Quincentennial of racket stringing
A quincentennial of racket stringing, collecting stringing machines, devices and tools. This is the story of how racket stringing was achieved from the earliest recorded times of the 16th century to the present day.This is not a manual on how to string a racket but outlines the different methods used and the tools and equipment employed as technology advanced.
The early years
Strung rackets probably came onto the scene in the very late 15th century or early 16th century replacing wooden battoirs and gloved hands, in an effort to speed up the game.
One of the first references can be found in Antonio Scaino's book, Trattato Del Giuoco Della Palla Di Messer, A treatise of the ball game.
Scaino was a priest and the book was published in Venice in 1555 covering all the ball games of the day.
He describes how
"a hoop of wook, perforated all round and within whose space, strings are woven like the thickest used in the Viola, lengthwise and crosswise like a well proportioned net. The strings must be uniform thickness but very fine and very strong and made so that they do not yield or a least yield with difficulty when pressed by the hand."
He also mentions the strings being "tightly drawn" but does not describe how this is achieved.
They must have been pulled by hand rather than any mechanical means.
There is an earlier but very scant reference to stringing in a book entitled Tudor School-boy Life - The dialogues of Juan Luis Vives in 1539.
The dialogue is between two school friends on the then ball game in France and the conversation goes as follows:
Borgia - "In what way then do they strike the ball in Paris>? With the fist as we do with the leather ball?"
Scintilla - "No, but with a net of knotted string."
Borgia - "Woven from thread?"
Scintilla - "No, from somewhat thicker strings such as are found for the most part on the six-stringed lyre."
c 1550 to 1750
Over the next 200 years we cannot, to date, find any further accounts and therefore little information is to be found on stringing methods used.
As with the style of racket construction the same is true for stringing in that we have to rely on paintings and engravings, etc., some of which have been open to artistic impression and not very accurate representations.
There are, however, some which are very detailed and realistic and almost photographic in nature and can be relied upon to provide much information.
From the ealiest days of strung rackets there appears to have been both interwoven strings of mains and crosses, in the regular style of today, and in equal number diagonal stringing.
Some representations of the game even show both methods of stringing in the same picture.
I think that both methods would have been used at the same time depending on stringers, manufacturers and players preference.
There is one brief reference from the travels of Philip Skippon in Francis Willoughby's 17c Book of Games concerning tennis in 1663 where he describes the making of a racket as
"The hoope and handle of wood. The strings that run from the length are the biggest and are called the maine strings, those that goe crosse, the crosse strings. They are the same with Violi strings and are stretch to a strong stiffness."
All references to date seem to have a musical connection and the strings, no doubt, were borrowed from the musical instruments of the day rather than having been make specifically for rackets.
c 1750 - c 1850
It is uncertain when there was a change from interwoven strings to the method whereby each cross string is turned around each main string where they meet but when we move forward to François Alexandre Pierre de Garsault's Art du Paumier-Raquetier de la Paume - Paris 1767, we can see that this is the norm on premium rackets of the time.
This style of stringing gave a rough and smooth side to the stringing face, the rough side enable the players to impart and extreme cut or slice to the ball.
This was now a full sized racket and quite heavy and powerful.
For the first time De Garsault gives us a very detailed account of how a racket is made and, more importantly for this article, how the racket is strung.
Briefly the main strings are threaded through the pre-drilled holes numbering 18 mains and a knot is tied on one side of the frame.
The handle of the racket is then slotted horizontally into a cavity in the workshop wall with the hoop end pressed against the stringers stomach compressing the frame like a balloon.
With leather scraps wound around the fingers to protect them the strings are pulled up vertically in turn away from the securing knot as tight as possible.
This process is repeated about three times until the desired tension is achieved.
The squashed frame is then put into a press and the sides of the hoop are drawn inwards to return the frame to its normal shape which in turn stretches the main strings further and increases the tension.
This French method of stringing must surely have resulting in a squarish shaped flat time racket.
