String Specs Explained

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Category: Making Strings

Published: Wednesday, 09 December 2020 02:45

Written by Super User - PartyPooper

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So you went on archery talk and asked... "Does anyone know the string specs for a ***** Bow?
What you got back is something that appears to be incomprehensible. It probably looks something like this:

55 7/16”
0--18 21--22 5/8 26 3/4--29 1/2 18--0

Your first impression is “What the hell is that?” I know you’re asking yourself why does every one need to speak in acronyms and cryptology? It’s OK take a deep breath I’ll do my best to explain. These questions are asked all the time on AT and the data is often shared between string makers so writing it out with a full explanation is painful and for string builders who do this all the time unnecessary. So a sort of non-standard short hand has evolved. Not all specs will look exactly as above but they sort of conform to the same sort of idea where the length of each serving is laid out in dimensions of where you start and stop your serving. So in this case 0-18 is stating: from the loop to 18” is the strings left most end serving. From the same post you measure over 21 inches and start the next serving for the string stopper and it ends at 22 5/8”. Then the next serving segment is for the center serving where the D-loop will be tied on and it starts at 26 ¾ and goes to 29 ½”. You finish it off with an 18” end serving on the other end of the string. This all sort of make sense when you consider that most string builders will layout the string by making tick marks with a sharpie marker where all the serving start and stop points are. So having just a list of dimensions makes the markup quick and easy. That’s the verbal description but some of us like to use visual explanations so below is an image, to help show the markup process.

Also unless otherwise stated the general rule is that a strings length is measured under 100 pounds of pressure from outside of post to outside of post.