I rang up my old friend who is a fishing enthusiast. Knowing that I was using it for tennis, he bought me a set of 49 strand stainless steel wire meant for shark fishing!!! (link1)(link2)
It fit the job perfectly! Since I was no stranger to stringing with steel wire (link), I accepted the strings happily!
With only 10 main strings, I laced them all up before tensioning.
The wire was extremely sharp, especially the ends when it frayed. Despite applying super glue to keep it together, I still suffered a lot of pokes, nicks, scratches and cuts.
To protect the clamps, I placed small pieces of cardboard on the string before clamping.
With normal strings, weaving was extremely easy on this super open pattern. However, given the very rough textured mains, there was too much friction. I had to go super slow.
Even then, strands of synthetic gut was peeled off by the mains while pulling through. My finger tips were cut while weaving too.
Towards the last few crosses, I guess the syn gut has had enough and snapped while tensioning!
Not wanting to re-do from scratch, I used a third piece of string to fill the bottom four crosses. So it's six tie-offs in total.
Here's how it looks when done. Haven't decided whether to snip off the tails of the tied mains yet...
If you decide to string this wire, here are some learning points on hindsight:
- Wear gloves or tape up your finger tips before weaving.
- Wear safety goggles.
- Try this only on an old racket you don't mind risking damage.
- Do not straighten the mains with your fingers after tensioning. It cuts very deep!
- Plan for blocked holes. It was very difficult to move the wire aside.
- Steel wire is very heavy so a light racket with a lower SW than you normally use would be good.
Playtest:
(Opinions from 2 other hitting partners were included below)
- No surprise here. It felt similar to the previous steel wire.
- Not boardy at all! In fact, most freshly strung full polys played stiffer and deader. This had a little more power. I suspect it was due to the huge tension loss from tie-offs.
- The feel was something between a kevlar/syn gut and poly/syn gut hybrid. Soft, but the ball bite and impact feel was really good here.
- Some pocketing could be felt during impacts but the rebound angle was really low so I had to aim up. Good for folks who tend to hit the ball out.
- In short, tight, controlled and very very spinny. Plus a decent sized sweetspot!
- Downside was it lasted me only 15 minutes. If you click and zoom in on the pic below, you would see how rough the syn gut had been abraded by the wire, especially at the sweet spot.
Before anyone asks, I would not be doing this wire stringing for any one. No exceptions.
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