String Balls

For years I've collected used guitar strings. Every time I change the strings on one of my instruments, I coil up the spent ones and toss them in a bucket.

Some years ago, a friend of mine bought a guitar shop downstairs from our apartment. Not only did this become a home away from home for me, but it was also an excellent source of used guitar strings.

Every time they setup someone's guitar, every time they changed strings on an instrument in the shop, they kept the old ones for me.

Soon, my string collection grew unwieldy. Eventually, I started futzing with them, trying to figure out what type of form to make. I tried weaving them, soldering them, braiding them; nothing quite worked. Eventually I began coiling them as I had when I first took them off the guitars. As each string is coiled, it is interwoven with the others. As more strings are added, the form naturally begins to bend itself into a spherical shape. The size of the coils seems to dictate how big the overall sphere will be; start with bigger coils, and you end up with a bigger string ball in the end.

These days, I’m enjoying the tangled energy and bird-nest quality they can take on when woven in the same direction. I’ve even contributed a stringball to science (kind of).

John Kieltyka