Thanks Dave for the explaination. I am familar with John's work but not Charlie's. Where is Charlie's work posted?
Charlie is a member of ShopTalk, and a professional clubmaker who lives and works near me. He is the club guru for a tour player, and works with several of the private country clubs in the area. We have sort of worked together for a couple of years on understanding and instrumenting what's going on. He occasionally posts to ShopTalk, but he doesn't write long articles.
... and what are the 3 different bearing based spine finders? If I were to speculate, I would say...
No, no, and no. They are:
* A homebrew of Charlie's design, dating back to before I met him.
* An instrument I built for him to measure shaft straightness, but I included a feature that could be used to find spine naively. (It can also find spine by differential deflection.)
* A FlexMaster. It is much more than a spine finder, but it can certainly be used for the purpose, and is probably the one he uses most. It is also the one he uses to find spine by differential deflection.
Would additional machines be: 4 - FlexMaster 5 - Apache machine (not sure what they call it)
He uses a FlexMaster. The straightness gauge I built for him also has a load cell with a zero-tare button, so it could be used for the purpose. But my load cell feature was an afterthought, and the FlexMaster is industrial-strength, so he uses that. I'm working on designing a more robust shaft profiler; sounds like a good winter project.
Cheers! DaveT
