I have an old Ben Pearson recurve bow that has been sitting around for years. I want to get back into informal target shooting, so I pulled it out of the closet, and find that somewhere along the way, the string has disappeared. No big deal, as the AMO length is painted on the bow. I found a supplier on line, and their directions were to take the AMO length, minus 3 inches for bows made after 2000, and minus 4 inches for older bows. Since this is an older bow, I went with the shorter length (minus 4 inches) and ordered a new string, and a few other odds and ends.The site said that if the string was a bit long or short, to just twist, or untwist it a bit to make minor adjustments.
Everything arrived today, so I put the string on to see how it looks. It seems to me, that is is a bit on the short side, compared to how I remember the bow looking in the past when strung. I thought, what the heck, I'll just take a few twists out, but I discovered that the string it wrapped at both ends, not twisted.
So my question is, how do I tell if the string is too short, and would it harm the bow to shoot it with a slightly short string?
Unfortunately, there aren't any archery shops nearby, or I would have gone that route to begin with!