Stringing and knocking-in

The bench

The workshop has two machines, an electronic constant-pull and a crank for frames the electronic clamps will not hold, with a stringer on them full time. It is the only bench we have. Inside Dhaka a rider collects the frame from your address and brings it back strung. From the other districts it comes in by courier and goes back the same way. Bench hours are 10am to 8pm, Saturday to Thursday.

Every frame leaves with a card: string, gauge, tension, knot count, date. The card goes in your cover and a copy stays with us. When you send it back in eight months and say it felt right last time, we can read what right was.

Racket stringing

Badminton

Frames carry a tension rating from the maker, printed inside the throat. Usually 24 lb, sometimes 28 lb on the stiffer models. We string to the rating without discussion. Above it we will still string, and we will say once that the warranty is gone and that frames which fail above rating fail at the top of the head.

18 to 20 lb. New player, or anyone whose clears do not reach the back line. The bed does the work the swing does not yet do.
21 to 24 lb. Club player with a full swing. Most of the frames on this bench live here.
25 to 27 lb. Flat, fast hitting and front-court doubles, where you want the shuttle off the face without the bed throwing it.
28 lb and up. Only on a frame rated for it, and only if you are already breaking strings inside a month.

Gauge matters as much as the number. 0.70mm lasts. 0.66mm gives you more of the shuttle and about half the life. 0.61mm is for players already choosing between two good rackets. Thin string in Dhaka in June breaks on mis-hits that thicker string forgives.

We string badminton two-piece, four knots, and pre-stretch. Crosses go one to two pounds above the mains on frames that ask for it. If your last restring was done one-piece on an isometric head, look along the top of the frame for flat spots.

Nylon relaxes on its own. A new bed loses close to a tenth of its tension in the first two days and keeps drifting after that. Heat speeds it up. A 26 lb bed strung here in June is reading around 24 by the end of the first week, and that is the string, not the machine. Restring on a schedule, not on breakage.

Restring as many times a year as you play in a week. Players who wait for a break have been playing on a dead bed for two months.

Tennis

48 to 58 lb covers almost every frame we get, but the string decides the number. Polyester goes in 2 to 4 lb below what you would use in synthetic gut or multifilament, because poly is stiffer and does not forgive the same tension.

Multifilament or synthetic gut, 52 to 56 lb. Comfortable, holds tension well, frays before it breaks.
Full polyester, 44 to 50 lb. For a long swing that finishes high. On a short, arm-driven swing it is dead weight and it will find your elbow.
Hybrid, poly mains at 46 to 50 lb with multifilament crosses two pounds higher. This is most of the tennis work we do.

Poly dies before it breaks. Fifteen to twenty hours of play and the bed has gone stiff and stopped biting the ball, with every string still intact. Count poly in hours, not in breaks.

Squash

Squash lives between 24 and 30 lb, on the thinnest frames we handle. Most club players settle at 26 to 27 lb on 1.20mm. Lower gives power and a bigger forgiving area. Higher gives a shorter, more predictable ball off the front wall. Squash frames crack at the throat rather than the head, and they crack on the machine when the mounts are left set for a tennis racket. We use squash supports and we do not rush the mounting.

What stringing cannot fix

A cracked frame. Tension finishes a hairline crack. We check the head and throat before we cut the old bed out, and if we find one the racket goes back to you unstrung.
Worn grommets. A saw-edged grommet cuts new string within a week. Replace the strip first.
A swing that is short for the racket. Tighter is not more powerful. Tighter is less powerful and more accurate.
Balance and weight. A head-heavy frame strung at 27 lb is still a head-heavy frame.
A number from another shop. A 26 on a drop-weight machine is not a 26 on a constant-pull. Tell us how the last bed played instead. That travels between machines. The number does not.

Turnaround

Standard is 48 hours on the bench, counted from when the frame reaches us. On the bench before 2pm and we will do it the same day for ৳200 more, on badminton and squash most days. Same-day tennis depends on what is already clamped up. Before a tournament weekend, call or WhatsApp 01518 990333 and we hold a slot.

Knocking-in

Six hours on the mallet, spread over two working days on our bench. Free on a bat bought here if you ask for it. ৳1,500 on a bat bought elsewhere, and we look the bat over before we agree to it.

