Oct 15, 2012 Tad Moore's Hoffman Blade... MannKrafted Style Here is a short story about a very unique and rare putter. The Hoffman Blade. The life of this putter goes all the way back to over 20 years ago, when it started out as a quality forging from one of the best forging houses in American golf, the Hoffman Foundry. The Hoffman Foundry did a lot of work for major OEM Golf companies such as Titleist, Maxfli and others. During a 1991 inspection visit to check on some irons that were being made, Tad Moore was presented the opportunity to purchase some of the heel-shafted blade. Fast forward in time and a couple years ago I was having a conversation with Tad and was told, "I know that I had a plan for these heads, but cannot recall what it was." The plan seemed to slip away and after purchasing a relatively small number of these putter heads, Tad returned to his shop in LaGrange, Georgia and put them away in an unmarked box....................where they sat, untouched for over 20 years! I did a good amount of work for Tad over the past couple years and when a customer purchased one of these raw heads from Tad and asked me to "MannKraft" it, I was happy to put on my thinking cap and come up with something very unique. This blade started with a very raw forged head that had a good amount of rust from 20+ years of storage in a moist climate. To increase the challenge there were also forging marks that ran all the way around the putter head like a bulging seam that split the putter in half, running down the neck, along the top edge of the putter, down the toe and back from the toe end to heel end and up the neck, again. To say the least, the forging marks were a pain to clean up sufficiently and come away with this end result. Next, I removed a width of material from the face, making room for the Damascus steel insert. While I had that section cleared, I also milled three ports, each approx. .375" in diameter and .250" deep. In each of these ports, I dropped a tungsten cylinder that I had turned on the lathe to fit snugly. These three plugs brought the weight of the putter up to a more modern weight (remember this thing was originally forged in the 1980's). This style head normally weighed in at between 310-318 grams. With the addition of the cylinders, this one is slightly over 330 grams. The putter is currently in finishing getting a refresh on the hot salts black oxide finish and will be available for pictures very, very soon. -LaMont in AZ
