Why sometimes do we have to wait for our order at the string maker?
Why he cannot just decide to make our 85?
Sometimes planning a gut production is really frustrating: the gauge of the string is not only determined from the number of strands, but also from their width and from the twisting. The second is on the string maker experience and sensibility (more twisted=bigger, but we cannot change twisting to obtain a gauge, it would strongly affect the response of the string), but the first is depending from the slaughter house and it is not easy to check...
At the slaughter house the beef gut is cut by a machine in strands similar to the dimension of lamb gut and sheep gut, so that the string maker can follow the sources deciding how many strands to use to obtain a gauge.
Then, it may happen that from a bunch of strings he will obtain a huge quantity of 97 but very little of the best sellers 88 and 85, and the only thing he can do is to plan another production, which will be ready only in two weeks...