School me on flemish twist backtwist

[PigOPs]

My first string was perfectly round and I'm having trouble making another. How many twists are you guys putting? are there any tips?

[Bisch]

Good luck! I quit trying to make my own strings because I just couldn’t get the back twist thing right!!!

Bisch


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[60 Deluxe]

Less than half a twist each time that I lay one bundle over the other. I do my small loop first then put twelve or fifteen twists in the body prior to doing my large loop. I use a stick with a peg for the small loop and a scale on the stick for length. I try to build the string about a half inch shorter than what I want as finished length. I then put the string on a bow overnight or put it on my string stretcher for a hour or so. It will be too long at that point but I add twenty or thirty twists when setting the brace height. A couple of other hints: put a clamp on the measuring stick where your first loop ends and the main body of the string begins prior to twisting in the second loop. That will keep your loop from untwisting while you are working on the other end of the string. You can burnish the string while it is stretching and again just prior to center serving.

I think that your problem is caused by too much backtwist in the bundles or twisting the main body of the string way too much. I watched videos while learning and it was a common thing to twist up the body of the string in those videos, so that is what I was doing. My strings came out looking like sisal rope and were sometimes too short. I made a few with no twist at all in the body but that caused problems on the string stretcher. If you think that it will tke twenty twists to close the second loop after you have it twisted and measured, then that is a good number of twists to have in the body of the string.

[RickBarbee]

However many twist it takes to make the splice is how many back twists you need.

Example: If My splice takes 12 twist, I put in 12 back twists before I start.

I just put the twists in 4 or 5 inches below the splice area, and let them run toward the center. When I twist up the splice, the back twists come right out.

(That's per bundle by the way.)

Rick