Hit my first forged blade today!

[jchase]

Was in checking out some irons at the local golf shop today. Like a thin top line and not bulky but still need some forgiveness. Well hit the adams A7 idea irons and the A7 hybrid (did not like!). And hit some nicklaus irons which were surpisingly good (rifle shafts)! Anyways the guy that was helping me just happened to have some older tour edge blades was hitting all 7 irons. Well needless to say the blades felt amazing! Didn't even feel like i was hitting the ball! Distance was good 175ish and the ball flight was nice and high and landing soft on the green! Anyways needless to say the guy is selling them for 150 and i might just have to pick these bad boys up! Didn't even think i was going to be able to hit them but man they felt great! May have to consider some blades in the future!

Joe

[SilverUberXeno]

If you hit the center of the clubface, blades will do just fine.

[jchase]

Now i know what everyone was talking about when they say blades feel buttery soft!!!! It was a good straight ball flight with a 15 mph left to right wind so would have been a nice draw!!! I am pretty sure i am going to buy these! Or try to get some of the adams idea pro combo irons they are going pretty cheap on the bay!

[SilverUberXeno]

Adams idea pro are sweeeet.

[spartyon8]

Its not the blades that feel buttery soft but more the material they are made from (forged).

I felt the same way when I first hit my TEE CNCs. WOW!

[BrandonM7]

Pretty much everything feels buttery soft if you hit them in the exact right spot. Blades just beat you to death if you don't.

[Wi-Golfer]

Originally Posted by spartyon8

Its not the blades that feel buttery soft but more the material they are made from (forged).

You don't actually believe that do you?

[FATC1TY]

Do you know that "forging" is just a method. You can cast with the same buttery soft metal to an extent...

[spartyon8]

I was under the impression that the forging process "softens" the material. Hence why my nice new CNCs are all dinged up when my Eye2 and P2s never did.

[FATC1TY]

Originally Posted by spartyon8

I was under the impression that the forging process "softens" the material. Hence why my nice new CNCs are all dinged up when my Eye2 and P2s never did.

It can, but what makes them "soft" and easier to ding is the carbon content.

The more carbon, the harder it is, but also the more brittle the steel is. The lesser amount of carbon, the softer it is.. Too little carbon, and your irons would bend easily, and would have the loft/lie messed up from being banged around too much. They'd also chatter so easy you wouldn't want to use them.

1025 mild-steel is pretty popular for iron heads, it's a compromise for function and quality.

Forged feels better because you don't get the air bubbles and inconsistency from casting which causes a harsher feel due to the harder metal and the air in the grains of the metal.

Hence why Mizuno is so big on their "grain flow" forgings.

[Wi-Golfer]

Originally Posted by FATC1TY

Forged feels better because you don't get the air bubbles and inconsistency from casting which causes a harsher feel due to the harder metal and the air in the grains of the metal.

Hence why Mizuno is so big on their "grain flow" forgings.

Mizuno is a big believer in it because it's their marketing slogan. Air bubbles are & have been a thing of the past, doesn't occur anymore.

[BrandonM7]

Originally Posted by spartyon8

I was under the impression that the forging process "softens" the material. Hence why my nice new CNCs are all dinged up when my Eye2 and P2s never did.

Forging actually hardens the material. It's called "strain hardening," and it happens when forging (or other working) causes the grain of the metal to align. Take a coat hanger and bend a kink in it - now grab on either side of that kink and try to straighten it out -- you'll notice the hanger bends in a place other than the kink. That's because the kink is harder than the surrounding metal. That kink has been worked and hardened.

It's all head design. You can cast or forge of any metal from soft to hard, whatever you want to do - as long as that head is steel, it's still a shitload harder than the ball you're hitting (otherwise the ball would leave dents in the clubhead.) Add to that the flexy stick between you and the clubhead, and the thick layer of rubber you hold onto - no way you're feeling the difference between grades of steel, much less the shaping method used to make it look like a clubhead. You're just digging on a certain design and how it masks the crash into that stationary ball. Everything else is just smoke and mirrors from the marketing machine.

