fat strings

[dpg]

My nocks fit best on a 16 strand FF string made by Black Widow.  (They normally supply them as 14 strands, I think).  My question is- am I sacrificing anything (performance...) by using a string of this size. Should I get custom strings made with less strands but thicker serving? My bows are black widow recurves in the 50-60# range.  Thanks.

[4dogs]

Yes. Get ahold of SBD strings, tell him what you want. He will fix you right up and I am sure you will be pleasently surprised with the results.  

[Zradix]

YES YOU ARE SACRIFICING....but not a ton.

Play around with some thinner strings now before the season and get used to em.
Be forewarned...you may very well need to retune arrows with a lighter string.

Many stringmakers will do there best to serve the string to a dia that fits your nocks well.

Chad Weaver (LBR) of champion custom bowstrings is a great guy to deal with.  http://www.recurves.com/bowstrings.html
I don't have personal experience with any others.

[MCS]

Skinny string made my widow a little faster and a lot  quieter. Just my experience.

[Jedimaster]

I replaced the fat string on a Bighorn recurve with a skinny string and it made a world of difference.  Before the bow was loud and had a lot of vibration.  I changed nothing but the string and it became very quiet and dead in the hand.  I was amazed.

Although I'm sure not all bows will demonstrate that level of improvement, I am a believer in skinny strings.  Any bow I intend to keep will wear one.  I used SBD on the Bighorn but there are others here that make a fine string.

[LBR]

My question is- am I sacrificing anything (performance...) by using a string of this size.

Very little by way of performance...probably 2-4 fps., possibly a little more but not likely.

Talk to the folks at BW about Ken Beck's string challenge.  Some bows may show a larger margin with a smaller string.  I haven't experienced it personally.  I have talked to shooters who feel they loose stability by going too small.

My experience with the BW "factory" strings is they don't pad the loops, and aren't as quiet as they could be.  I think they are machine-made, which doesn't lend itself to padding the loops?  The guys at BW could answer that question.

I have made strings for BW bows at my shop and never had to do to extremes to get them very quiet.  The "factory" strings are 14 strands of Dynaflight '97 (if it hasn't changed).  I generally use 12 (Dynafligh '97 or 8125G), with the loops padded to 18.  My bet is 16-18 strands of 8190 with padded loops would also work well.  Of course you have to do your part with tuning and silencer placement.

Chad