Tubing broken / cracked grommets

[eah123]

A few questions:
How long? I‘ve seen 2 videos on how to do it. One video says to just extend the piece a little so that it goes as far as outside of the frame and sits in the string notch. The other one by Yulite suggests making it long enough to go into the neighbor grommet. Does that really help?

Is it better to remove the cracked / broken grommet before tubing (Using a grommet grinder)? My thought on this is keeping a cracked grommet risks further damage to the grommet set it is part of, if the crack would continue to extend upward, which is more of an issue if it’s integrated into the head guard. Removing it cleanly could prevent this.

If using tubing as a permanent solution rather than a new grommet set or Fittex, should you replace the tubing with every restring, or ok to re-use it until it splits?

 

[Irvin]

That would depend on the racket. Normally I would rather replace grommets if possible as opposed to patching up the problem with tubing. On some rackets like ported rackets it is sometimes necessary to tube the grommets / ports. Isner would have his white rackets tubed every time they were strung and the tubing ran from port to port to keep the string from breaking while the vibrating string wore into the racket’s port.

 

[esgee48]

If it is 1-2 tubes, I will tube the grommet. I do not extend the tubing too much past the outer hole; just enough to bend onto the frame. Reason is some frames have channels in the grommet outside for other strings to lay into. I will reuse tubing if the hole is already tubed. It will be inspected. If it is a tie off hole, I will use FITTEX. Too many tubes means I will ask the client to get a replacement grommet set. Right now that limit is greater than 6. Of course if bumper guard is a mess, the frame may get rejected for restringing unless I also receive a grommet set.

 

[loosegroove]

@eah123 , if you have a drill bit set, you can use the correct size drill bit in lieu of a grommet grinder.