The Traditree has become a hot item for traditional stringers in a very short amount of time. While the idea of creating a form to string a traditional pocket around has been around for decades, the Traditree is really the first product that I know of to be mass produced for this purpose. In the past, people used carved wooden blocks (they usually looked like a “T” Tetris piece), tennis balls, lacrosse balls, and even crazy plastic devices thought up by a madman!
But because of the rise in popularity of the Traditree, an interesting debate has cropped up and that relates to using a form to string a traditional pocket Vs. doing it free hand, and without a form. It’s Traditree vs Free Hand in today’s #TraditionalThursday!
The Great Traditree Vs Free Hand Debate
The purist sitting on my left shoulder is screaming that all traditional pockets should always be strung free hand. That’s the way it’s always been done, and it’s the way it should always be done. The realist sitting on my right shoulder is calmly telling me that as long as more people are stringing their own sticks and interested in traditional, then I should be happy. Can’t it be both? Not really.
I have now strung thousands of traditional pockets and the vast majority of them were done free hand. The best traditional pocket I’ve ever strung was done free hand. I still have it, and it’s still perfect. But my first traditional pockets were brutal. They were just straight up terrible, and I almost gave up on the idea of a good traditional pocket being mine. Thankfully, I kept at it, strung up 20 or 30 more heads, and finally got the hang of it in a serious way.
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It was a LOT of effort, and I had to learn a lot of the tricks by trial and error. Spacing was tough to figure out, and so was tension for leathers and crosslace. Starting from scratch (and looking at other people’s pockets) was a tough route to take. I can see why most people would give up on it altogether and slide back to mesh full time.
When I string with a Traditree today, I can string a great pocket and I can do so very quickly. The leathers are held in place perfectly, tension is right from the beginning and needs little to no adjustment, and spacing is literally a dream. There is no guess work involved, and no “eye-balling it” to get it right. You just string the knots as you want them and boom, you’re done in no time. My pockets aren’t better with a Traditree, but it’s really amazing how easy and fast it becomes.
And it’s not just me that has an easy time with a Traditree…
The company regularly reposts photos from people on Instagram and a lot of the comments read something like this: “Just strung my first trad with a @Traditree, and it came out nice!” When I look at the pocket I typically can’t help but agree. People are simply stringing awesome first traditional pockets. These pockets are way better than the first 20 traditional pockets I strung. It’s not even fair, really. So while the Traditree form helps me string faster, it is clearly helping first time traditional stringers string better.
If the Traditree leads to more people stringing good traditional pockets, I’m all for it. Free hand certainly has its allure, and a free hand pocket will always be something special, but a Traditree pocket is really quite excellent, and I’m impressed with the product overall.
Stringing traditional pockets is not easy. It takes time to learn how to do it, and then it takes more time to learn how to do it well. After that, it takes time to properly break in the pocket. Compare that to a piece of mesh like Epoch’s Otter Mesh, which breaks in immediately, and the choice can become pretty clear for a lot of people. If the Traditree helps cut down the amount of time it takes to string a good pocket and it gets more people interested in the roots of the game, then I say bring it on!
That guy on my left shoulder is an elitist anyway.
Free hand stringing will always be a valued skill. It is the apex of creativity and stringing skill, and is something for people to work towards. While it is a great way to string, it is only a way, and not the way, to string do so. Whether you use a form like the Traditree or not, keep stringing and you’ll see improvement. The Traditree might just help you get there faster. So maybe it’s not a case of Traditree Vs free hand at all…
Check out the LaxAllStars Traditional Archives HERE. Tons of good stuff in there!
