Want to complicate this further? We have experience making bass strings in Germany and Austria and make the bass strings here at home for our own rebuilding projects. We have always called roughing up the core wire before spinning the copper onto it, "kratzen" which is German for scratching. I never heard of schraffing until it was offered as an option here in the USA. Ron Torrella's research into the etymology is very enlightening, but I never heard those German terms in Europe. As David Sanderson pointed out, roughing up the core is to help the copper grab onto the core during spinning. There are other factors which would cause dead strings and those must be taken into consideration. The schraffing or "kratzen" of the core, in my opinion, plays absolutely no role in whether you twist the bass string (ALWAYS in the direction of the winding, BTW). Our procedure is one full twist for the singles, two full twists for the doubles and triples (to clarify: this does not refer to the number of copper layers, but the number of strings in the unison). Hope this helps. Joel Rappaport Round Rock, Texas
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