All things are not equal
90% of Golf Shafts have irregularities inherent from the manufacturing processes
These small irregularities may cause the shaft to bend fractionally unevenly. During the swing, the shaft bends towards the flawed area, causing the clubface to open or close.
Spine alignment finds the natural and least point of resistance of the golf shaft
By aligning the spine in your shaft the club face will open and close when you want it to, not when the shaft wants it to.
Custom-Golf.co.uk carries out spine alignment
We find the spine of the new or current shaft and place it into the head; we then place the spine towards or away from the target. This way we are removing the dominating shaft spine as a factor in the flex of the shaft.
This has two positive areas on the golf shaft
All golfers put a bending force on the shaft at some point during the downswing. If the spine effect is moderate to severe in the shaft, when the shaft bends in response to the golfer's swing force, the direction of bending of the shaft can move off the direction of bending, thus shifting the position of the club and clubface. This can then cause the golfer to hit the ball more off-centre than their swing might have otherwise predetermined.
The Benefits
The benefits of aligning the spine include dramatic improvement in solid impact with the ball and enhancing accuracy, feel, and trajectory control. I am convinced that spining your shaft will double or triple your pleasure from a round of golf. To my knowledge, no original club manufacturer is spining shafts. There is a 99% chance that your game would benefit from spine aligning and I have never met a customer who did not want to hit straighter shots!
Note: Graphite shafts have graphics or logos that may not line up perfectly once the club is spine aligned
The Physics of Spine Aligning (here comes the science bit...)
Spine orientation, or spine aligning, is the new process which measures a shaft under both constant and dynamic load to precisely locate the shaft's inconsistencies in shaft wall thickness, shaft straightness, shaft roundness and shaft material.
When a shaft's most predominant spine is properly aligned in a neutral position, the shaft bends along the Principle Planar Oscillation Plane, the longitudinal plane of bending through which a shaft can move as closely as possible to a perfect straight line with no movement in any other direction. Thus, the shaft unloads or kicks forward during the golf swing. By decreasing the shaft's movement in directions other than the final swing plane, we, as clubmakers, can reduce shaft-induced mis-hits and stabilize torsional stiffness for more distance, accuracy and better feel. In fact, some industry experts believe that spine matching is even more important than frequency matching.
