Any string that goes into a tennis racquet is, at some point, going to be tied off using a knot.  Creating a string knot is normally not an issue, however, some strings are more sensitive to this process than others.

This plot will show the relative difference between gauges, and other properties.  We can see that NG17 gauge did not quite make it to the stress/strain ceiling of 50 pounds.  That is why there is only a single line while the other two (2) go through the cycle before the knot fails.

This is a tough test for natural gut due to the coefficient of friction (COF) being pretty high meaning the overlapping strings are like sawing at each other as the knot is being pulled tight.  The knot strengths in the 60 pound range are  suitable and will not, typically, be a problem.  Be very careful with values less than that, however.

      Natural Gut Knot Strength

And, while we are talking about knots, we need to consider the best practices for tying off other strings on natural gut.  The best practice is don’t!  Find a grommet that can be suitable for tying off another material type on itself…not the natural gut.  Obviously if the entire string bed is natural gut it is a good idea to find a suitable tie off on a cross string.

There are other considerations when typing off on natural gut and we will have look at these in a future post.

The power potential of the NG Strings has beed added to the String Power Potential page and can be seen here.

Just type in NG Strings in the search field if you don’t feel like scrolling!