Hey y’all, I have recently gotten into playing with vintage irons. I am gaming a set of Ben Hogan Apex PC irons with DG X100 shafts. I have reshafted 2 sets of vintage irons now, but I want to improve. One set had pins (the Apex PC) and the other did not (Walter Hagen Haig Ultra).

Many of the vintage irons I purchase have pins passing through the neck of the clubhead through the shaft as well. I’ve read that the epoxy they used back then often wasnt amazing and so they did this to make absolutely sure the clubhead was fixed in place.

My current method to remove these pins is to just punch it out before torching the clubhead. On the most recent set I did this on, I had a couple heads I absolutely mangled. :(  I had trouble keeping the punch centered on the pin, then it got super stuck about halfway through so I snipped the pin and tried to punch it back through the other way so it would not stick in the clubhead. The clipped side of the pin was impossible to keep the punch on and so I just ended up punching a ton of dings into the soft forged club head. I then attempted to drill it out but completely missed the pin on the back side and added an awful drill hole through the neck of the club. I am planning to send these damaged clubheads to a professional to repair, but that gets expensive fast.

I tried torching some first before punching the pin and that helped a bit.

Is there a better way to do this? It breaks my heart to damage these clubs which I want to give a second life to. Tangentially, what to do with the pin holes after reshafting? I paint-filled on the Apex PC set but curious if there are other’s thoughts.

Britt Lindsey Answered question September 22, 2022