Harbor log · 16 Apr 2026
Tip-in depth and collar length
The ferrule cannot invent a sit the head refused. If the shaft did not go home in the hosel, the ring will look long, or crooked, or both. People then ask for a shorter collar as if the plastic were a skirt that could be hemmed independently of the body. Length is measured against a shoulder. The shoulder only exists if the head seated. Sequence is not a ritual. It is the only way the numbers mean anything.
On this pier the ring goes on the tip before the head pretends the job is finished. Dry-mock the ID. Friction should hold the collar for a sit check. Then the head. Then alignment. Then the fillet wipe. A ferrule shoved down after the epoxy has skinned will take a permanent lean. You can sand the lean until the wall is too thin for January. You cannot sand a lean into flush. Mall kiosks love the shove because it is fast and it looks round under a tube light. Daylight on Superior Street is less impressed.
Tip-in depth — how much shaft lives inside the socket — belongs to whoever owns the bore, which is not us. We still have to know it, because collar length is the visible remainder. If a previous installer left the tip short, a standard ring will sit shy and the fillet will try to fill a gap. Fillets yellow. If the installer left the tip long and the head is not quite home, the ring stands proud. Proud is the miss we see most on late reshafts. The golfer thinks it is a style. It is a stop that happened too soon.
We square a small rule against the hosel shoulder before we cut anything. That sit number goes on the ticket next to the color code. If you want a different sit than the old ring, say it while the joint is still a decision. After epoxy, “a little shorter” is a new job and a new hang. July humidity shortens the working window; we mix smaller cups then. January is generous on the clock and rude on the air. Neither month lets us rewind a head that never seated.
There is a superstition that a longer collar adds a secret gram and therefore a secret something else. A longer ring can add a gram or two at the joint. That is not a program. If you want mass, say mass and we will talk about whether this is even the bench for it. Leaving a ferrule proud as a swingweight trick produces a photograph that looks like a miss, because it is one. Corinne will not sign a proud sit. The ticket has her initials. She is not interested in initials on a costume.
Bring the actual gamer. Bring the rest of the set if the length has to agree down the bag. A 4-iron that was reshafted last year and a 9 that has never been opened will not share a sit by accident. We measure both. We recut outliers even when they “look fine” in a garage. Garage light is how proud collars survive until the first tee. The first tee is not a finishing shop. Suite 8 is.