Tell us on the forum your experiences of forging and cast heads. Has this feature helped you understand the processes? What differences in performance have you discovered?ED

It's a very good feature, and gives a good introduction to casting v forging (okay, with an obvious slant towards Mizuno!).

I personally find the differences in forging v casting are outweighed by club head design. I'm prepared to believe that in a true one-to one comparison, forged feels slightly softer, but I think that this is a tiny effect compared with the difference between a well-designed and badly-designed club head.

very good advertisement by Mizuno to let the punters see why Mizuno forgings are better than , .... ?

well , they're comparing against cast clubs -- forge & cast are 2 entirely different ways of working metal

would be more relevant if they compared their forgings against other forged clubs IMO -- would there be a very noticable difference ? -- I somehow doubt it

many ways to forge metal as well ...

http://www.forging.org/facts/wwhy6.htm

I've played forged blades since 1979 and loved them to bits,I've always hated the harder cast feel.But that was then,this is now.I changed to Ping i3 cast blades for forgiveness,no other reason,I simply do not play enough golf to keep with my last set,the Macgregor Muirfields.

Imo its difficult to tell the difference because its normally offset and cavity wieghting that has a much bigger impact on your feel than whether its cast or not.If you get 2 clubs with the same offset,same cavity back or blade design then it becomes interesting.I've read that Mizuno gave their some irons to a pro and sneaked in a cast head for a laugh and he felt it straight away.I personally love the feel off a forged blade and believe its one of the joys of golf creaming a long iron with a forged blade.

But on the whole unless you are a pro and really need the feedback to analyse your game I can't see what difference it makes to mere mortals.

Its difficult for many players to get a decent test though.They pick up a forged club and it has less offset than their own,it also has a smaller sweetspot and off centre its nowhere near as forgiving as their own clubs.At to that smaller topline and smaller head which effects confidence over the ball.Also,the blades have weaker lofts and they lose distance.Hardly a fair comparison.

Forged for me...but occasionally I get to hit a quality cast cavity back on the course and think.... this is soo easy to hit eg Monty's new Yonex irons with graphite shafts. Tried a 6i demo and was flushing it perfect 2+ clubs longer than mine !

Tried many a cast club - some very good but I find that I cannot control distane as well as the forged clubs I have used for 30 years (not the same set) I must admit to liking the cleveland CG1 but there was too much offset for me. The problem is that there seems to be no decent like for like comparison. Most cast clubs are cavity back with medium to large offset, most forged are blade/muscleback with zero to medium offset. Most lower handicappers do not need the anti slice forgiveness of the larger offsets so go for a design which suits there game - primarily found in musclebacks. Having just bought a set of forged blades, custom fitted, I would take some convincing that there is a cast club out there that is better for my game (and beleive me I have tried plenty over the years). Many modern forged clubs have as mucs forgiveness as very recent cavities. Its all a compromise - and somewhat dependant on the type of courses you play as well - the narrower soled musclebacks may not be as good on a soft parkland course as they are on a firm to dry links course and vice versa with wide soled game improver cavities.

steady on with how much info you give us on 'past clubs' Geldap -- you'll have Mrs Geldap back on here again checking up on you !

.... :0)

more serious , quite agree with what both yourself & Wormburner have stated and the reasons why the differences are there and they are as they are - far better explained by the pair of you than what Mizuno is attempting to state IMHO

Let's be honest here... yes the offset and cavity make the difference between how forgiving a club is... But the same club can be forged instead of cast unless we are talking thin face or other materials.
The only reason the manufacturers cast clubs is cost !!
And if a cast club costs half as much to make, excluding the fact it's also made in china again to further reduce costs, then how come some still charge a hefty premium ?

Paul

tried plenty - not bought plenty. Never actually owned a set of cast clubs, am on my 5th set of forged clubs since started playing.

Stuart - you said it. Cast clubs are cheaper therefor making even bigger profits for the likes of callaway with an inferior mass produced product, your extra £££ goes on players endorsement deals.

Played forged blades since I was 14,now at 42 I have gone to some cavity backs because I play a hell of a lot less.But there are more cavity/musclebacks in forged now,the Nike CGI forged looked great in a shop the other day.

I do not like the look of that section of a 'competitors' forged club with a welded hosel - looks crap

....wouldn't happen to be a Miura by any chance, they have welded hosels.

I will stick with Mizuno thank you.

;-)

Haven't really bought into the big deal about forged clubs. Irons are all made of steel and if there is some minute differences in the crystalline structure of a forged head that may give a smidgen more "feedback" then so what. It totally pales into insignificance compared to the shaft one has in the head, and where you strike the ball in the face of the head.
I'd bet a significant of dosh that in a blind testing 95% of golfers wouldnt be able to discern the difference between a cast and a forged head.

The irons I currently use have Titanium faces and god knows if Titanium can be forged. I get feedback, I know where the ball was struck on the face of the club, and crisp hits feel great, as good as the MP32's I had at one time. But these sort of irons arent kewl. They aren't forged zero offset blah blah. Funny how many of the forged blade users I see cant hit the ball, the clubs are chav decor in their bags.

Sorry but I thought the feature was very unimaginative and lacking in content.

I've tried a bit of both and bought my first forged clubs - Mizuno Comp EZ - about 5-6 years ago.

I still think that the feel of hitting a forged iron off the sweetspot is hard to beat BUT there are definitely a lot of very nice cast clubs out there these days that may or may not have been inspired by forged offerings.
Two such models that spring to mind are the Ping S58 and TM r7 TP, both of which are great clubs with lovely feel. I'm sure there are plenty of others too.
Other manufacturers are also experimenting with softer steel alloys that allow the loft & lie adjustments that were previously the preserve of the forged brigade.

My personal choice is for forged irons (currently) but there are plenty of very good castings around these days. Conversely, more and more companies are making forgings available so we are pretty spoilt. I tried the Nike CCiForged mentioned above and thought them excellent (the cast version is a pig though!). Even Callaway have a set of forgings out! And there are also companies like MD making them avaialbe at a lower price point.

What I have learnt over the past year is not to dismiss anything until I've tried it, and that certainly includes cast irons now.

I've tried a bit of both and bought my first forged clubs - Mizuno Comp EZ - about 5-6 years ago.

one of the most 'player friendly' & best looking set of cavity back irons ever made IMHO -- they blended everything so well

quite why Mizuno moved off this design to then roll out the MX range of clubs we've seen since remains a mystery ? (to me at least)

I still have a set of Mizuno Comp EZ in very good condition - they are everything you say Paul and I cannot bear to part with them.
However, I play with MX 20's (identical dimensionally in all respects, except for an undercut cavity instead of T bar muscle back) - which are probably the definitive compromise between cavity and blade, the long irons are definitely easier to get airborne.

I play Ping i3+ and they are investment cast - was told at Gainsborough last Tuesday that the casting method is different which gives a similar feel to forging.

However, on Thursday i was warming up on the practise area swinging my 9 iron when i caught one of my Miura wedges on the toe.
Result: The Ping is fine, the Miura (sob sob) has a hefty dent in it which has come through from the back to front near the toe causing a blistered look. Luckily it's not on the striking surface!

I play i3s,blades,and you would be hard pressed to tell the difference.But as I said before there are so many other things that effect feel,such as the thickness of the leading edge and the amount of bounce.The sound from my old Hogan blades was like a lovely fizzing crack,thanks to the size of the head,the leading edge and lower bounce,I really had to hit down and fizz those irons.With the Pings being so much more forgiving I just swat the ting away.The sound is totally different,but can I feel the forging through all that lot?

We can all go over this till the cows come home - there IS NO BETTER or worse - the only thing that matters is getting the ball in the hole in the fewest strokes. Find a club that allows you as an individual to do this to the best of your ability and stick with it. If thats the biggest heaviest cavity known to man then great - if its the tiniest shiny blade, as long as its best for you then thats great too.

Creo - please don't tar everyone with the same brush, plenty of decent players play blades as well as cavities, I don't judge a player by whats in his bag or how pretty his swing is. Fact is there are people out there who spend bags of cash on equipment to change it five minutes later, and I would say there are more seriously crap golfers weilding their £350 drivers about out there than there are blade players who can't play. Look down the local range and see all those nike sumo users hitting it 200 yards !! Chances are they won't have forged blades in their bag.

The Miura grain structure is the tightest in the industry, reason being he forges without the hosel attached, this allows him to heat the steel to the highest possible temperature and to strike it at a different angle from the rest, this cannot be carried out to the same perfection with the hosel attached. During the forging process the hosel is the weakest part of the iron and this is why this company (Mizuno) and all others cannot achieve the same quality. If you mass produce you cannot spin weld. A Tight grain structure will allow the head to be a consistent weight, Miura irons do not need weight plugs to bring the head up to weight. If a specific weight is required then the head will be ground more or less. Weight plugs change the centre of gravity of the head this leads to poor feel and poor performance. All Miura heads are +/- .5g

The Miura hosel is welded from a CNC machined tough steel, this gives a consistent bore depth, it is then fiction welded to the iron head, as most engineers are aware a material weld is the strongest part of any joint. The friction welding allows the Miura engineers to be accurate when positioning the hosel at the correct loft and lie angle. The Miura hosel will not move during use.I suspect the picture showing the welded hosel in the Mizuno page was their effort!

One thing Mizuno do which is similar to Miura is the pressing of the groves into the head, this is the best why of producing groves because you are not removing weight from the head. It works even better when the grain structure is as tight as the Miura. During fittings the Miura iron will produce less spin, because the ball stays on the face a fraction longer, on the Mizuno it will slide and spin up the face before it leaves the head. I have seen the spin reading drop by as much as 1000 rpm, good players can feel this, and when they play shots into wind they don't need the extra spin. if you don't believe me ask.

Woods, Woosen, Garcia,Couples ( yes Freddie he asked Bridgestone for 2 sets made by Miura , Woosnam, Olazabal and the list goes on.

Hope this helps some people understand the Miura process, some guys think other companies are as good but they are not, bottom line is you cannot mass produce quality.

(Hi TAZ why do you order a set of the limited Miura blades)