Does your string actually need replacing?

A soft halo of broken fibre along the bare string is normal, and it is the single most common reason someone orders a string they did not need. Those are outer fibres that have shed. The strands carrying the load are underneath and untouched.

Wax it and keep shooting. The one exception is fuzz that stands up in a single spot rather than evenly along the string — that is not age, that is the string rubbing on something, and it is worth finding out what before it wears through.

Gaps opening in the serving where the nock sits, or serving that has started to unwind at one end. Look at what is underneath: on a string that is otherwise sound, the strands under the serving are usually in perfect condition, because the serving is what has been taking the beating.

On today's short-brace, high-poundage bows the centre serving is a consumable. A worn one means the serving is worn out. It does not mean the string is.

One strand parted, picked, or sliced. This is the one case on this page with no argument to it: stop shooting the bow.

A cut strand is not a cosmetic loss of one strand out of twenty. The remaining strands are now carrying load they were not sized for, the string is off length on one side, and whatever cut it — a burr in a cam track, a sharp edge on a cable slide — is still there and will cut the next one.

Flattened, shiny or fluffed serving where the cable rides in the cam track, and a polished patch where the string lands on the string stop. Some of this is unavoidable — those are the two highest-stress points on the bow and they chew servings for a living.

What matters is the depth. Serving that is flattened is doing its job. Serving worn through, so the strands beneath show, has stopped protecting anything and needs dealing with before it becomes the entry above.

A string that has gone pale, stiff and slightly hairy has lost its wax. That is a maintenance job, not a replacement. Wax it — work it in with your fingers, the friction is what melts it down into the bundle rather than leaving it sitting on top.

Do not leave it, though. Wax is what lets the strands slide against each other instead of sawing at each other, and a dry string collects grit that then works like a file from the inside. Neglect is what shortens strings far more often than shooting them does.

First, the part that is not a fault. Every peep moves a little between brace and full draw — that is the string twisting as it comes under load, it happens on every bow ever built, and up to an eighth of a turn is normal.

The test is what you see at full draw. Come to anchor and look. If the peep is square, it is doing its job however far it turned on the way there. If it lined up when the bow was tuned and now points somewhere else at full draw, the string has changed — not your anchor and not your form. That is creep, and on one of our sets inside six months it is our problem to fix.

The end loops sit in the cam and take the whole load of the bow through a tight radius, and the speed nock area gets handled every time the bow goes in a press. Fuzzing here reads worse than it is, because the serving is thin and tightly packed to begin with.

Look for the serving lifting off the loop, unwinding at the end, or any strand visible through it. Loops are not something to gamble on — this is the part that is holding the bow together.