I've been buying ready made strings for the past few years, but I recently had a desire to make a bowstring again. Neatly packed away in my bowstring material box are 4-5 partially used rolls of bowstring, all unlabeled. I'm sure it was obvious to me when I packed them away which ones were dacron and which ones were fast flight, but not now. Is there any way to tell dacron from fast flight string?
dacron came in spools with black inside. Fast flight had red inside. Look at the center of the spool.
Thanks! Never noticed that. You saved me some spools of bowstring.
Fast flight strands are also much harder to cut with scissors. Dacron will cut easily.
Fastflight is lighter(less dense per volume) than water. Dacron is heavier. Thus a float test can tell you something with rope...but the wax on string strands may make it tough to tell. Dacron melts at a higher temp, burns while in a flame and forms a black glob that can be stretched into a fine filament while still soft(it hardens when cool). Fastflight shrinks curls and burns but cannot be stretched into a fine filament.
Dacron smells oily and sweet when burning. Fastflight smells like parrafin wax. The FF melted glob is a waxy soft residue-Dacron's glob will be solid.
Thanks Justin, this will give me another way to verify which is which. I had a hazy memory of which string was on which spool based on the colors, but wasn't sure, and Three Arrows method confirmed what I had been thinking, as there was a red insert in the spools that I thought were probably fast flight, and not in the others.