just want to throw out some interesting observation i had recently and wonder if anyone has similar experiences. when i weave/tension my cross string, i used to pre-weave a few strings, and then tension all of them in sequence. then i experimented with weave-tension-weave-tension. and i noticed that the new method gave a harder feel on the string bed and also at the same time, less lively feeling. i switched to the new flow partly because i want the string to stay pulled by the tensioner long and thus produce a truer tension. and partly i thought the process might be faster. but experimental results shows that the resultant string job isn't as good, so i went back to the original flow. anybody has noticed such small changes in their process/flow and causing enough differences in feel to be noticable? the disclaimer is that the tension setting for both cases are identical. which is the base condition for a fair comparison.
As you said, the weave-tension-weave-tension workflow gives a truer "y" tension... so if that feels hard and less lively to you, that means you've reached your max playable tension and you've been actually playing better with the lower "y-1" tension from your old workflow.
the strange part is that the difference is noticable whether it is 24/24, 25/25, 26/26, 27/27, etc. it seems that it is the ratio and not the absolute value itself.
I wonder if part of the difference you are noting has anything to do with string twisting. If you are tensioning three or four crosses sequentially, you could argue that the string does not have as much "room" to untwist between each tensioning. Sounds far fetched but maybe that is giving you a different feel. In my short stringing career, I have settled on threading 2 ahead of tension -- except when I'm approaching those tricky shared grommets, in which case I'll thread several ahead to get through them while the mains are not so tight. This is where the string wants to twist most.
Fidget is probably onto something. If you pre-weave many strings in sequence, you will introduce twist UNLESS you "stroke" the loose end of the string to get the twists out (as I do) before putting it back in the racket; I know a lot of people who weave a string, pull the end out of the racket but keep hold of it while dragging the slack through - this is where the twists come in.
How about entertaining a dumb query, if a string is pulled and twisted around its longitudinal axis...would it be beneficial in net play? Tnx.
Wouldn't be a very active forum if dumb questions weren't entertained. First off, why would you take a highly engineered product and purposefully put it in "wrong"? A sailor spends a lot of time making sure his lines aren't all gnarled up in twists and coils because a twisted rope is unreliable, hard to handle and potentially dangerous. A twisted badminton string would be unequally twisted along it's length, so it wouldn't thread nor stretch properly. The tension would be screwed up and might change over time. It would likely be weaker, too. ________ But this does take us off the original topic and I, for one, am interested in hearing more experienced opinions on kwun's original postulation.
Oh dear, hahaha. I am thinking more in line with why some strings are purposely textured (though materially it may be [may not be] the reason why it is so, nonetheless...) rather than smooth as a candlestick, it sure helps impart a little bit more action on slices and quicker tumbles (technique is a totally different issue altogether). My off topic point is, if a textured string has its benefits using more materials, why not just twist it many times over longitudinally?
twisting produces uneven stretching of the fiber inside the string. the outer fiber has is now being twisted into helical path while the middle fiber mostly remain straight. this unevenness may cause premature string breakage and can also change the character of the string itself. my pre-stringing is quite local and as far as i can tell, produce very minimal twisting.
i haven't measured it. but i wouldn't surprised if the pre-weave flow produce slightly lower frequency. but that's overall frequency avg between the effect of main/cross. main frequency on its own is the same flow.
