There's nothing wrong with shop bought strings per se, its just that often homemade ones and custom made ones are higher quality. I've made a couple of strings myself and it is a very difficult thing to do, at least for the first few times and it will take quite a long time to make the first couple (about 2 1/2 hours per string). However, I now use custom made ones (SDM strings on my
recurve and BlingStrings on my
compound) which are far better than the ones I've made and cheaper than buying a couple of spools of material to mess up and a string jig on which to make them. Granted, if you get good at it then eventually it will be cheaper, but a new
recurve string is only ?10 and a full set of strings and cables is only ?45.
This is the guide I used for making my strings.