I've never broken a string during my current three years of outdoors playing every day for four months a year - and now and then in studio recordings for the rest of the year.

BUT...
many times string #7, the lowest and fattest one, has broken up at the tuning peg. When that happens I use to tie it together again - or rather tie a short part of a slightly thinner string at the top, to be fastened into the tuning peg.

I use an orchestral tuner and have never broken a string.

TRUE STORY

About 3 months after I bought my first Stick, in 1985, I was tuning up and tuned too high and broke the 1st string.

Now I hadn't been using that string very much, and found I wanted to play in the low range of the melody more any way, so I decided to try a little experiment... I moved the remaining melody strings on position to the outside and added a low melody string a 4th down at position #5.
I had to tie an extension onto the new string because it wouldn't reach the tuning machine and it was probably a little too skinny, but I liked the results.

Anyone who has spent any time with me knows, I try to be a "lemonade maker", always turning crises into opportunities..

This tuning eventually became known as the Baritone Melody tuning. Emmett developed a full Baritone tuning which lowered the melody by a 4th and raised the bass up a step.

So sometimes breaking a string isn't the worst thing that can happen.