What do forged irons do

The metal is cooled, the ceramic is broken and what remains is a perfectly shaped golf club head that does not require a lot more labour or attention before it is ready to be assembled to a shaft.

There is no restriction as to what type of metal can be used. Beyond this, breakage is a possibility. However, in recent years, many stainless steel alloys have been developed along with a soft casting process that yields club heads, which are hard but are bendable with some as much as 5 degrees, making custom fitting of cast clubs for loft and lie much easier.

So, now let us look at the process for forged clubs. Then we will do a comparison of forged versus cast. In the forged process, a solid billet of steel is used. The steel billet is heated to very high temperatures, put in a press and is then hammered into shape with several tons of pressure.

This process can be repeated several times before the head is ready for finishing. It is at this point that there is a big difference between cast and forged. With the cast process, at this point the head is virtually ready to be assembled. There is not very much additional work to be performed on it. In the forged process, the head has to go through a grinding, buffing and detailing process before it is ready to be shafted. This part of the process requires very skilled craftsmen and is extremely labor intensive.

The cost of labor is the main reason why forged clubs are much more expensive. There are a few smaller foundries in Japan that are still producing totally hand forged heads, and they are the priciest heads available. It would be better to wait a little too long then make the move a little too early. Be patient, watch the progress in your game, and make the move when you are sure the time is right.

Once you have made the move into a set of forged irons, you should expect a few things to happen. First and foremost, you are immediately going to notice a difference in the way the ball feels coming off the club. When you miss the sweet spot, however, they feel…less than great. Overall, there is more feel in a set of forged irons, so your hands will be receiving tons of feedback, for better or worse. You are also going to notice a loss in forgiveness from your old set.

Miss-hit shots are punished when using blades or muscle back irons. With an oversized set of irons, you might have been able to reach the green even if you hit the shot off the toe of the iron. You will no longer benefit from that kind of feedback. Forged Vs. Cavity Back Irons. Forged vs. Cast Iron Golf Clubs. What is the History of the Golf Club? Cast Vs. Forged Irons.

Blades vs. When the metal hardens, it is in the desired shape - in this case, a golf club. As any liquid in this case metal fills whatever container it's poured into the very nature of casting allows manufacturers to be more creative in their designs. Given this, the process lends itself to cavity back irons, clubs primarily designed for beginners and game improvers. The process allows mass to be cast to the clubhead's outer edges to create what is known in the industry as perimeter weighting, which increases the club's forgiveness by reducing twisting on off-centre hits.

Further advances and the use of accurate computer design software to create the moulds allow designers to move minute amounts of mass in some cases a single gram to precisely where they need it. This detailed approach has led to the individual irons, which make up a set, designed as if they were individual clubs.

The long irons will have more mass low in the head to help get the ball up in the air easier, while the shorter irons will have the centre of gravity a little higher to control the flight and distance more easily. As the metal in cast clubs does not need to be manipulated there is far greater flexibility in the type of steel available.

Using steel that sets harder makes cast irons more durable, have increase ball speed and thus add more distance than their forged counterparts. Casting is also quicker, easier, and therefore cheaper than the forging process, meaning cast clubs are more affordable at retail than forged ones. In simple terms, forging is hammering metal into the shape you want it.

In golf, the process is a little more refined, but the premise is the same. A simple billet of steel is pressed and rolled hundreds of times to turn it from a block to a playable golf club.