Many friends and playing partners dismissed me as crazy until they had a go with my rackets. Then some got hooked as well!!!
If you have not tried it, don't start. Once hooked, it is very difficult to accept any other strings.
Maybe some of my failures below could act as a deterrent?
The initial problem was poor tension holding, which was solved by some ridiculous pre-stretch before stringing. Then the line kept snapping during tensioning or tie-offs.
So I tried using fishing crimps instead of tying knots. Unfortunately, that did not work well. Some crimps slipped, some snapped the string, some did not sit down well after crimping while others slid through the grommet hole.
To overcome the constant snapping, I tried a "divide and conquer" strategy. The 12 centre mains were divided into 3 pieces of 4 mains each, resulting in 6 knots, hopefully, to mitigate the amount of re-work if/when each line snaps.
However, the tension loss during tie-offs was more severe than anticipated, despite adding 15 lbs per tie-off. This, in turn, caused uneven pressures between the mains and crosses.
Above, the left racket (note the six orange knots) width was 25.3cm and the right, 26.3cm. The sweetspot disappeared for the left racket, just like this case (link).
This is why flexible hoops are a little more difficult to string well compared to stiff hoops.
The line was cut out immediately and re-strung. Back to a more conventional two tie-off knots this time.
There's some parallax error in the pic above, but the width read 26.3cm after the restring. It took me just two attempts before succeeding this time. Not too bad.
All in all, about four hours was spent pursuing this.
Still keen to try fishing line?
20May2014 update:
- The racket in the last picture above was strung with fishing line mains and a shaped-poly cross.
- It was a bad decision as the mains snapped in just 30 minutes of play, severely notched by the sharp poly edge.
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