How Wide is a Piece of String?

A little while back we had an article on nocks. One of the features of nocks noted was the difference in groove sizes to let you tailor your nocks onto your sting for a snug fit. How big the groove needed depended on the string with number of strands, width of serving and even how tight the serving was wound round the string as key factors. Well, there's another parameter we hadn't thought of .. colour!

Now that sounds a bit daft but stay with us people. Obviously string material in its natural state with nothing added is going to be the narrowest its ever going to be. And if something is added to colour the strands, that's going to add to the bulk of the strand increasing its width. Can't be significant though .. can it? Well, its probably something that should be tested.

But, how can this be tested? Well, lets take bundles of the same string material with the same number of strands but of various colours. Serve each set of colour strands with the same serving material at the same tension then measure the diameter of the served bundle using a micrometer for accurate figures. Someone with a lot of time on their hands did just that. Here are their results which are quite alarming if you thought there wouldn't be much difference. For context remember the 2 groove sizes for Easton pin nocks (popular on carbon arrows) are .. large at 2.49mm and small at 2.24mm.

So as you would expect, the raw string material without any colouring is the thinnest at a svelte 2.53mm. Obviously the small nock (2.24mm) would fit this one pretty snugly but there wouldn't really be a lot of material for the large (2.49mm) to get a bite on. This may cause a dry fire if the nock does not grip well and will probably slide up and down the string. Better would be the red coloured string (2.62mm) which might be a good compromise and work on both nock sizes although the small groove may struggle. Note: As the arrow is clicked onto the string repeatedly, there will be wear/compression of the serving. This will make it a better fit over time although too much wear and the nock may start to move. Chonky boi green, on the other hand, would be a disaster at 2.9mm for the small grove nock. The nock is going to be under constant strain possibly causing the nock to crack or fail at some stage as its forced onto the string. Even the large groove might be having a few issues and it may be that neither of these pin nocks are suitable for this colour of string. Unless, that is, some remedial action was taken like reducing the strand count or tightening up the tension on the serving. Otherwise a different nock with a larger groove will need to be used.

Mmmmm ..... pretty and tasty!

This obviously impacts your choice of nock design and even brand. Lets take a possible situation as an example .. Assume you are using a raw un-coloured string that adds nothing to the string bulk and is shot with small groove nocks. On changing strings to a colour that helps your string picture, you may have to change to large groove nocks to fit the new string. If you continue to shoot small groove on this chunkier string, you may not be getting a good release of nock from string or even be putting unnecessary strain on the nock by forcing it onto the chunkier string. This issue is going to get even more complicated when you start to have multicoloured strings. The different coloured strands are going to be different widths, vary in weight and are going to react differently to being stretched. Imagine 50% of your string material reacting one way and the remainder reacting another .. that's going to be a bit less predictable than 100% of your string reacting the same way. These findings came as quite a surprise to even highly experienced archers and the top ranks are now having to consider colour in their strings as a parameter they have to be aware of.

What can we take away from the above? Well, strings are already complicated enough without all this going on and we probably need to bail on these multi-hued shenanigans. However, archers do love their candy cane strings so we doubt even real issues with string colours are going to stop them! That's archers for you .. style over substance but multicolour strings do look pretty. Got to bling up that bow!

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Candy cane image by Kati from Pixabay
If you want to read about how the colour of your bow affects you .. read this article.