First hour. Light, flat strikes on the middle of the face. Nothing hard, nothing near an edge.
Hours two and three. Out to the shoulders and down toward the toe, still light, covering the whole hitting area.
Hour four. The edges, mallet held at 45 degrees, rolling the corner over until it stops being a corner.
Hour five. Harder on the face, and the toe worked from the front rather than struck from below.
Hour six. Old ball, thrown by hand, then twenty minutes of soft net. If a seam lifts a splinter on an edge, it goes back to the mallet.

Then you play two or three sessions with an old ball before a new one comes near it. We can give a bat six hours. We cannot play the first fortnight of your season for you.

A bat sold as ready to play has been through a roller press at the factory. The press compresses the face evenly, which is why the face looks finished. It does almost nothing for the edges and little for the toe, and edges are where bats break. Two hours of mallet work on a pressed bat is the difference between a bat that dents and a bat that splits.

Pressed is not knocked in. The press does the face. The edges and the toe are done by hand or not at all.

Grade decides the hours. Eleven-grain English willow is soft and open, takes the full six, and repays them. Kashmir willow is denser and drier from the start. Three hours is enough and it will never open up the way English does. Anyone charging you six hours on a Kashmir bat is charging you for four.

Oil, sheets and grips

Oiling

Raw linseed oil, one teaspoon spread with a finger across the face, the edges and the toe. Three coats, 24 hours apart, bat left flat and face up. More than three coats gives you a soft, slow bat, and that cannot be undone.

Do not oil a pre-prepared or coated face, and do not oil under an anti-scuff sheet. There is nothing for the oil to enter and it sits on the surface. If the bat came with a sheet on, oil the edges and the back only.

Timing for Dhaka: oil between November and February, before the season, while the air is dry. A bat oiled in the middle of monsoon is taking on oil and water together. Bats kept here need fewer coats than the bottle suggests, because the humidity does part of the job for nine months of the year.

Face sheets and toe guards

An anti-scuff sheet costs less than a repair and will hold a surface crack together long enough to finish a season. It adds 25 to 30 grams and changes the sound off the bat. Some players cannot stand that. Put one on a used bat first and find out.

Toe guards matter more here than in the books written in England. Dhaka grounds go concrete-hard from December, and most toe damage does not come from the ball. It comes from tapping the bat while you wait. A rubber guard, fitted with the right adhesive, takes ten minutes.

Re-gripping

A replacement grip goes on with a cone. An overgrip goes over it. A second grip adds 20 to 25 grams high on the handle and lifts the balance point, so a bat that suddenly feels heavy in the hands often just needs one taken off. Chevron holds better in sweat. Plain rubber lasts longer. We fit either before the bat ships.

What we turn away

A bat cracked through the toe or up the splice. We will price the repair and tell you where it goes. We will not knock it in and hand it back as sound.
A frame whose grommet strip we do not stock. We would rather order the strip than string over damage.
Bats sent in for a re-oil that have already had six or seven coats. Oil does not come out.

Prices

Badminton restring, string from our rack: ৳650 to ৳1,100
Badminton restring, your own string: ৳350
Tennis restring, synthetic gut or multifilament: ৳1,200 to ৳1,600
Tennis restring, full polyester: ৳1,500 to ৳2,000
Tennis restring, hybrid: ৳1,700 to ৳2,200
Squash restring, string from our rack: ৳900 to ৳1,300
Tennis or squash restring, your own string: ৳600
Same-day service, frame on the bench before 2pm: add ৳200
Grommet strip, fitted: ৳400 plus the strip
Grip or overgrip, fitted: ৳120 to ৳250
Knocking-in, bat bought at Sportycus: free
Knocking-in, six hours, bat bought elsewhere: ৳1,500
Knocking-in, Kashmir willow, three hours: ৳900
Oiling, three coats over three days: ৳300
Anti-scuff face sheet, fitted: ৳450
Toe guard, fitted: ৳350
Bat grip, fitted: ৳200
Handle re-bind: ৳800
New handle, splice replaced, ten days: ৳2,500

Sending it in

Pack the frame in its cover. Tell us last time's tension, or tell us how the last bed felt. Either is enough to work from. For same-day, the frame has to be on the bench before 2pm, not promised for 2pm, so book the rider pickup in the morning.

Finished restrings and knocked-in bats go back by courier to any of the 64 districts for the usual delivery charge. Every knocked-in bat ships with a note of what was done to it and how to play it in. Bench work does not count toward the ৳3,000 free delivery line inside Dhaka. Kit does.