in today's video we're gonna cover the preferred bowstring material of top-tier Olympic style recurve shooters so I've had a lot of questions lately about which bowstring material that I prefer how many strands to use depending on bow weight and a whole lot of questions related to bow strings that I'm going to answer in this video for those of you that are new here my name is Jake Kaminski I'm a two-time Olympic silver medalist in the sport of archery I'm working to make this channel a really great resource to all sorts of archery from tuning and form strength training and lots of other things related to archery so if you're serious about learning about archery and want to know more start by hitting that subscribe button the notification bell that way you're notified every time a new video is uploaded pumping out tons of content lately and you don't want to miss out you're watching the Jay Kaminsky YouTube channel [Music] so again today I'm going to cover the bowstring material basics as far as how many strands to use for how much bow weight roughly the recommendation of what all top tier Olympic style recurve shooters use and the properties of each type of bowstring available on the market so everything in this video that I'm going to recommend as far as strings are concerned I will be putting links to in the description below and those are Amazon affiliate links so when you do click on those and buy those products I get a percentage of the sales and also anything that you buy within 24 hours of clicking on those links I get a percentage as well it's just a small way that you can help this channel out and guarantee that I'll continue to produce content for free for everyone so thanks for those that do click on those everything that I will be recommending is going to be from bcy bowstring or bcy fibers they're pretty much a staple in the archery community as far as string materials goes I know there are a couple other manufacturers out there I think some of them have actually recently gone out of business or stopped producing bow strings so I'm gonna be recommending bcy fibers because I am very familiar with them and they are a great group of people as well so I have drawn up on this white board some properties to look for in a bowstring or basically just a reference that you can use when choosing a bowstring so on this side of the chart is a soft bowstring and on this side of the chart is a stiff bowstring so I'm gonna show you how and why specific types of bow strings are beneficial to a recurve bow not only from a longevity standpoint but also a performance and sound quality standpoint as well and also which ones to avoid just so you don't potentially damage your equipment okay so soft soft would be something that is not very harsh not a lot of residual vibration not a lot of this extra harmonic pinging of the bow when the arrow is gone in the string is oscillating back and forth so not only is the string oscillating back and forth but the limb tips are moving as the string is moving in and out and there's ultimately a lot of stress and shock load on the limbs and strings that are typically on the softer side will produce a better feel to the actual archer meaning less residual vibration less harshness less feedback almost but not in a negative way because it's not gonna mask and hide a bad shot but anyway a stiff string can potentially put a bit more stress on the limbs than you should be looking for now when I was working for some of the bow manufacturers out there trying to figure out why limbs were failing from time to time and trying to track it down and there was somewhat of a correlation between using strings that were made for compound with less creep less stretch and there were like I said there was only somewhat of a correlation not necessarily a direct correlation so this isn't like a definitive proof or anything like that that says you should not be using a compound string but I still would never recommend it from the feedback standpoint but also just in case you never know especially if you're out there buying your equipment it's a different story entirely you want that stuff to last as long as possible so like I said soft too stiff alright well start at the stiff end and work our way back for 52 X is a pretty standard compound string it's very thin very stiff no creep no stretch it's a really really good fiber but it's not good for recurve because it can potentially damage your limbs and it's a bit harsh in my opinion so essentially what makes a compound string a compound string is when they start adding Vectren into the actual fiber itself of the the strand of the string and so the more Vectren they have the stiffer they are the less creep they have the more Dyneema or the more even spectra they have it has a totally different feel than the Vectren as far as recurve shooting is concerned so for 52 X has a lot of that Tran compared to X 99 and some of the proprietary quote unquote blends of strings of the professional string building manufacturers that say no creak no stretch no nothing typically it's made out of this type of material I'd avoid that as well stick with name style actual published string materials that you can reference because these are not gonna get you in trouble whereas they say Oh a super-secret proprietary or whatever chances are at something on this end of the spectrum and you don't want that any recurve so mercury and 8125 mercury is a new one eighty one twenty fives the old tried-and-true basic string material for the last dozen years or so but essentially they're both made out of Dyneema Dyneema and spectra are very similar and a few properties but then within Dyneema there's a different qualities basically there's a SK 95 which is your 80 125 and your SK 99 is your mercury okay so the difference between SK 75 and SK 99 is sk 99 will have a bit less creep it will also stretch less before it breaks so it's on this end of the spectrum it's definitely not a veteran but it is still a bit stiffer than