You may have beat me tonight but I will win in the end.
That is all I have to say. 
I managed to save the cake and do something very basic because that's all I had time left for. It was a freebie anyway. 
The last wedding cake I did had a ton of those on it! What I found is to make sure your icing is STIFF. Pull out away from the cake until it is the length you want it, then attach to the cake. I tried to make them for 1 1/2 hours with THIN icing and could not for the life of me get it to work. As soon as I switched to stiff - they piped just fine!
My icing was too thin, plus it had some air bubbles, plus it was chocolate and the cocoa powder was a little lumpy. There was no way I could win that battle, LOL.
I've followed the instructions by the book and the &*%^$#^^ strings always get messed up. I always try to discourage customer from choosing a cake with drop strings. However, my last customer choose a cake decorated with them. Before I worked with the strings, I traced them by using tip #14, then made the icing very stiff and of course with a lot of corn syrup; then applied them. I must tell you...even using this method one of the darn things fell off!!!! I just gave up and from now on if I cannot do it at the reception place, I rather to just say NO to the customer. Is very depressing to watch all your hard work get ruined after so much time invested. 
I don't know if this will help any of you but I read about a lady who made dropstrings out of fondant. She used a clay gun and then applied the strings. She delivered the cake and not one broke. I have not had a chance to try this myself but I wanted to put it out there. Good luck and I hope you all master the technique no matter what your approach!
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