norcal
Legend
First of all I want to let you know I do not own this product, I have no stake in it's success, I'm not being paid for this review, I didn't even get a Stringweaver tool out of it! A guy on my local league team (he is a professor at the local college and a good player) invented the 'Stringweaver' tool and he knew that I string and he asked if I wanted to try it. I told him sure, I would be happy to. I told him I was a member of the tennis warehouse forum and I could write a review on the 'stringing' forum there also if he wanted. I don't know if he is a member here, but if you have any questions I'm sure he can come here to answer them.
Some background on me. I have been stringing rackets for about 30 years. When I was younger I strung for quite a few people and strung quite often. I wouldn't consider myself an 'expert' but I've strung hundreds (maybe a thousand?) of rackets over the years on many different stringers. At this point I only string for myself and a couple friends and average probably three rackets per month on my ancient Klippermate. Anyway, here goes:
Instructions: very simple to understand and figure out. I did not even watch the video on the website. Basically you just fit the tool over the strings and lock it in place. It only takes a few seconds. You push the lever one way to separate the main strings and then alternate as you string each cross. You do not need to take the tool off the strings, you can just slide it down the string bed as you go. The tool itself is made of heavy duty plastic and seems quite durable.
Using the Stringweaver: Once the tool is installed It effectively separates the main strings so when you weave the cross string there is essentially no resistance. I have strung full beds of polyester and hybrids with a polyester cross in the past and absolutely hated weaving with polyester. This tool will certainly take a lot of the hassle and pain out of weaving, especially polyester, and allows you to string the crosses more quickly. I imagine once you get used to this tool and tweak your weaving technique you can go really fast (especially, say in an 18x20 full poly job lol nightmare). I use a poly main, syn cross in my 16x18 frame and the whole process was pretty straight forward and simple.
Things did get a bit cramped towards the throat, I was able to use the tool down to the last cross without much trouble and could have fiddled around with it placement wise to help with the last one but I just took it out and did the final one the old fashioned way because it's so ingrained in my muscle memory anyways.
One thing I wondered about was if using the Stringweaver would affect the tension of the string job - when tensioning the crosses you don't have the friction of the mains (since they are mostly separated) so I figured the overall tension would be higher. I strung this racket the exact same tension/same string as the one previous (without the tool) and according to RacketTune App the numbers were:
Previous job: 46.9
Stringweaver job: 47.6
I record my stringjobs and they are all between .2 of each other so this one seems to be .5 tighter. Of course the variation could be due to the vagaries of using a dropweight, or my general suckiness as a stringer or whatever but it kind of makes sense it would be slightly tighter.
In conclusion, I would recommend this tool. It is very easy to use and I think it would benefit beginning stringers who are slow at weaving, any stringer who has to deal with poly crosses, stringers who string more dense patterns and stringers in general who want to weave faster/easier (or are string geeks who like to try different things). If you string infrequently or have an easy string/pattern and have your weaving technique down then maybe it's not for you.
Another attractive feature of the Stringweaver is the price - $35. When he first told me about the product I was guessing $60-ish. To me as a stringer $35 is worth the wear and tear on my fingertips as well as the potential increase in stringing speed.
Anyways, hope you guys find this review informative. You can google the name of the tool for more info. Edtit: Google stringweavers, I guess without the s it takes you to some guitar website or something.
Cheers
Some background on me. I have been stringing rackets for about 30 years. When I was younger I strung for quite a few people and strung quite often. I wouldn't consider myself an 'expert' but I've strung hundreds (maybe a thousand?) of rackets over the years on many different stringers. At this point I only string for myself and a couple friends and average probably three rackets per month on my ancient Klippermate. Anyway, here goes:
Instructions: very simple to understand and figure out. I did not even watch the video on the website. Basically you just fit the tool over the strings and lock it in place. It only takes a few seconds. You push the lever one way to separate the main strings and then alternate as you string each cross. You do not need to take the tool off the strings, you can just slide it down the string bed as you go. The tool itself is made of heavy duty plastic and seems quite durable.
Using the Stringweaver: Once the tool is installed It effectively separates the main strings so when you weave the cross string there is essentially no resistance. I have strung full beds of polyester and hybrids with a polyester cross in the past and absolutely hated weaving with polyester. This tool will certainly take a lot of the hassle and pain out of weaving, especially polyester, and allows you to string the crosses more quickly. I imagine once you get used to this tool and tweak your weaving technique you can go really fast (especially, say in an 18x20 full poly job lol nightmare). I use a poly main, syn cross in my 16x18 frame and the whole process was pretty straight forward and simple.
Things did get a bit cramped towards the throat, I was able to use the tool down to the last cross without much trouble and could have fiddled around with it placement wise to help with the last one but I just took it out and did the final one the old fashioned way because it's so ingrained in my muscle memory anyways.
One thing I wondered about was if using the Stringweaver would affect the tension of the string job - when tensioning the crosses you don't have the friction of the mains (since they are mostly separated) so I figured the overall tension would be higher. I strung this racket the exact same tension/same string as the one previous (without the tool) and according to RacketTune App the numbers were:
Previous job: 46.9
Stringweaver job: 47.6
I record my stringjobs and they are all between .2 of each other so this one seems to be .5 tighter. Of course the variation could be due to the vagaries of using a dropweight, or my general suckiness as a stringer or whatever but it kind of makes sense it would be slightly tighter.
In conclusion, I would recommend this tool. It is very easy to use and I think it would benefit beginning stringers who are slow at weaving, any stringer who has to deal with poly crosses, stringers who string more dense patterns and stringers in general who want to weave faster/easier (or are string geeks who like to try different things). If you string infrequently or have an easy string/pattern and have your weaving technique down then maybe it's not for you.
Another attractive feature of the Stringweaver is the price - $35. When he first told me about the product I was guessing $60-ish. To me as a stringer $35 is worth the wear and tear on my fingertips as well as the potential increase in stringing speed.
Anyways, hope you guys find this review informative. You can google the name of the tool for more info. Edtit: Google stringweavers, I guess without the s it takes you to some guitar website or something.
Cheers
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