string material

[jess stuart]

Well I have finally used up my supply of fast flight string.  I will be ordering soon should I go with D-97 or something else.  I only have experience with B-50 and fast flight.  Your suggestions and experiences are appreciated.

[walkabout]

b50 is tried and trued many times over, and its pretty easy to find for reasonable prices. no need to worry about reinforcing nocks or anything like fast flight, and the few extra fps isnt so much a big deal for most trad/primitive archery. great thing about b50 is you can use it to make a tiller string and itll work for any bow too. just my 2 cents.

[Robertfishes]

I have a friend that makes my strings and he made me two 452x strings for my two recent R/D longbow builds. Jeff also built me a couple of Fastflite plus strings for my recurves, they are nice too. He adds extra strands for padding in the loops. I used the Black Widow D97 strings when I had BW bows. Lot of different string materials to choose from.

[DCM]

Well as an alterative view point, B50 isn't even useful as a tillering string because you have to bend the bow so much to allow for the stretch.  I've braced a bow being tillered 4" and more with it and literally watched it stretch down to nothing.  Don't get your fingers caught in there!  Similarly, it robs cast and increases noise, wrist slap and handshock.  Fortunately if you craft your string grooves and string loops correctly, you don't even have to re-inforce for FastFlight, even on woods as soft as elm, even yew if you are careful, in my experience.  

I personally would go back to FastFlight.  At around $23 for 8900' the last time I checked it's a great value, compared to $8 for 4200' of B50 or something like 450+ at $50 a spool.  I think I figured it costs about a quarter (25 cents) of material to build a FF string compared to about 16 cents for B50 way back over a decade ago when I was trying to decide what to use.  I tested both and when I first tried FF was amazed at the difference between Dacron and low stretch materials.  

For the bowyer/hobbiest it's just free performance, and particularly pronounced on bows with lots of early draw weight, and/or really long bows like elb.  After you've built a few bows, performance becomes increasingly the goal, after all the other criteria are satisfied.  Why build, and draw, a 60# bow when a 50# can make the same cast?  Why put up with that low "hummmmmm" as a bow continues to vibrate after the shot, not to mention the handshock and wrist slap.

And I bet if you find a vendor with B50, they'll have low stretch as well, probably FastFlight.

[frank bullitt]

Jesse, if Fast Flight has worked for you, I would stay with it! D-97 is about the same, little larger diameter, but price is pretty similar.

Nothing wrong with B50 either. I remember a time, BF, Before Fast Flight, when we only had the one material! Now look at the choices.

I started putting F.F. on my selfbows, mostly osage, in 1991, after building strings for Black Widow with it. You can't beat it for toughness, abrasion resistance, and low stretch!

If you ask over on the trad bowmaking supplies section, you probably could get some pretty cheap or for trade!

Good shootin,

Steve

[Jason Jelinek]

I'm with DCM on this one.

FF strings are tough, last much longer than B50, are quiet on selfbows and perform better.  In my opinion they behaive more like linen strings (except they are lighter and more durable) compared to B50.

[Darryl Quidort]

DCM - You mention "If you craft your string grooves and string loops correctly" that you don't need to reinforce the bow tips.  I'm interested in how you craft your bow tips.  I just finished an Osage selfbow and I'd like to try a D-97 string...but I'm afraid to.  I have about 3/8 inch of wood left between the nocks.  In your opinion is that enough for a D-97 string?  Thanks for the info.

[Osagetree]

I've never used anything but B50,,, I always stretch the strings before using them for tillering or even for my replacement strings which have been few!

[frank bullitt]

Darryl, I have a Black locust bow built by Gary Davis from 1991, with very thin tips, have been shootin 450+, 6 strands, no problem. My personal made osage bows have F.F. strings.

You shouldn't have any problems with the D97. Selfbows are solid, not laminated, so reinforcing is not an issue. Your not going to "saw" the tip off.

There's nothing wrong with either materials. The reason I use the High performance material on my wood bows, first, it puts all the energy into the arrow. Quiet and efficient shot for hunting.

[Darryl Quidort]

Thanks for the reply, Frank.  I'll try it!

[DCM]

Darryl, basically teardrop shaped where the string lays staight across the limb at brace height.  Sorry, this is the best pic I have, but there's a whole thread at paleo on string grooves and nocks.  There's a good tute at stickbow too, for lam bows but it's all the same.  The idea is to spread the force over as much surface area as possible, and avoid having the string bend around, pressing into the grain of the wood.  Wood is very strong in compression across the grain, not so much with the grain where it has a tendancy to split.  I also have started relieving "above" the groove so the string won't interfere at full draw, something I did not appretiate years ago when I built this one.

 

[George Tsoukalas]

Y'all are free to use whatever you want. All I've ever used is B50. In over 20 years of bow making B50 has served me quite well.  I see no reason to change. I use old B50 bow strings for tillering. I long string tiller out to 10 inches and reduce the stave to 10# over final target weight. I don't need a big heavy string to tiller.Too many twists per inch can cause problems.  The ideal is 1 - 2 twists per inch. Otherwise the string acts as a  spring and will stretch quite a bit. Jesse, I should mention that my comments are in reference to selfbows. The use of other strings on bows that can accept them is established. Ask your bowyer. Jawge

[DCM]

Actually linen was used for millinia before polyester was invented in the '40s.  B50 is Dupont polyester or Dacron.  Linen is even lower stretch than FF (the current FF+ anyway), and substantially lower mass than B50.  Similarly, hemp strings offer better performance.  Oddly, bowyers, archers and hunters of old did not seem to have the aversion to change we suffer today, or to the unfounded concerns of low stretch/low mass strings "sawing" stuff off.  Rather the transition to synthetic post WWII was all about the advantage in longevity compared to natural fibers, not performance.  But alas, dogma lives long and dies hard.  Ironic given bowyers historic and passionate pre-dispositions wrt to preferred bow wood species when contrasted with the prevailing dogma today.  Darned ironic.

Ok.  I'm done.  Now I understand why some folks get so worked up about topics like AGW, etc..

[Jason Jelinek]

DCM,

I also noticed that 2# differene in draw weight between B50 and and FF/linen.

I made 2 strings for the same selfbow at the same brace height, there was a 2# difference in draw weight between the B50 string and the linen string.  That was over 8 years ago.

[Innocente]

DCM: i had the exact same revelation while making my first fiberglass laminate build this past week... noted the TICK sound at full draw as the string pops out of the tip overlay - investigated it for hours, and realized i needed to relieve the string notch area ABOVE the string.  filed it down above the string, no more tick.

and just so my post has anything at all to do with this topic:

i love making my own b50 flemish twist strings because the stuff is so CHEAP!  i'd probably be willing to make strings of yarn, if i convinced myself i'd save a dime.