Step 3: Wooden Shaft Maintenance

Removing the clubhead also allows you to properly inspect, repair, and recondition the wooden shaft.

“Don’t you worry about breaking the shaft?”

That’s one of the most commonly asked questions when folks see me playing with hickory golf clubs. It’s a reasonable concern given the age of these clubs and one that weighed heavy on my mind when I first started out.

I quickly learned, though, that if properly maintained and paired with a reset clubhead, a quality wooden shaft can last a long time. Most importantly, I learned that a cracked shaft isn’t necessarily a death sentence, either.

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Proper maintenance of a wooden shaft centers around making sure that the wood stays dry. Most of the clubs you’ll find in an antique store or flea market will have shafts that look beat up and dried out. Boiled linseed oil has traditionally been the product of choice for revitalizing wooden shafts, and I’ve had good success using Birchwood Casey TruOil to reseal mine. Other hickory golfers have had bad luck using linseed oil, reporting that it weakened the shaft and led to splitting. For those unlucky with linseed oil, shellac is their go-to product for a wooden shaft reseal and refinish.

Recently, I’ve switched from TruOil to a product called Skidmore’s Restoration Cream based on a recommendation from fellow hickory golfer Rob Birman. It’s worked so well for me, that I don’t use anything else to recondition shafts or grips anymore. Its recipe of beeswax, linseed oil and other natural ingredients is all you need to take care of an entire hickory golf club. I use it to revitalize and protect the shafts, recondition original leather grips, and as a rust-protectant on iron heads.

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When you buy a vintage hickory golf club for the purpose of play, it’s always a good idea to remove the clubhead and inspect the shaft. Most shaft cracks occur when the club strikes a ball with a loose clubhead – even imperceptibly so – and the only way to verify a head isn’t loose is to remove and reset the clubhead before playing with the club.

With the clubhead removed, you’ll be able to see any existing cracks or splits in the cone of the shaft and repair them with very thin cyanoacrylate (CA) glue, better known as Super Glue or Crazy Glue. I prefer the fast-flowing Professional liquid CA made by Loctite.

Once the glue dries, I’ll reseal the shaft, reset the clubhead with epoxy, and reinforce the crack line with whipping thread – all-in-all, a small investment of time and effort to repair a vintage shaft. If the repair doesn’t hold, at least you tried; you can always buy quality hickory shaft replacement shafts from Louisville Golf and Tad Moore: