Using a Fenwick Elliott Shaft on an existing Head

A number of players are using Fenwick Elliott shafts fitted on heads made by other makers. This is not particularly surprising, since other makers make heads that are peripherally weighted to a greater or lesser extent, but no other makers have incurred the expense of setting up the tooling needed for our graphite shafts.

What do I need to do to fit a Fenwick Elliott shaft to my existing head?

This depends on what sort of head you want to use.

A timber RPM head is the easiest - simply remove the old shaft and insert a Fenwick Elliott shaft using the RPM collar.
An RPM international is also easy, but because the head is rather shallow (as well as narrow), 5 millimetres or so will need to be removed from the base of the Fenwick Elliott shaft - this can be done with a hacksaw. This head does not use a collar.
A traditional timber head fitted with a timber shaft is also fairly easy:

Saw off the old shaft at or near the head
Drill a 30mm hole 6mm deep from the bottom of the head, using an accurate drill press,
Drill a 25mm hole from the bottom of the head, right through the top of the head. This hole needs to be exactly in the middle of the 30mm hole, and hence exactly in the middle of the head. After you have done this, you should have achieved a 2.5mm shoulder at 6mm into the head.
We will supply one of our standard aluminium collars (30mm diameter and 6mm thick) and 8mm hex screw.

If you can get your mallet to Adelaide, we can do this for you.

If your head is less than 54mm deep (or 58mm deep if you plan to use a 10 mm thick RPM collar), then the shank of the shaft will be too long for your head (the shank on a Fenwick Elliott shaft is 46 mm long + 6mm for the collar + 2mm to allow a gap between the shaft and the collar = 54 mm). If there is not this gap, then the shaft will not be held firmly in position, and is liable to rotate during play. A deficit can be made good by using one or more of the following methods:

There is 14mm of thread in the Fenwick Elliott shaft, so the length of the shank can be reduced. To keep as much thread as possible, saw off the minimum needed to achieve the required 2mm gap. 5mm or more can readily be achieved in this way.
We can make recessed collars, which will gain about 4mm.
As a temporary method, a spacer can be slipped over the shank, so as to sit above the head. This does not look too elegant, but is a useful method of checking out the playing characteristics without altering a shaft.

Which way round?

The shaft should be fitted with the writing fore and aft, see shaft specification.

In a timber head, this means that the alignment spline can self-indent along the line of the grain..