This is reminiscent of English rackets of the 1880s when perhaps this method of stringing may have been used here during that period.
To avoid the hoop collapsing before removal from the press, billiards are inserted within the hoop, top to bottom to brace against the mains tension.
These wooden and iron billiards are so called because they resemble billiard maces of the day but also have screw adjustments to the different hoop sizes.
The cross strings can now be inserted by turning each string around each main in turn.
The cross strings used at the time are half the thickness of the mains for easier insertion and there are an astonishing 32 or 33 crosses.
It must have taken several hours.
Finally at the top of the hoop 10 or 12 double strings are woven across to prevent movement of the mains and reduce abrasion aginst the holes in the wooden frame.
The tension of the cross strings now hold the shape of the hoop and the billiard braces may now be removed.
c 1850 "Modern" interwoven hand pulled stringing
Moving forward to 1858 Julian Marshall's account of his "Annals of Tennis".
He fully describes De Garsault's method of stringing with looped cross strings but states that this method became obsolete about 1860 in favour of interwoven strings as with today's method.
The mains and crosses are now the same thickness and the number of crosses reduced to 26.
The old method of turning the crosses with thinner strings is retained for 4 crosses to the top and bottom forming the trebling as we term it on wooden rackets up to the mid 1980s.
The reason for this new type of interwoven strings is to enable a greater tension to be pulled on the strings to cope with the harder balls of the period and a much faster game.
Additionally this enabled greater speed and efficiency of stringing the racket, better tension retention and a more powerful elastic strung bed.
Repairs to broken strings would be much easier to achieve.
Hand pulling was still the only method of tensioning the strings and this technique continued right through to the early part of the 20th century.
Consistent tension would be somewhat random depending on the strength of the stringer.
As with top players today, it would be advisable to stick with the same stringer for consistency.
Some stringers would periodically use and old hooked fish weighing scale to test their tension pulling and also compare the musical note sounded when a string was plucked.
The only advancement from the days of De Garsault's "pulling up method" was that now the strings are pulled laterally from the side of the frame.
The string would be tensioned by either wrapping a piece of leather around your fingers and pulling as hard as possible or using a piece of leather covered dowel and pulling or torquing the string the string.
A metal awl would then be inserted in the string hole to trap the string tension before moving on to the next string.
Clearly some more accurate method needed to be devised and with less damage to the gut and less physical exertion.
A short note on the production of strings, which as alluded to earlier, were mainly taken from musical instrument production and made of natural gut.
The main and most respected producer for musical instruments srings in the 1830s was Babolat of Lyon, France.
In 1875, Major Walter Clopton Wingfield inventor of Lawn Tennis or Sphairistike approached Pierre Babolat to produce a string for his new game.
He produced a new string made from the outer skin of sheep intenstine known as serosa which had great properties of elasticity and tension retention.
Minor improvements were developed in the 1920s when rather than merely clamping the racket handle into a vice on a bench, specific stand alone vices were make which not only clamped the handle securely but also had fixed adjustable arms to fit around the hoop of the frame.
This secured the frame from distortion and provided hands free stringing. Some stringers were developing a homemade wrench type device shaped like a J.
String would be attaced and the wrench used like a lever against the frame to stretch the string to tension.
This was less demanding physically and a more consistent tension could be achieved.
Different tensions could be measured against how far the lever was moved.
The next and most important improvement would be a device to mechanically stretch the string to a more accurate, measurable tension rather than using guesswork.
This was first achieved in a patent 1863059 of 30.4.1929 by William Edward Beythold Jaffe of Chelsea, England.
His machine attached the string through various cleats to a drum which was rotated by a drop weight.
The weight could be adjusted up or down the length of the lever arms to set the tension required.
This led to the many drop weight machines which followed for many years, some of which are still used today.
In most drop weight machines the tension is controlled by moving a heavy weight up or down a lever arm much in the same way as a set of scales works.
This was a vast improvement on previous hand pulling methods but still not entirely accurate.
These early machines still didn't have string clamps and continued to require awls forced into the string holes to hold the tension.
