[Zulu]

Well I made a couple of strings recently.(Thanks Nuthatch and Mr. Barbee).

I made a 16 strand 2 bundle flemish from 8125 and a 12 strand 2 bundle with the loops padded to 16 strands.

I put them them through the chrony from 6 feet today after they have had about 200 shots through each of them. The limbs were left at the same settings for all three strings.

My benchmark string to test them against was a 16 strand endless that D.Merrill had made and Stevelong had sent me.

The D_Merrill string shot at 199fps (average of 20 shots)
The 16 strand femish was at 194fps. This string was around 25gr heavier than the endless.
The 12 strand shot at 198fps and sounded the quietest of them all, but not by much.

Clearly there is an art to making a string that performs, just not sure what it is.

The numbers may not suggest much difference but I read somewhere that 1# of draw weight equals about 2fps. This adds up as I had to wind in the limbs about 1 1/2 turns to get the 16 strand flemish to tune to the arrows.

 

[newell38]

D Merrill builds an excellent string!

 

[Grantmac]

Hard to beat a good endless of "normal" strand count.

-Grant

 

[stevelong]

Nice job ROD, strings are on my list of things "to do" learning, etc. next winter.

 

[D_merrill]

While it is nice to see my number fastest. I would really be interested in comparing the three strings types when made by the same person when comparing string types or 1 string type made by different people if comparing makers. Although I think they are close enough that any of the three would serve you well.

 

[Zulu]

I had to go down to 12 strands to get close to yours. I also took great care to get the counter twists correct and an even tension on each strand. It probably took about 3 hours to make that string though I don't have a server and used fishing nylon to serve the center.

The 16 strand showed well stiff at the same poundage. Also the test of time comes into play. The string of yours hasn't changed brace height in 3 months!

 

[stevelong]

Rod, one thing easy to get lost in the string talk, you are getting some great speeds from your setup. NICE.....not all-important, but NICE.

 

[Zulu]

Yeah Steve, the object was not to extract as much speed as possible from my string but rather to gauge the quality of the string.

It also makes sense to have a well performing string when you think of the R&D that goes into new limbs to get an extra 6fps.

This is why I can well believe stringmakers claims that their strings will add performance to your bows. These claims are often put aside as hype (I'm thinking of the Widow challenge that was put out).

Stability is also an equation but I'm not sure how that would be tested.

 

[J-archer]

Thanks for posting the results. This confirms that endless loop construction of the same strand count does perform a little better than flemish. To make it a fair test, the center serving length and nocking point type needs to be the same across the different strings.

 

[Zulu]

I think D.Merrill has it right when he says the same bloke needs to make up the 3 different strings.

I'm new to all this so a more proficient stringmaker would likely get the 16 flemish closer to the 16 endless.