite or steel shafts and noted a difference?

Are you referring to a difference in the amount of spine, graphite vs steel, or variations found in different shafts for a given type (steel or graphite)?

I had the AXE Tour SL shaft in my Maltby KE4 head that was PUREd, but can't give an honest answer about whether or not it made a difference.  The shaft in my current driver (not PUREd) was installed with the logo down for a cleaner look, and I can honestly say I have about the same dispersion with it as with the PURE shafted driver.

I also aligned the shafts in my irons, and while they are very straight hitters, I can't say for sure is the aligning had anything to do with that or not.  I did it mainly because I built them, and had the ability to align them, so I did it.

If you have the ability to do it and want to, it certainly won't hurt anything, and will likely give you a warm fuzzy about it (that's really what I did it for!).

This is what I've found as well. My swing is in no way consistent enough that the spine would be the deciding factor in where the ball goes. But since I can do it, I do. It's part of the fun of building clubs I think. :-D

General theme I hear from teaching pros and clubsmiths: Recent increases in qualilty control for name-brand shafts has made spining and puring unnecessary. ( Caution: on occasion the component makers will produce a bad batch of shafts - spining and puring can't cure this - you just need to replace the shafts.)

Club designer Ralph Maltby discusses spining and puring in his blog, and addresses the "bad shaft" problem:

http://www.ralphmaltby.com/forum/topic/618?page=1#number2

While I really admire Maltby, his two comments in that thread of "If I personally thought that spineing would help me either for real or mentally, I would do it in a heartbeat" and “pured” or “spineing” (same thing) is a waste of money " make me want to ask him why he offers the service.  But I've also seen him say that he thinks draw biased (weight biased) drivers are bunk, yet he makes and sells them because he said "that is what the people wants".  I guess in a way I can't blame him..... if the customer is dead set on wanting 'xxxxxx', and you don't offer it, you will likely loose that customer.

But since I have the equipment to do it, which I made all of it for next to nothing, I will still continue to do it.  Like bradsul said, for me, it's just part of the fun of building clubs.

Recent increases in quality control??? It all comes from China now. I don't think we are improving anything just trying to get back to where it was. My shafts are all pured. That is standard on the clubs I bought. I can't say it is noticeable but I did not play these heads pured and "unpured". The bottom line for me is that if it cost an extra $50 I would do it.

I can tell you from experience that every shaft, graphite or steel, that I have touched has a NBP (natural bend point) or more commonly called a 'spine' (it isn't, but that's another story). The last set of shafts I bought, c-tapers, varied from a minor yet repeatable NBP, to ones so obvious all you had to do was load the tip of the shaft and it would snap violently to it's NBP, without even touching the shaft. From a variance perspective across the set, they are much worse than DGs or PXs IMO, but in their defense, I've only spined and FLO'd the one set. Maybe I got a bad set, can't say for sure.

The only set of shafts I've found to have very little NBP to them, across the entire set, was a set of Penley Stealth 80s.

I FLO'd the Diamana WB in my i15 and saw my impact area shrink from a quarter to slightly larger than a nickel. YMMV...

I've used bearing based spine finders and they will find the residual bend or warp of the shaft, or sometimes an oval in the shaft butt, but they won't tell you the whole story.  I do flo my shafts and shafts I install for others as well as using the warp, NBP, BOW or whatever term you want to use to choose the final orientation of the shaft but I haven't done enough side by side comparisons to know if it's really helping or not.  It's a funny thing that if you believe that it's going to help, it often does, (at least for me and some people I know).

Dave Tutelman goes into this at some length at his website and from his writings I get the idea that if you have a shaft that shows a significant spine you should return it and have them send you one that isn't defective.

Here is a link to a video from clubmaker that is inspired at least somewhat by Tutelman's research that I think you might find interesting.

LOL, so true!  At least, that's the theory I use, and the reasoning for doing my own shafts that way.  I mean, it costs me nothing to do (beyond the initial purchase of a few bearings).

Warm fuzzys.  I like warm fuzzys.

All of our shafts go through flex plane orientation (spine aligning) as part of our proprietary Shaft Optimization Process .  If a golf club is shafted without regard to its inherent flex plane the shaft will try and rotate around its axis to a position of stability during the swing which creates an oscillation of the shaft and club-head.  This oscillation results in the club-head literally wobbling through impact.  When the shaft is correctly oriented in respect to its inherent flex plane it will resist twisting to any other position when placed under load and will remain stable through impact.  It is as if the club-head is riding on rails through the impact zone.

Personally, I would not play a golf club where the shaft did not go through this process.

It depends on the shaft

if you are getting say a TM R11, the shaft is more likely to be aligned properly

but something MASS MASS produced like the burner, it's likely to be any which way. When i put the prolaunch red into my burner i got it spined and i'm not sure if it's the spining or the higher torque that straightened out my drives

I really can't see how the spine could be always aligned on an adjustable driver (like my R9) unless you set it and left it there.

My driver shaft seems to perform the best when it is set on "Neutral" even though I would actually prefer it to be set on "Right".

Of course the answer would probably be to remove the shaft and re-set the spine so it would be the same on "Right" as it currently is on "Neutral" (and never try to adjust it again).

So,in the case of the adjustabilty in a Taylormade R1, does this essentially make an adjustable driver useless if you wanted to make changes?

Personally, I would not play a set of golf clubs where the inherent flex plane of the shaft had not been determined and oriented correctly in relation to the clubface.

Sorry, but how do you come to this conclusion?? The model of the club has nothing to do with the alignment of the spine. Shaft manufacturers paint and label the shafts and the club  builders simply attach it to the head or adjustable hosel fitting so the label is usually on the underside at address. That shaft you have in your driver off the shelf is a substandard piece of equipment. A sleeve of golf balls is likely to be worth more. Aligning the spine on a shaft like that will likely produce more consistency with even the most inconsistent swing. After market graphite shafts are better, but not perfect. If you have the chance to Pure your graphite shafts, do it. For me, the spining of steel is more about the flex. If you have ever put a shaft in a spine finder and felt how the stiffness varies when you turn it, you will get what I mean. Whether it not it works has been flogged to death over the years. The theory behind it, makes perfect sense, so I Pure my clubs first with a spine finder, then use FLO with a laser. If I am eliminating the variables, then I know I have to work harder to fix other flaws.

For all you guys that worry about splining. Splining is a good thing for irons because the direction of the shafts are non-adjustable after they have been glued in. As for everyone who has a new driver with 16 different adjustments splining is ridiculous. Every time you make an adjustment the spline position of the shaft changes unless it is an older driver that is set in one position and stays there throughout eternity. Tiger's new Vapor driver is stationary and you check most of the other pros you will fine the drivers and fairway woods are also. So good luck splining adjustability.