Over the net ten years a multitude of inventions came onto the market includiong the massive Atlas ( pictured below ) and Serrano machines of the 1940s.
These machines now had clamps fixed to horizontal bars which would slide along the length and width of the frame and could be pulled down to secure each string as it was tensioned.
The Serrano and Olivier (pictured) machines were "drop weight" but the Atlas now had a simple spring loaded ratchet arm which could be pulled against the spring until a marked guage, registering the tension was reached.
These machines reduced the stringing time by at least half. Stringers could now complete a racket, not only quicker, but more accurately, consistent and requiring less physical effort.
These machines were termed "no awl" machines.
c 1960s Lockout spring tensioning
By 1954 Frank Held of New Jersey, USA, had perfected a mechanical machine under the name EXTELON.
Like Major Wingfield and his "SPHAIRISTIKE" game of Lawn Tennis, he took the name from a combination of two Greek words, EXTEIN and TELON, meaning stretched out perfectly.
This machine had frame protection clamps at 6 and 12 o'clock, dual stringing clamps, and a very accurate spring lockout tensioning device operated by a crank handle.
The Lockout device operated by means of a spring locking the rotation of the handle when the specific tension was reached.
Accurate to 0.5 lb, the machine now also had a rotating table which allowed the stringers to pull from both sides of the frame without having to walk around the machine.
These type of machines are still made today remaining very popular providing an accurate and very reliable performance at a reasonable price.
c 1970s Electronic
From the 1970s electronic and computer controlled tensions were developed in machines up to today's quite wondrous versions.
Today's machines can have tensions to the nth degree, have various speeds of pulling to suit the type of racket and string being used, can pre stretch gut strings to avoid tension loss, and additional tension to secure knots and convert lbs to kgs.
Some even have a computer which keeps records of all the different stringers using the machine, past records of all rackets strung, at which tension, when and for whom.
Some even have an ergonomic tilt adjustment to suit each stringer's posture.
These machines can cost up to 7000 GBP or more and of course are primarly used at major tournaments where there is a requirement to restring 30-40 rackets per machine, per stringer, per day.
These machines can of course seem somewhat over engineered if you are just a part time stringer, perhaps only stringing a few rackets per week.
The cost income ratio would be prohibitive.
The machin has to be fit for purpose.
The main qualities I would look for in a machine have not changed over the years.
It has to be reliable, protecting the frame and string, have an accurate consistent tension and enable you to string within a reasonable time to suit customer needs.
My collection
You can see from the pictures that I have kept all the machines I have used over the years and aquired a few of the older ones as a collection and talking point in the Stringing Room / Workshop.
You do need quite a lot of space though if you are going to collect machines and tools.
I do not believe in restringing a wonderful old 100 year old racket even if the strings are rather disturbed as this is all part of its history and should be retained.
However, if the strings are totally gone I will use one of my machines and use the techniques of stringing which are contemporary with the date of the racket, even if I have to "hand pull".
I think this should be acceptable to collectors provided it is done in an honest way without trying to deceive and can only enhance the look of the racket.
It can always be removed. I have often been requested to restore a racket, which has been a Grandad or Grandma's loft find, for display purposes and provide a nice decorative conversation piece and certainly enhances its preservation.
Stringing tools
Finally with regard to stringing tools, whilst today many are made specifically with stringing in mind, in the past many early stringers would make their own tools.
Many of the tools used are very similar to those used in many other crafts.
If you are to collect stringing tools then they should be considered like any other historical object or archaeological find.
By this I consider that you must look at the context in which the item has been discovered.
Did it come from a known stringers workshop or a racket and stringing factory which has closed down?
This would be ideal provenance rather than the dubious discovery of a pile of nondescript awls, planes, drills, draw blades, etc, jumbled together and picked up at some bracante fairs.
These could have been used for any craft and have no proven history.
Provenance is all important here so make sure that you get that written evidence and history to go with the items.
Jim Warner, 2015