Easy DIY Ball Collector

Recently I've been practicing a lot (mostly chipping). I have my own bucket of balls. Over here at our golf course we use our own balls and you pick them up yourself, as we are a really small community.

So I started to look for a ball collector that is cheap and couldn't find one.

My brother is really handy and I told him what I wanted. He surprised me today and it works really well!

All he used was an old pvc pipe and wire.

Nice.

OK - thanks, now I have a couple ideas on how to repair my old shag bag better too.

If you use hard wire be aware that the wire can damage the bottom ball. You can maybe put another twist on the wire to avoid letting balls make contact with the cut area.

Look at Wittekgolf.com. Those guys have everything. I bought one of the tubes I listed below. They are the aluminum ones like you see at the courses. For the average guy these should last a long time. I went one step farther and put a pin through the top to keep the balls from falling out during transport. My course has a practice area and I take my own balls.  #77010 - Balshag Tube #77011 - Replacement Clips.

Nice.

I may have to make one of those next year.

Or maybe there is some way to just make one yourself...

I did make my first one. Instead of wire, I use 1/2" wide stainless sheet metal I cut from a cement trowel. Made three 'fingers' and attached them to pvc similar to 'TheWood'. Worked well also. I use that one at home and keep the aluminum one in the truck. I was always forgetting it when I went to practice.

Almost like this? Did you use pop rivets to hold the stainless steel together to the PVC pipe?

I Googled a bit and found this concept which is used for baseballs in the patent. (I am mentioning the patent as I dont want trouble with copying stuff etc.) http://www.google.com/patents/US20110059814

They used it seems PVC and a rubber ring which wouldn't damage the ball at all? Pretty smart.

Yep. Pop rivets worked fine attached like the pic.  I used a heat gun and slightly flared the end where the fingers attached. The aluminum one from Wittek golf is similar.

I had a shag bag that wore out. The zipper broke. All I did was take the bag part off, cut out of the internal metal rings and just use the cylinder part. It holds 14 balls, which I have found to be enough on the short game practice areas. I did drill a hole in the top of the cylinder, and put a double carabiner clip in it to keep the balls from rolling out.  The other end of the carabiner clip held a towel, which was always handy. Several times I have been asked where I bought this chrome shag stick.

I once built a shag stick out of SCH 40 PVC. I think I used 1-1/2, but not sure. After I decided on the desired length, I would cut a <3/8" wide piece off the end of it. Then I would cut 1/4" out of that circular piece.. I would take the smaller piece and glue it inside the main tube. The 1/4" cut out allowed me to compress the ring to fit inside the main tube. The inside ring was big enough to accept the balls, but also small enough to keep them in the tube. All that was left was to put some sort of cap on the other end.  I even added exterior paint. I wound up making 4 or 5 of these critters only to give them away to other golfers who like the idea. The only draw back was, that at 4'+ long, they were a bit heavy to lug a round. I think 48-50 inches long, they held about 30-35 balls.

I find it very relaxing to build stuff that help with my various hobbies.