dental floss

[penrosefred]

Has anyone used dental floss for a bow string? I have a big spool with a lot of ft. on it, I wondered if I could use it for a temp. bow string untill I get the dracon. If so how many strand would it take for a 50 pd.long bow? What do you think?

[Broke another one]

your not the first person to ask this question and so far I have found the best answer is from "warbow"

"Well, I'm all for pointless idle speculation and empirical testing!  It sounds like fun to me. The only downsides being the possibility of breaking expensive ILF limbs and sever personal injury

The fact is that bow strings for 100 pound plus warbows used to be made out of **linen**, which is nowhere near as strong as nylon. Medieval archers would have killed for such a material (well, perhaps just roughed you up...) Anyway, a nylon bow string should be sturdier than linen, even if not ideal. But rather than just making a bow string out of dental floss, why not do some static breaking strength tests to compare the breaking strength of a single strand of dental floss to a single strand of B50, which has a static breaking strength of around 50# (is that where the B50 comes from?). Then you can calculate how many strands of dental floss you might need--assuming that the nylon in dental floss has a similar dynamic breaking strength as dacron (a pretty big assumption, but I'm guessing it should be true, and I think that nylon is actually more elastic than polyester, IIRC). I'm going to guess that the equivalent nylon string will be much thicker than even dacron, and certainly more so than 8125.

Oh, and try a static test on the teflon strands. Those should be pretty weak, and probably near useless as bowstrings. But, if you are stuck in the wilderness with nothing but cases of dental floss, a spoke shave and some hickory staves... (I'm not sure if minty snares would work...) "

[Innocente]

i've used parachute cord while waiting for a string to arrive, it works great.  nock's a little tight, no question, though.
never thought of using floss, i bet it'd work great!

[ichiban]

floss is made from nylon which is highly elastic and there for stretches alot so it would slow cast alot, but it would stretch less if it where thicker but then it becomes heavy which slows cast. the reason linnen is good is not because of its strength but its low elasticity and low mass. but experimentation is awsome fun i just wouldnt try it on say a 100 lb warbow or your favorit bow..

[barley40]

I'd wait on the dacron. The floss makes dandy nocking points though, and won't wear out your glove.

[dutchwarbow]

broke another one,

today, most traditional warbow strings are made from linen indeed. But the traditional warbow strings were untwisted, glued hempstrings, wich were 'hard as bon'. A friend of mine has experimented with this tegnique, and I've shot a 110# bow with this string. Sadly, the nocks of the bow broke soon after, and the ears of the string broke at the second attempt, but he's getting better with every string he makes.

nylon might be stronger, I don't know. But quality hemp is superb stuff, as those 3mm strings on a 110# bow prooved. And those strings keep getting better... Nylon is worthless stretchy stuff for strings, especially for warbows.

 even dacron is like a rubberband on 120#+!!!  prestretching helps a bit... But surely wouldn't help nearly enough for nylon.

Nick

[bowur]

dental floss should work, I've used artificial sinew before and it's about the same thickness. Just make sure you wrap the heavily used parts(nocks and nocking point for arrow)  with something so it doesnt start fraying