[spartyon8]

"Some of the world's most popular wedges, including Titleist Vokey and Cleveland, are cast. What do you believe are the performance benefits of Mizuno's forged wedges?

Of course for short shots you need feel and distance control - and our forging process enhances both. The mild carbon steel we use for forging is a softer metal, giving the golfer extra touch; the increased vibration we have just talked about, created by the more solid head, is again going to give the golfer more feel, which gives him greater information and feedback on the shot. But also the purity and integrity of the metal produced by forging allows the player to strike the ball consistent distances, which boosts confidence."


This is the explanation Mizuno gives about their forgings. Now everything that I have read about forged irons vs cast claim that feel is a very touchy subject where the average golfer won't notice any difference between the two. I can feel a difference when going from my stainless Eye 2s and cast P2s.

Now I am no metalurgist and never claim to be. I may just be very gullable and buy into this "feel" companies are claiming. I may just not be wording myself correctly. But, and albeit a very large but, everything points to the carbon steel used to make forged golf clubs being a "softer" metal compared to any other process used in the golf industry.

Mizuno Golf Europe - The World's Leading Iron Forger

[spartyon8]

I see where I made the mistake in my thoughts, I said it was because of the process of forging which is so far from the truth. Its the material used in the forgings. I apologize and will put foot in mouth now.

[BrandonM7]

Originally Posted by spartyon8

...I can feel a difference when going from my stainless Eye 2s and cast P2s.

Both cast, just of different metals and different designs.

Now I am no metalurgist and never claim to be. I may just be very gullable and buy into this "feel" companies are claiming. I may just not be wording myself correctly. But, and albeit a very large but, everything points to the carbon steel used to make forged golf clubs being a "softer" metal compared to any other process used in the golf industry.

Mizuno Golf Europe - The World's Leading Iron Forger

I'm not a metallurgist either, so take it for what it's worth. I had to take one materials engineering course before I failed out of ChemE college, so my authority is limited to 12 weeks instruction from a foreign guy I could barely understand. That's a little bit more than most folks have, but still not a lot by any stretch of the imagination.

What you say is potentially true, and certainly on the right track -- if you're going to feel a difference, it's gonna be mainly based on the head design. But, and as you say a very large but, if you were going to feel a difference between two identical designs it would much more likely be due to the alloy used rather than the method with which it was shaped. Definitely on the right track there. I still contend that there are too many soft points in the chain (the head is the hardest of them all by a long shot) for you to feel a difference in "softness" due to either alloy or method, but if we cast that aside and say I'm wrong about all that, the alloy is without a doubt more likely to have a much larger difference than the shaping method. Unless you're talking about absolute bottom-barrel Chinese made garbage with fast pours, no vacuum evacuation, etc in the casting process, there aren't air bubbles or other imperfections making cast feel dead and gross - we're talking fractional differences in the hardness between cast and forged of the exact same alloy. But as you very astutely pointed out, forged irons are typically made of significantly softer steel. That's not because they want to give you warm fuzzies, it's because it's cheaper to forge a softer metal. They sure as hell tell you it's to give you better feel, but that's a marketing department selling you what their production line makes. So there's the big difference (if hardness matters at all) - it's that one method is typically made of hard steel and one of soft as a matter of course. Some companies cast of soft metals - Maltby has a couple of wedge models, and I think SMT casts irons of a softish metal. But they don't have forged versions of the exact same design and metal, so you still can't make a direct comparison.

In the end they could half-step the shafts soft and you'd think they were so much softer than the set next to them that there must be magic in the metal.

Plus the ball's a hell of a lot softer than the clubhead - but on the flip side of that, I can bounce a golf ball on my garage floor and can instantly tell the difference between the center of the floor and the edges where the footings are -- and that's 8" thick concrete vs 24" concrete - both should be infinitely hard compared to a golf ball, but I can tell the difference. So maybe the hardness of the steel matters more than I think Ahh, what do I know? I'm just a crappy golfer that glues a few clubs together every now and then.