The Pro Spine Finder is a tool used to locate the spine of any golf shaft, be it steel or graphite. While there are some that question the need for this, I for one have been convinced for the last 4 years that spine alignment of the shaft in a golf club is of major importance. How the spine is aligned plays a major role in how every club will perform. Again, some people will tell you that this isn’t very important with the new modern golf shaft, as manufacturing methods have eliminated the need for this. Well, I’m here to tell you that this is not true. I’ve tested more golf shafts than I can count, and I’ve been able to locate the spine or NBP of every one of them. While it’s true that some are better than others, none of the ones I’ve tested have been perfect.
The Pro Spine Finer is pretty easy to use once you get the hang of it. First you clamp the tool in a bench vice at approximately a 30-degree angle. Then you insert the butt end of a shaft inside the two ball bearing sleeves. You then place the third bearing over the tip of the shaft and apply enough force to cause the shaft to bend a little. When you apply the force to the shaft, the shaft will want to twist along its axis, until it comes to what is known as the Neutral Bend Plane, or NBP. This is what you are looking for, and what you want to align when you install the shaft in a clubhead. How you align the NBP is a matter of choice for some, and not for others. More on this later.
There is a second way to use the tool, and it’s for testing clubs that are already assembled. To check the spine alignment of an assembled club, first clamp the tool in a bench vise in a vertical position. Then remove the grip from the club so that the butt end of the shaft will fit inside the bearing of the tool. Then slide the single bearing over the shaft up to the clubhead. Then insert the end of the shaft into the tool with the clubhead up. Now, while you’re holding the butt end of the shaft in place, apply a little pressure to the shaft with the third bearing, and watch the clubhead. What will happen is, the clubhead will twist, until the shaft is bending along the line of the NBP.
Why is this necessary? Well to put it in simple terms, golf shafts may be round in shape, but none of them are perfectly round and they don’t bend the same when you rotate them. If you rotate a shaft 360 degrees along its axis, you will find that the shaft will bend different amounts with the same pressure applied to the tip. If you plot this on a chart, what you will get is what’s known as a Sine Wave. How much difference you will find in a shaft will vary, and even the best models can vary as much as 15 %. What does this mean to you the golfer? Well, it means a shaft that is sold as a R flex, might be more like an A flex if bent in one direction, and more like a S flex when bent in a different direction. Most likely you will not find that much variation in one shaft, but you might find that much variance in a set of steel shafts for a set of 8 irons. One shaft may be a little stiffer than R flex, while another may be a little softer. What you want is to eliminate as much of this variance as possible so each club in a set of irons will play the same as the next. There is a second reason for doing a spine alignment on the shaft, and it can be even more important than having the flex of the clubs the same. It has to do with how the shaft will bend and re-bound when you swing the club. This is how I got hooked on spine alignment four years ago. When a shaft is bent under load, as when you swing the club, you need to have the shaft re-bound again in a straight line, a line that is parallel to the target line. The only way for this to happen is if the shaft has been spine aligned when it was installed in the clubhead. If it wasn’t, you can make a perfect swing, and still not hit the ball in the center of the clubface. Miss the center of the clubface, and a perfect swing is wasted. How much can spine alignment help? Enough to make a noticeable difference in how straight and accurate you can hit every club in your bag. Enough to make the difference between finding the middle of the fairway with your new driver, and being in the rough.
Top club makers do what is called a FLO test. That stands for Flat Line Oscillation. The test is pretty simple, you clamp the butt end of the shaft in a vise, and then you flex the head end and release it. This will cause the shaft to spring back and forth, or oscillate. What you want is for the shaft to oscillate in a straight line. If you do this test with most every golf club made, you will find that the club head will oscillate in an oval, or figure eight pattern, just about anything other than a straight line. The ideal situation is to have the shaft oscillate in a straight line down the target line coming into impact. The way to achieve this is to align the spine of the shaft in one of two ways. Either the spine is aligned toward the target when the club is set up behind the ball, or the neutral bend plane is aligned toward the target. Either alignment will work, but any other alignment will not. It you think about it, a shaft can be aligned around a 360-degree rotation. Of those 360 degrees, only two positions will allow the shaft to perform at its best. That means that if the shaft is randomly installed, as is the case with every OEM that I know of, the odds of it being installed correctly are 2 in 360, or 180 to 1 against it. Personally, I don’t like those odds, especially when I can do something about it. All it takes is a spine alignment tool, and a few minutes of my time, and I can install a shaft that will perform at its best for me.
Earlier, I mentioned that how the shaft is installed after the spine is located, is a matter of choice. Some club makers want the spine aligned toward the target. Others want the NBP aligned toward the target. Well, I happen to be someone that thinks it depends on the flex of the shaft, and what flex the golfer needs. What I mean by this is that if I have a golfer who needs a shaft on the high end of R flex, and I have an R flex shaft to install, I’ll install it with the spine toward the target. If I have an S flex shaft for the same golfer, I’d install the shaft with the NBP toward the target. If I lost you with this, let me explain.
It will help if you think of the shaft as a yardstick, rather than a round shaft. If I were to install a yardstick in a club, with the wide side toward the target, the yard stick/ shaft, would be easy to bend. This would be the same as installing a golf shaft with the NBP toward the target. Now, if I were to install the yardstick with the narrow edge toward the target, the yard stick/ shaft, would play much stiffer. This is the same as installing a golf shaft with the spine toward the target. And while it’s true that a golf shaft will not vary anywhere near as much as a yard stick, it will vary enough for most golfers to be able to feel the difference. A case in point is an OEM driver that I purchased two years ago. It has an R flex Grafalloy 65-gram Prolaunch blue shaft. As installed by the factory, I was rather happy with the performance of the club, which is why I purchased it in the first place. But I wanted to see what would happen if I aligned the shaft according to the spine. So I pulled the shaft, did a spine alignment on it and re-installed the shaft with the NBP toward the target. This is the alignment preferred by most custom club makers.