your SK 75 now I've heard through the grapevine potentially that 8125 is going to be eliminated or slowed down in production and more mercury is gonna be focused for a few reasons obviously the SK 99 is superior to the SK 75 in some ways but as a recurve shooter I think that it might be more important to be on this end of the spectrum that ad end for a few reasons so essentially 8125 and mercury are almost the same with the exception of strand count specifically the mercury string is much thinner which actually may be much better in the long run for a potentially more accurate string and I'm gonna cover that at the end of the video so stick around if you want to figure that out but you go more towards this end of the spectrum even further left of 80 125 and you have 650 - now 650 - from bcy bowstrings is the original fast flight material which is just a hundred percent spectra now Brownell I think potentially just went out of business or I heard from somebody telling me that may not be true I haven't looked it up forgive me if I'm wrong but all the Koreans shoot Brownell fast flight and that is on this end of the spectrum that's why their bows have a very very distinct sound to them they have a very very distinct sound and it is if anybody has ever shot next to a Korean shooter you know how their both sound and it's because they're using fast flight however the Brownell fast flight is not actually fast flight it's not a hundred percent spectra it's something else it's it's actually called fast flight plus there there's something else in it again I haven't looked it up because I like bcy they've always taken care of me and you know you can't go wrong with their their fibers so like I said you can see how it's on the spectrum here all the Koreans shoot way over here and once I tried this bowstring material I actually liked it a whole lot more than 8125 what I felt in difference was there was a bit more soft like rebound as the limbs came back after they delivered the arrow so there was a much less harsh initial punch back per se as the arrow was leaving the bow and after the shot the limbs just felt much happier yeah so the spectra does have a bit more creep I guess you would say then the Dyneema 's so it's got that little bit of cushion so basically it's just got a bit of stretch and then it comes back right so there's it got a bit of elasticity to it although if you do overload it it will stretch and stay stretched and that can degrade over time so you know you may need to replace your bow strings a bit more often but honestly I mean I replace my bow strings at least once to twice a year just because I wore them out but there is a benefit to the spectra from the research that I've done spectra is less susceptible to abrasion so that means you'll get less of that fuzziness compared to a Dyneema a Dyneema will fuzz more you can control that with string wax but I was one of the type of people who almost never waxed my strings unless I knew it was gonna be pouring that day just to prevent it from soaking up a whole lot of extra water but typically I wouldn't wash my strings nearly at all if ever so the Spectras will look better longer as well so that's what I would recommend to reference on types of string material I really love the 650 281 25 is okay but 652 I mean it changed changed the way my bows felt entirely and I really liked it and I really wouldn't go back to 80 125 as long as I had the choice of the 652 so the next question is how many strands to use and this is a very common question of course all the time I typically would recommend there's a barrier at the 40-pound range so your 40-pound range if you're forty pounds and above you should shoot 20 strands if you're 40 pounds of blow you should shoot 18 strands if you're a youth Archer maybe you could shoot 16 strands but you won't really gain any performance and doing that 18 strands is really the way to go so I'd recommend 18 to 20 now what material is that from because these materials are different sizes the six 52 and the 8125 are the exact same size so that's your 18 to 20 strand range right now the mercury is much much thinner it's actually a lot thinner and this is what I would recommend if you're gonna do the mercury would be 32 strands on the low end 34 and actually according to my math it said 35 and a half strands so potentially even doing 36 on the high end may be beneficial that's something that I'm just not familiar with so that's something you'll have to play with so again that's for 18 to 20 that's 652 and 8125 mercury is more for 50 to X is less than mercury but more than 80 125 but I wouldn't recommend these anyways stay on this end of the spectrum at 5 as you okay so why would I recommend using a thinner string material compared to a thicker string material I'll draw it for you here so this isn't exactly 18 and 32 strands I just drew up the difference between the two so what we're looking for is the symmetrical Miss on the outside diameter if you remove the circle that I tried to use as a reference for roughly the same size you'll see that this one has a much smoother appearance on the outside there are more fibers within this bundle the fewer fibers you have the more these little valleys and Peaks are so it's actually not round anymore so to give you an over-exaggeration compare this to this you can see how there is these huge peaks and valleys in this string of three strands more strands you have the more round it becomes the better it wants to deliver the arrow and the more round your center serving is which is more consistent for your knocks so there is a benefit to this roundness however like I said I really prefer that 652 thanks for watching and thank you to my patreon supporters if you want to become a patreon supporter or check out books apparel and some seminar info head to Jay Kaminski calm and be sure to hit that subscribe button in the notification bell to be notified every time a new video is uploaded and I appreciate you watching thank you again