Steel or Graphite

 Whats better in your eyes steel clubs or graphite??

Personal choice, Ollie. Myself I feel that many golfers would benefit from using graphite shafts in their irons

I use them now and I like the feel of the clubhead as the shaft flexes to ones swing.

It helps to time the ball knowing where the head is.

John S, any particular reason why you think this? After all the whole world seems to use graphite in their woods.

 I have Dynamic gold steel shafts on all my irons but have a super whippy grahite shaft on my driver. This gives me a lot of distance but the key is to time it properly...if I go at it hell for leather I'll slice it.

That question is a bit like asking which is best, a VW or an Audi.  There is no answer.  Steel is good for what it is, cheap and simple to manufacture but has the scatter gun approach to stiffness where step changes and material thicknesses dictate where, when and how the shaft flexes.  Unfortunately for mass produced shafts the variations in tolerance means that only an average flex value can be manufactured.  Composite shafts (very few use solely graphite as the matrix) should theoretically be more accurate and repeatable in their flexure because of the way they're made - but then again in order to make them cheaper that's not always the case.  In theory a composite shaft can be made as stiff or as flexible as needed with very little increase in weight with a bit of judicious winding.

In my opinion the next big step will be made when Metal Matrix Composites (MMC's) are commercially available - not just the pretend ones that are claimed to be in some drivers - but really exotic blends such as the Silicon Titanium MMC's that are being used in aerospace.    

Good interesting post, Tim. which confirms for me that graphite is the way to go.

With a bit of thought it should be possible to build composite right and left handed shafts, now there's a thought

How are they more accurate, John, you have statistics to prove that statement.

Just because most of the pros use them does not mean that they are better, it's just that no-one has bothered to put the resource in to developing composite clubs to that degree.  After all, if Titleist were providing my clubs, I'd take whatever they threw at me.  The beauty of a pro endorsing a manufacturers kit is that the clubs that are provided are meticulously sorted to match the particular characteristics of the player, the rest of the rubbish is thrown out and sold at vastly inflated prices to the likes us - who, in a wonderful piece of reverse marketing, actually act as unpaid sales reps for them!

As I said earlier, a composite shaft can be made to whatever stiffness, flex point and weight required, it's just that it's a bit more expensive to do that than get a vast army of unskilled chinese workers to churn out steel.  Just you wait until iron and steel prices start to go through the roof again and I bet you'll see more 'revolutionary' materials (composites) start to be used. 

I am not known for acknowledging new technology having been brought up with steel shafts and persimmon woods.

I just feel that the majority of players are using equipment that is not best suited to their swings. Image seems to be the name of the game these days.

I can use my friends stiff steel shafted forge mizuno's without any problem. I hit them straight but no distance. The same head on a graphite regular shaft would give adequate distance without any detraction in accuracy.

I have a set of x 14's steelheads by Callaway, which I picked up for £100 as I found that I was not able to hit my old blades with my usual precision. The graphite shafted  X 14's suit me fine for most shots although I do miss the wedges of the blades and the longer irons for ease of shaping. Something that is fairly difficult with the X 14's.

John, steel shafts good ones anyway are more accurate than grafite purely on the torque degree.Irons shafts have low torque 1.8 to 2.5* and low end grafhites are 4 to 5.5*. The lower the torque degree the tighter the dispersion ratio, you can get low torque grahfite shafts but they cost a fortune I have a set of Roddio I 10's  cost over $1000 a set and with a torque degree of 2.4 great shaft and play very much like steel weighing in at 105gm's. These were very acurate but at a cost but i couldn't get anywhere near the distance I do from steel also I much prefer the feedback from steel.

Why do pro's use grafhite , because believe me they ain't playing the same shafts that you buy in a retail golf club . There's a big difference in manufacture between tour shafts and retail , joe public are being short changed big time.

Didn't I just say that, oh Welsh one?

Please explain dispersion ratio.. 

Example torque of 2 may deviate 5yrds off a straight shot where as a 5 may deviate 10-15 ,make sense.