If your buying "stock" strings that come pre packaged you need to buy strings that have the AMO 62" label for the Puma and a AMO 64" for the Gull. If your buying custom the 4" shorter than AMO will be about right. The 4" rule will give you a string that will work but many recurve shooters like to play with different string lengths to tweak the most performance out of the bow that they can. Do NOT put fast flight or any other modern material string on those bows, use only Dacron or B-50.
Hope this helps.

 

First Welcome To Archery Talk!

Again I echo use only Dacron be it B-50 or one of the new Dacrons but make sure it is DACRON. Now if it were me I would order a Flemish string that's 3 3/4" shorter than the amo length of each respected bow and twist the strings to find the desired length. The way I do this realty takes a 2nd person. I start out with no silencers on the bow and a low brace height. Then I shoot an arrow with someone having their back turned to me the I twist the string three time and repeat the process. The bow will slowly get quieter and then I will start to get loud again. Then I play with it one twist a a time to fine tune it. Where the bow is the most quiet is where it is transferring the most energy and you've found the sweet spot. Once you've done that record your brace height and the actual length of the twisted string. Over time the string especially Dacron will continue to stretch and you'll have to add a few twist. For what it's worth it's my opinion that a tightly twisted string is a more stable string.

One thing you might note is that playing with the string length and brace height will affect the way you bow shoots a given arrow spine, but again this is tunable with point weight.

 

You start getting to much twist (1 in 5/8 inch) you start to loose stability strand tension starts to change

 

Just have to be careful saying tightly twisted. That leaves a lot to the imagination. That's all I am saying. Your instructions are great.

 

With a recurve, brace height (and therefore string length) is critical to how the arrow flies. Finding the perfect height at brace will keep you arrow from "fishtailing", or side to side wobbling in flight. Too much or too little will cause fishtailing. Each change in spine or point weight will need to be tuned by string twist.

Vertical wobbling, or poroising, is tuned out by adjusting the nocking point.

Best of luck to you.

 

$280 for a recurve string? Dude, I've got some old recurve strings I'll gladly sell ya for half that! :angel:

You might want to contact 3Rivers Archery; google 'em. Call the Tech desk number. They'll set you up with what you need, and it won't cost you more than $15 - 20 each.

 

I think he was talking about a new bow being $280, so he bought a used bow instead.

 

I surely hope so... but that'd ruin the setup for my joke.