My racquet ... injured or dead?

[Cereal68]

My BLX Tour suffered a rather forceful 'drop' during a team warm-up overhead drill. It didn't sound good, but I didn't see anything other than marred paint immediately. Later I noticed a sort of paint bubble and when I scraped it away and peeked under the bumper guard ... it's cracked on the outside of the frame, but not all the way through to the inside.

It seemed to be hitting fine.:?

Through the years I've lost a few racquets in this way, usually serving, but the damage is usually much more obvious and clearly fatal.

Can this frame be re-strung or is it done when the string is done?

Is it worth keeping in the bag or should I just toss it and replace it now?

 

[esgee48]

The frame is injured, probably fatally. Repeated hits will eventually enlarge the crack to the point that it will go through the outside of the frame. You could try a repair with epoxy, but you would have to take the strings out to do it properly with no guarantee of success.

Just play with it until it (frame or string) breaks. If it makes it to the next string job, try the epoxy route.

 

[goran_ace]

It seemed to be hitting fine.:? ...

Can this frame be re-strung or is it done when the string is done?

Is it worth keeping in the bag or should I just toss it and replace it now?

If it is hitting fine then no need to toss it just yet, particularly if you have other rackets in the bag. Keep playing with it as long as it feels ok.

As for restringing, when the string breaks it doesn't hurt to try to restring it if you have your own stringing machine. Worst case scenario it just confirms that it is broken and you were going to toss it and buy a new one anyway. Best case scenario it wokrs out ok, you delay having to buy a new racket, and you just have to monitor the crack to see if it gets worse. If you bring it into a pro shop to be strung, have your stringer take a look at it and be aware of their policy about stringing broken rackets. In the pro shop at the club where I worked the policy was that if the racket had a crack we would either refuse to string it if it was bad or if it wasn't too bad we'd talk to the customer and tell them that we could string it if they want us to but they'd have to acknowledge that we are not responsible for any further damage to the racket.