Making my own insert for my Odyssey putter?

[Unforgiven93]

Hi guys,

So I'm in college right now and I have access to some pretty awesome machine shops because I'm in mechanical engineering.  I had this idea the other day....  I have an Odyssey Versa 7, and I'm thinking about replacing the plastic insert with a custom machined metal insert that I would mill down to the right size for my putter in said machine shops.

So I have a few questions... some of which could be difficult to answer.

Have any of you done anything like this? If so, how did it turn out?

Would removing the plastic insert and soft rubber behind and replacing with some kind of metal insert make hitting the ball feel weird/not perform well?

What kind of metal should I use?

How easy is it to remove the insert and soft rubber behind?

What should I use to bond the new insert to the putter?

I think this would be a fun project.  It would make my putter very unique.

Any help would be appreciated.  Thanks!

[toolman605]

I did this to a White Hot Pro #7 and its a fun project. I was attempting to blacken a putter that I bought from someone who bead-blasted it and I just didn't like the look of it. I used some Caswells (sp?) blackener and it wasn't what I wanted so I decided to try torching it.

In the process of torching it I managed to heat it up enough to make the glue holding the insert in fail and the insert fell out! Turns out its held in with a black silicone adhesive. You can see it surrounding the insert.

I made an aluminum insert (including deep-milling) and it made almost no difference in the feel. The Odyssey #7's are hollow and the insert is held in place by a plastic carrier. So unless you replace this carrier you are still "insulated" from the insert if that makes sense.

Its a fun experiment and you can get black RTV sealant at any hardware store to glue in the insert. I made mine snug enough so it didn't need any adhesive.

Give it a try and feel free to ask questions. Make sure you post some pictures of the completed project with your impressions!

[Unforgiven93]

In the process of torching it I managed to heat it up enough to make the glue holding the insert in fail and the insert fell out! Turns out its held in with a black silicone adhesive. You can see it surrounding the insert. I made an aluminum insert (including deep-milling) and it made almost no difference in the feel. The Odyssey #7's are hollow and the insert is held in place by a plastic carrier. So unless you replace this carrier you are still "insulated" from the insert if that makes sense. Its a fun experiment and you can get black RTV sealant at any hardware store to glue in the insert. I made mine snug enough so it didn't need any adhesive.  Give it a try and feel free to ask questions. Make sure you post some pictures of the completed project with your impressions!

Sounds like you're the guy to talk to! So I don't want to ruin the paint job on my putter (by using a torch to melt the silicon), do you think I could just pry out the insert and the silicon? One of the reasons I want to do this is is to reduce the mushy feel of the putter, so I would want to use something much harder than the current black silicon to hold in the new metal face. Any ideas what I could use for that? So you used aluminum for your insert, how has it held up? And knicks or dings? I want to use brass and I know they have a similar hardness. I really want to do this. I think it would be awesome...

[Unforgiven93]

So I decided to just jump in and try to do this because... I wanted to. So first I tried to cut out the insert with various sharp objects. Clearly my sharp objects were not sharp enough, because that didn't work at all. So then I went home and tried heating up the knives with a pen torch to melt through the insert... That didn't work either. So finally I just decided to go for it, and I used the pen torch to melt out the insert. So as you can see, the torch screwed up the paint, as I was fully expecting... So I ordered my brass online, got it, carefully measured the insert hole with calipers, sketched it on the brass, then I sawed off the excess on a machine. After I had the general shape I used a belt sander to get edges rounded and the bottom rounded. Then I used waterproof clear krazy glue to secure the insert. Waited about 30 minutes, went to the belt sander again, and shaved off the whole face a few more millimeters. And the final product turned out pretty well! Especially for being all done manually. I originally thought I would just program a machine to do it all for me. I putted for about 30 minutes right after I finished and it feels great. It seems much more consistent with distance than the original insert. Off center putts still feel pretty good. I'm glad I did it, it was a ton of fun. I look forward to droppin' birds with this bad boy.

[SavvySwede]

Nice job. Now you need to make your own custom putter head. That's what I would do, make myself a true one of a kind item.

[joekelly]

Do you have the total weight of the brass insert? Need heavier?  Go with fourth inch of concrete (no stones), layer on some epoxy and finish with simple brass plate.

To grind out the old stuff, did you try various dental tools?