Monday, 4 November 2013

Taboo Stringing?

During odd stringing experiments, sometimes the mains snap after the crosses were done. Usually, that meant re-doing the entire stringjob since the crosses were tied to the mains.

After some thought, I decided to modify my racket's grommets to allow tying crosses to crosses. Some modern sticks already have this "feature" in stock form.


I'll let the pictures do the talking...










After the mod was done, I strung the racket to test it out. It worked out pretty well.





However, barely an hour later, the mains snapped!!!



I ran through my mental checklist:

1. Is this a precious racket to me, expensive or hard to find?
2. Am I prepared to risk breakage or warping this frame? 
3. Will I get injured? 

Then I took the plunge... and did some taboo stuff...










Well... the frame remained intact. No cracking nor warping. And weaving the mains was not any more difficult than weaving the crosses. 


I guess this meant another tick for my unorthodox to-do list...


Playtest:

- The racket played a little strange though. The feel of the crosses seemed to appear more dominant than the mains. It could be due to poor mains tensioning from the crosses' frictions? On hindsight, I should have pulled tension twice for each main string.
- There's huge string movement in the mains too.
- It's playable.



05Nov2013 update:
- There must be some string-hungry gremlins running amok... The mains snapped again!!!
- This would be the second time that only the mains were re-done.







Playtest:

- I think this is the second time (link) I tried a fullbed of fishing line and it played very well.
- The feel is much crisper than when hybrid with syn gut. But not as stiff as full poly. Probably crisper than a fullbed of Solinco Tour bite but softer than most polys.
- I would rate this as primarily a spin setup. I could curl the ball anyway and anyhow I wanted.
- Comfort and power were good.
- Despite the very thin (0.9mm) mains line, I was surprised that both flat and spin serves held up so well. Placing the serves were not any more difficult than with my kevlar / syn gut hybrid. So control was very good indeed.
- The sweetspot felt a little smaller than with the syn gut hybrid (link). Or it could be due to the different racket?
- When I examined the strings after about an hour of very hard hits, there was zero notching. Just abrasion marks where the mains and crosses intersect.
- String movement was minimal and there were no huge gaps that caused odd rebound angles.
- When I measured the tension by frequency, the total loss was only about 13% compared to almost 40% when I first tried using fishing line.
- Costs aside, this is a very enjoyable and playable setup for me. Just hope the string gremlins wouldn't chew up this one!




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