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No Fan of Floating Clamps

Some people think it’s okay to string all fan-patterned racquets with floating clamps, but it most definitely is not okay when there are shared holes in the throat (as there are on the Head i160 squash racquets, for example). Apart from the large gap that has to be clamped at 1H and 3H, the next clamping (3H and 4H) looks normal but when held together with floating clamps there is actually nothing holding the clamp in position except for the friction of the string going around the outside of the frame. You can test this by pushing the clamp toward the throat. It will freely move even while gripping the strings.

5 sets of Wilson Stamina Spin 15L to:

Kane Fasolo, Perth, Western Australia

Editor’s note: This can also be a problem with any squash or racquetball frame that uses what they call “bypass” stringing, where adjacent mains are not sequentially installed. If your stringing machine has swivel clamps, you should never run into this problem, as it typically affects only stringers with glide-bar clamps, such as the Ektelon-type machines. Because the clamps on these machines don’t swivel to allow easy clamping of the fanned mains, it’s tempting to use floating clamps. As this tip illustrates, however, it is better even on Ektelon-type machines to use the machine clamps, even though it means tweaking the string to get it through the clamp.

From the September 2005 issue
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