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Catching Box Pattern Misweaves

When stringing a racquet using a box pattern, you weave at least one of the bottom crosses before you weave the first cross at the top. If you’re not paying attention, it’s easy to weave that top cross incorrectly compared to the bottom cross, which is difficult to catch until you have almost all the rest of the crosses installed. One way you can easily double-check to see that you are on the right track is to count the remaining grommet holes for cross strings, after weaving the top two or three crosses. Even though it means more work if I’m wrong to wait this long, by this time all the mains will be in, so I know I don’t have to worry about counting grommet holes for main strings while I’m trying to count only grommet holes for the crosses. When I do the counting, I say “easy” or “hard” for each open grommet hole, depending on whether the weave is an easy weave or hard weave, based on the crosses I’ve already installed. The last hole should be “hard.” If it’s not, the top cross was woven the wrong way. I know some stringers who count the remaining grommet holes as “over” or “under,” depending on the orientation of the cross as it encounters the first outside main, however, you’ll get thrown off if the remaining crosses don’t all start outside the outside main. I find this technique particularly helpful when stringing at tournaments, where not every racquet is what it appears to be. Even given the variety of stringing patterns and the fact that any racquet can have either an odd or even number of crosses, it only takes a couple of seconds to verify that the crosses will finish correctly.

5 sets of Prince Premier w/Softflex 16 to:

Casey Maus, Cathedral City, CA

From the May 2006 issue
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