I met a guy that was making putters out of solid brass.
The funny thing was, he was hacking the living hells out of his hands, as he drilled various holes. I offered to show him a solution, but he all but spat in my face, as he was a metalworker by trade, and I was an "Ignorant Mechanic".
So, I showed the 'other' guy, how to put a flat on the edge of a drill so it turned into an easy job! To my knowledge, the A-Hole never did learn the trick!
That's kinda what drove me to making my first one. I stumbled on a bunch of videos from what's considered the worlds best custom putter maker, and was somewhat gobsmacked by some of the methods and machining and thought "well I can do better than that....". It was rabbit hole journey discovering the wide world of custom putter makers, but your experience sums up a few of them. I cut them some slack, because most aren't formally trained machinists, or engineers. Just some self taught guys that had an idea, a dream, and the balls to follow it.
It doesn't excuse the attitude to shit on people trying to help you though. To me it doesn't matter what your title or job description is, you can learn something from anybody. Sometimes it's what NOT to do, but still, we have 2 eyes, 2 ears, and one mouth, they should be used in that ratio.
At the end of the day a putter is just a block of metal on a stick. Shaped in certain ways to present a suitable face to hit a ball into a hole with. There are some intrinsic details like loft/lie angle, length, weight, face angle balance, face texture etc. A bit more details than most realize, that all depend on the person swinging it, but still, just a block on a stick. It's not rocket science.
A lot of the details in custom putters are just fancy flash to make you feel better about shelling out hundred of dollars for something that wont make you putt any better.
. A quality well made product/tool is always a pleasure to use though.
Rant on, What drives me NUTS is the trend of crooked letter and number stamping made popular by said industry leader above. As someone that's spent a great deal of time with letter and number punches in my hand taking great care to stamp tooling details straight and even, it pisses me off when some jackwagon comes out and starts stamping all wacky like and people start throwing money at him paying EXTRA for it. Just go buy your own stamps for $30 and let a kid do it, I guarantee it wont be worse. If I payed that much money and received that, I'd blow a gasket. Rant off. lol.
There are quite a few guys though that are very talented highly skilled craftsman that make some really nice products. I have a lot to learn about the cosmetic side of finishing. I'm so used to making utilitarian things, tooling and repair items, and not taking that extra step to make them shine because it's not needed. A quick rub with a scotchbrite pad, and convolute wheel doesn't really cut it on stuff like this. I need to up my game. and learn to buff, plate, and polish. Baby steps.
