Well, I'm fairly new to making strings, and I'm sure my work isn't the flashest, but I do get by.
However, making strings for my new 70" Redman and a young fellow's new 60" Bobcat has given us a challenging and frustrating time.
This is the first time I've made low-stretch strings for Hills, as previously I made a few Dacron ones without drama for my 70" Wesley.
The drama today and yesterday and last week was that when following the string jig directions (as I have always done), they were coming-out too short. This has resulted in some strings that were unusable, in which the bundles had sections (some quite large) in which they were like two ropes loosely inter-twining instead of that nice round unified appearance that it should have. We do the 7.5"/8" thing for the bottom and top loop respectively.
I fixed it for the young fellow (who needed a string desperately after he accidentally cut through the one supplied with his bow) by making a string using the 62" peg instead of the 60" peg. My string is still unsatisfactory, although it is shooting well, and I will soon be adding a 71" peg hole to the jig.
I have thought about the problem, and I wonder if it has anything to do with us having to make very small loops so that they will not come off the nocks? I imagine that the larger the loop, say for a recurve or a longbow with deeper grooves, the longer your string actually turns-out.
But I don't know why I didn't have this problem when I made Dacron strings for my 70" Wesley Special.
However, we did get shooting, and both of us were very impressed with the feel, the gentleness and the silence of this TS+ as opposed to Dacron that we previously shot. The young fellow's string is a sixteen strand job (I wanted to save a little time and actually get him a string to use, as he had tried and tried and tried to get a string to happen today; later, he will make twelve / sixteen job). Mine is twelve / eighteen string. Both are double served. These truly are quiet set-ups.
Does anyone have any comment or advice or similar experience to offer this novice string-maker?
The really cool thing is that there is another junior bowman hooked on traditional archery and bowhunting, and especially Hill longbows, and he is already learning the art of making strings. He'll keep trying to make some spare strings for himself over the coming weeks. Soon he'll be making-up his own Surewoods for hunting, as I taught him that at school last year.