Thus the number of windings is not Torah law or even Rabbinical law, but rather a custom that developed later. Interestingly, based on the Shulchan Aruch, the Rema and the Mishnah Brurah, it seems that the one-third/two-thirds requirement, described as , is of more importance than the number of windings, but if you look at the vast majority of tzitzit you will find that they are much closer to one-fourth/three-fourths.

In fact we normally leave the tzitzit we tie for our customers one-fourth/three-fourths, because I believe if they saw one-third/two-thirds many would be somewhat alarmed and possibly disappointed. In the yeshiva world today, you often see students sporting very long tzitzit. I imagine many of them think this is very pious, when in fact it is actually a leniency.

It’s very difficult to get the windings exactly 7, exactly 8, etc. We try our best to do it within half a winding. If you are not experienced at tzitzit tying, this may be hard to discern. If you look at the tzitzit on one side, you may count 7 windings in the first section, but when you flip it around to the opposite side there are 6 or 8 windings, because there may be six-and-a-half or seven-and-a-half. (The way to count accurately is to note careful where the winding starts, note where the final winding ends and compare the location.)

Rabbi Mois Navon of the Ptil Tekhelet Association speaks of this issue as well. “The truth is that it is very difficult to get precisely three full winds when coming out of a double knot or going into a double knot,” he writes. He then argues that “the Gemara’s requirement that a chulya be 3 winds is a directive for action to be taken by the person wrapping and not necessarily a statement on how the final product is to appear.  That is to say, the tier is required to wrap the shamash around the core strings three times, this may however result in a chulya looking like two-and-a-half wraps or even three-and-a-half, depending on where the string started or ended.”