The Acer XP905 Hollow Core Iron features a hollow core stainless steel body which removes the weight from the center of the clubhead. The oversized iron design is designed for extreme perimeter weighting, offering stability and forgiveness. The face is thin, lightweight, Beta Titanium that offers increased ball velocity. Finally, a rubber backing in the cavity is designed to dampen vibration and improve both sound and feel.

The Acer XP 905 WS is available both as components and finished clubs.

Dynacraft is an old-line component designer and manufacturer that recently was bought by Hireko Golf.

The new Dynacraft Prophet CNC iron is produced with a new technique where it’s stamped from a billet of 1020 carbon steel into an oversized, overweight head. CNC milling is then used to cut the blade into the exact shape needed. The technique allows the creation of a forged blade with an undercut cavity that generally is found only in cast heads. The result is a true game-improvement forged blade.

You can get them as components, or assembled, and they come with a 60 day satisfaction guarantee.

You can’t have too many putters. Or at least that’s what my friend Dave claims. Here’s one he doesn’t have in his collection (yet).

Hireko golf says that its new Acer CB2 putter is “the most advanced putter made for the component market.” It features a two piece consturciton with a lightweight milled aluminum face and center section and a stainless steel outer ring.

The outer ring accounts for more than half the weight of the putter, which allows Hireko to achieve the holy grail of golf club design—a high moment of intertia.

It’s also center shafted, which is my preferred style. I also like the fact that you can get it either assembled, or as a component.

Hireko’s got a 60 Day Satisfaction guarantee.

It’s golf show season here in Michigan (and, I suspect, in many other places, too).  And these shows are often a great place to get good clubs at a tremendous discount.

Unfortunately, the reason some of these clubs are so inexpensive is that they’re cheap knockoffs. But how can you tell?

Here’s a tip: if you’re shopping for clubs at one of these shows, carry a small magnet with you. It’ll be useful for determining whether a club really is what it says. Magnets won’t stick to titanium, so if a driver says that it’s got a titanium face and a magnet sticks to it, be suspicious. Magnets also won’t stick to zinc or aluminum. So if an iron claims to be steel, and a magnet won’t stick to it, be suspicious.

Zinc-Aluminum alloys often are used in beginner clubs and in knockoffs.

During the long, cold Michigan winters, I have a lot of fun building golf clubs. It’s relazing, and keeps me looking forward to arrival of spring. some, I build for myself; some for others. I generally build a set to be auctioned off in my kid’s elementary school auction fundraiser; and I sometimes will repair a club brought to me by a friend.

If you’ve never built a golf club, I suggest you give it a try. It’s not terribly expensive to get started (although it can be quite expensive if you buy all of the optional tools). And it’s not terribly difficult at the basic level. The tricky part of golf club making is not the assembly, but in the choosing of which parts to assemble it with.

Golfsmith has a number of convenient kits to get you started in clubmaking. Teh Viper Ti 464 driver kit gives you a 460cc titanium clubhead with a moveble weight system, a matched Proforce graphite shart, a velvet grip, ferrule (the plastic slip that goes above the clubhead and offers stability and reinforcement to the shaft) and a matching clubhead cover.

You’ll also need to get the clubmaking supply pack, which comes with the proper epoxy (superglue will NOT work), grip tape and solvent, a vise clamp and a step-by-step instructional DVD.

What you’ll need to have on your own is a vice, some sandpaper and a fine toothed saw—all stuff the average homeowner already has.

Give it a shot. It’s fun.

Golfsmith’s SR-460 driver head is its entry in the strangely shaped drivers sweepstakes. Bearing a striking similarity to the Cleveland Hi Bore, the SR-460 has a cavity crown design that shifts the center of gravity low and to the back of the clubhead. This raises the launch angle and reduces spinning, delivering longer drives on the course.

Inside the cavity crown, the clubhead has a baffle system to minimize flexure, or bending, of the crown and sole, allowing maximum energy transfer while tuning the acoustics. In addition, a tungsten heel weight in the head’s sole provides a draw-bias flight pattern to reduce pushing and slicing.

While it may look like a knock-off, GolfSmith has for years produced its own designs, so I am certain that this is—as they say—the result of two years of research by their design staff. The similarity to the Hi-Bore is most likely a case of form following function, just as Nike and Callaway both are offering square driver heads this year.

I’m a big fan of GolfSmith’s Snake Eyes line. I’ve built five sets of Snake Eyes irons—each using a different head—and have found them to all to be well-designed, and well-made. They were all well within tolerances for weight and angles. More importantly, they all played well. Unlike a lot of component manufacturers, GolfSmith’s products are original designs, well executed.

The Snake Eyes Z9s are next on my build list. It’s a great concept: a thin faced, undercut, perimeter weighted “forged” iron.

GolfSmith does this by plasma welding a 1025 carbon steel billed forged face to a 431 stainless steel body. CNC milling on the back of the face is designed to help focus the optimal center of gravity location. The design, Golfsmith says, offers the feel of forged, with the benefits of improved distance and tighter dispersion.

I like the idea a lot.