I did this because the last time I had be tested on a ShaftLab last year, the recommended flex for my driver was on the low end of R flex, almost an A flex in fact. What I found out when I first tried the driver again with the re-installed shaft was an eye opener for me. When I got to the top of my backswing, and my hands stopped, I could feel the clubhead keep going. The shaft was now playing at its softest, and the weight of the head was enough to cause the head to keep going and bend the shaft some more. What a weird feeling that was. As the shaft had been installed by the factory, I had never felt this before. After hitting the driver this way for a week. I again pulled the shaft and re-installed it with the spine toward the target. The difference was like night and day. This time when I got to the top of my backswing, when my hands stopped, so did the clubhead.
The shaft was now playing at its stiffest, and it no longer bent due to the weight of the head when my hands stopped. It was a much more solid feel and one I liked much more than when the NBP was aligned toward the target. For me, the driver felt much better this way. This makes a lot of sense, and it can be explained by the ShaftLab test that I had a few months ago. As I mentioned, when I was first tested on the ShaftLab, the recommended flex for my driver was on the low end of R flex, almost an A flex. On my last ShaftLab test, after I had been working on increasing my swing speed, the new recommendation for my driver came back as S flex. 6.3 to be exact. I had gone from a low R flex, to a Stiff flex, from 5.1, to a 6.3 rating. And when I re-installed the R flex shaft to play as stiff as possible, it felt more like what I needed. What I was able to do using the spine alignment tool, was take an R flex shaft that was playing too soft, and re-install it to play firmer, firm enough to make a noticeable difference. I was able to take a $65 shaft, one that was too soft, and re-use it and save myself the $65 it would have cost to buy a new S flex shaft.
It may not be as good as installing a new S flex shaft, but it does feel a lot better, and my accuracy with that driver has improved enough that I’m not afraid to put that driver in my bag. Not only is the flex better, so is the way the shaft bends and KICKS back coming into impact. With the spine aligned toward the target, when the shaft KICKS in, it does so down the target line, meaning I get straighter and long drives. Now I have an OEM driver that performs as well as it can, based on the clubhead and shaft doing all they can.
WHAT IT’S GOOD FOR
The main reason to use a spine alignment tool it to be able to align the shaft in the clubhead, so as to allow the shaft to perform at its maximum potential. This means aligning either the spine or NBP toward the target. When this is done, a set of irons will feel much more consistent, with each club performing pretty much the same. A driver or fairway wood will strike the ball closer to the center of the clubface, for straighter and longer shots. Pretty much what all of us want from our clubs. The second reason to use a spine finder, is to make the most out of the shaft that we might have to work with. If you have a shaft that’s just a bit too soft or too firm, aligning the shaft correctly can help solve the problem, for next to no cost. This is something that most anyone can agree is a good idea.
WHY YOU NEED ONE
The truth is, golf is a rather hard game to play well. No one needs to have any disadvantage built into their clubs. But the fact remains that most every golf club you can buy , has the shaft installed in a less than optimal alignment. This is a disadvantage to every golfer with the skill to play this game fairly well. Spine alignment will not make a 30-handicap golfer start shooting scores in the low 90’s. But it will allow him or her to play better golf, because when he or she does make a good swing, the club will perform at it should, and the ball strike will be closer to center.
Let me ask each of you a question. Have you ever demo-ed a driver and hit it really well at a store or course. Then you purchased the exact same driver with the same shaft from ebay, or some other place for less money, only to find that when you hit the new driver it didn’t perform as the one in your demo? The most likely reason for this is that the one you purchased had the shaft installed with a different alignment of the spine, compared to the demo model you hit so well. And this is one of the main reasons I don’t recommend anyone buy a driver or any club for that matter, on E-bay. Sure, you might save a good bit of money, but it the club doesn’t perform like the demo model, it’s not a GOOD DEAL. It’s a waste of GOOD MONEY. Personally, the only way I’d but a club on E-bay, is if I intend to pull the shaft when I get it, and spine align it correctly. For the average golfer, this in not an option, unless they take it to a custom club maker. Ant the cost of pulling the shaft, doing the spine alignment testing, and re-installing the shaft, can eat up most of money that was saved buying on E-bay. The good news is, with spine alignment tools, at least the club can be made to play a lot better, and the golfer can get the most out of his club.
I believe enough in spine alignment, that I will not build another club without taking the time to do the spine alignment before I assemble the components. And if I happen to find a deal on a new club that is too good to past up, I’ll do the spine alignment on the club to see if I can make it better. The odds are 180 to 1, that I can.
While it would be nice if every serious golfer had their own spine alignment tool, I don’t see that happening. But what I do recommend, is that every serious golfer has their clubs tested to see if they can be made to perform better. And to insist that any new clubs they have built, have the shaft spine aligned correctly as a matter of practice. The test is simple and quick, and there is no good reason it shouldn’t be done with every custom made club, or re-shafting job.
WHAT IS IT
JB’s Pro Spine Finder
J. Ballard Enterprises Inc
1118 Asheford Green Ave.
Concord, North Carolina. 28027-8108 www.ClubmakersChoice.com
704-788-8954 YouTube Demo
Pricing
JB’s Pro Spine Tool; $59.95 & $10.00 shipping
JB’s Standard Spine Tool; $49.95 & $10.00 shipping
