Hi, I've started messing around with the antique machine I got from my club that I posted pictures of in the stringing machine thread. I got some questions about adjusting the flying clamps. See pictures. What I did was I put one as a starting clamp outside the frame and tried pulling tension and checking if the string slipped. Is that a good way to test it or is it maybe unrealistically demanding and not representative of how it behaves when you clamp two strings normally? Reason I'm wondering is that even if I adjust them so they visibly crush and leave marks on the string they still slip on 11,5kg when testing that way. I guess you normally shouldn't see any marks on the string from the clamps? Also I see that they're clearly uneven so one side has a bigger gap and is looser. Which I assume isn't how it's supposed to be? So am I doing something wrong or are those 30 year old clamps just bad and need to be replaced? This is with BG65 Ti string so should be one of the most forgiving also.
Yea... those old days when they could still use three teethed clamps... They probably were ok for old frames that were never strung higher than 16 lbs... Can't imaging they would be able to hold today's tensions in any useful way.. I have never had much luck with three toothed clamps, even with diamond dusting... I would just get a new ones to say the truth...
Ok, yeah that was what I was suspecting. And I guess we found the reason why when the guy that had the machine before tried to string li-ning no.1 at 11kg it turned out as 7,7. So I'll get two new flying clamps then. Seems most people recommend Yonex.
The Yonex ones are kind of the industry standard. Very compact, reliable and they seem to hold everything. And good thing is you can get them locally and you won't have to order from overseas - and they are fairly priced too imo. So yeah, I'd recommend them too. A dead safe bet.
I can't talk well about the Yonex ones. Out of 4 I had 2 which were faulty. One had uneven springs (one gap opened, the other one still close. I needed always to center the middle manually) the other faulty one had on the gripping surface a sharp edge which damaged the coating on the string slightly and made the job prone to break faster.
Well that doesn't sound good. Too late though, already have two on the way. Keeping my fingers crossed there's no issues with these then.