Handcrafting a Honu Putter

Time lapse video showing the steps for making a Honu Putter.

[@skolvikings354]

Took a putting lesson from Matt and instantly ordered a Honu. I am now nails inside 15 feet and I make way more left to right putts than ever. The putter is the best face balanced putter I have ever used and I am going to order another one. One for inside on the Matt and one for the bag. Aloha! Mahalo!

[@honuputters1891]

I'm glad to hear that it is working so well for you. Technically, Honu is not "face-balanced", but rather "center of mass balanced". On a face balanced putter, if you sight down the shaft, you will see a point just in front of the center of the face, close to the strike point.

[@robertunderwood9544]

Got my putter yesterday. It is beautiful cannot wait to use it

[@NelsonAerial]

Hey Mitch. I’ve tried many putters, even the L.A.B. DF2.1 and their Mezz.1 putters. I saw your putter on Mr. 1 Putt and contacted Matt Flenniken to get fitted. I live only 45 minutes away in Half Moon Bay from his golf course. It just happened that he had my specs in stock with a Khotai angled grip. WOW!!! I’ve reduced my average number of putts by 3-5 per round, reducing my overall playing index by the same. Went from a 13 to a 9. Thank you for your passion. By the way, everybody wants to try my putter!! Your putter goes exactly where I aim, 100%! Plus, my lag putts are crazy better. Wishing you the best!!! It doesn’t hurt to see Matt’s video having only 18 putts….. Crazy!!! 🙏🏼👌🏽💛 Mahalo

[@gs3940]

I purchased a Honu, put a Winnpro X 1.60 grip on it and I absolutely love to putt now. It's not hype, my score literally went down because my misses are closer and I'm holing more putts than ever. Plus the feel of the putter hitting the ball is just fantastic. I forgot how good it felt like to hit a golf ball with wood. It took a week or two to adjust my stroke and stance, but once I did, it was just magic. What I get a kick out of, is when I play with others, their first reaction is "wtf is that thing". By the end of the round after I smoke everyone on the green, their like, "can I try that".

[@honuputters1891]

Thanks G S! It is comments like this that keep me going. As you can probably tell from the amount of work involved in making a Honu putter, I don't make a lot of money on this business. The positive feedback that I get from users makes it all worthwhile.

[@gs3940]

@@honuputters1891 Stay with it! I know its an uphill battle taking on the golf monopolies but you have a WINNER! And by the way, You Tube reviews from independent reviewers like Mr Short Game and Mister One Putt work. That's how I found the Honu

[@mgrassodirector]

Played my first round with my new Honu this past week. I had several one-putts wherein I saved par. The feel of this putter is exquisite. Like butter. I chose the Kotahi grip and have it positioned, as Mr. One Putt does, in the anatomical position so the wedge shape of the grip is facing about 2:30 on the shaft, and it fits the right hand perfectly.

[@honuputters1891]

Thanks for the testimonial! I'm glad that it is working well for you. If you are one of the recent customers who had to wait a long time to receive your putter, my apologies. I ran into a lot of production challenges at the beginning of this year with weather and family issues and power outages and equipment failure. Hopefully they are behind me now; production is back in full swing.

[@raita_appi]

Its good to see you in action Mitch. I am pretty sure your golf passion is seen through the quality of putters. When I start to play golf, I know whom to come for the guidance :) Good luck!

[@dougie6897]

Gorgeous putter..... but dreadful inappropriate Scott Joplin piano ragtime underscore .

[@honuputters1891]

Thanks Subash!

[@colinc.8742]

Beautiful piece of craftsmanship, but it won’t make you a better putter, only practice will achieve that. Tiger used the same putter for the last 20 years as did Jack N.

[@davidmeeks7449]

Jack changed to a mallet putter to win his last major.

[@colinc.8742]

@@davidmeeks7449 I stand by by comments.

[@jonq8714]

Do you laminate for dimensional stability over a single piece of wood?

[@honuputters1891]

The lamination is because I cannot source material that is thick enough. In principle, the Chinese bamboo-sheet-goods factories can make any thickness that you want by choosing the thickness of the individual strips and the number of layers that they lay up to make the planks, but the minimum order is about a cubic meter of material. That would be more than I could use in a decade, and the shipping and storage cost would be prohibitive. So I buy what I can get from "nearby" stock, and laminate two pieces to make up the thickness, and then plane down to the actual thickness that I want. It is a never ending problem to source the stock in the quantities that I can manage. I have gone through at least 4 different layup variations in the 6 years I have been making putters, and another one is in the works. Making things in modest quantity is a real challenge; you can't afford to spend a lot up front, like you would for large-volume runs, but you need to get enough so your processes are efficient and you are not having to figure out something new for ever unit. Since I started, the price of the bamboo has increased by a factor of 4 and the availability of suitable material has dropped.

[@jonq8714]

@@honuputters1891 I truly appreciate the thoughtfulness of that response. I'm a hobbyist woodworker, have make things on small commission, but mostly for myself. While I don't 100% know the challenges you face, I know enough that it must be daunting. Do you use bamboo for any specific purpose or is it part of your branding given your locale? I just had a large oak tree fall behind my home, so I was thinking about using some of that in a few putter builds for myself and my friends should they want them, but that wood has an origin story for me (even though I prefer other hardwoods to oak). I was just curious about your species selection. Cheers friend, and continued good luck!

[@honuputters1891]

@@jonq8714 The way this came about is that , after retiring from the computer industry, I was trying to improve my golf game (low single-digit handicap) and that meant improving my putting. Intense practice gave me a backache and my putting results were worse. I wanted to try some alternative geometries so I went out in the shop and made a square slab out of some bamboo flooring from a previous project, drilled it to the angle I wanted, and put in a long shaft. I wasn't expecting it to be any good, but it turned out to be amazing on short putts and the feel was exquisite. It was too light for long putts and every attempt to add weight ruined the short putt performance, until I realized that the added weight was messing with the balance. I tried other hardwood species but nothing quite felt like the laminated bamboo (with appropriate grain alignment). You can make a great putter out of other hardwoods on a one-off basis, but mass production can be difficult due to variations in the grain. Bamboo has very straight, tightly packed fibers so it tends to be relatively consistent if you can get good quality material without voids. It is also among the hardest of "woods" - although it is technically not wood but grass.

[@jonq8714]

@@honuputters1891 Amazing! I was actually considering using a copper face plate for aesthetics and then tungsten weights to get it close to a traditional cast mallet putter, the finding the balance point prior to locating the shaft, time consuming but seems to make sense in practice. I wonder though if the copper will rob me of the pleasure of using the wood in the first place... since I've considering swapping my driver out for a persimmon by Louisville Golf maybe I should go "all-in" and experiment with different hardwoods myself. Tinkering is fun. Another reason I want to do this is to make a side saddle for my brother who puts face on but with a standard length putter shaft... he says it's more comfortable but I've never seen him actually make a putt (Mr. Gimme). Thanks for your responses.

[@honuputters1891]

@@jonq8714 I would be tempted to use brass instead of copper. I think that copper might dent

[@maliabarros8264]

Apl😅