How to setup your Plunger | Recurve Plunger Setup | How to adjust and tune your plunger on your bow – Transcript

00:00I'm finally doing the video that so many of you have asked for. We're going to be talking about plungers. Finally, I will be answering your questions about plungers. Setting up and adjusting your plunger that's best for you to make you shoot the best and tightest groups is actually going to be easier than you think.

00:17You're watching the Jake Kaminski YouTube channel. If you're new here, my name is Jake Kaminski. I'm a two-time Olympic silver medalist in the sport of archery and I'm working to make this channel a great resource for all types of archery. I have a form series, a tuning series.

00:42I've been talking a lot about equipment lately, especially how to adjust it as well as strength training for the sport of archery. So, if you're interested in learning more, hit that subscription button and the notification bell, so that way you're notified every time a new video is uploaded. I'm putting out tons of content and you don't want to miss out on what's coming out in the future. So, before we get into talking about plungers, how to adjust them and how to set them up specific for you, I want to talk about some apparel. As you can see, I'm wearing one of the shirts that I have designed and put up on my website. I'll have a link in the description below on where you can check

01:11out some of the apparel and I'll put a card up at the top up here. And uh I'm really excited to come out with a bunch of different designs. Plus, one of my viewers came up with some really amazing designs and I really want to thank James. You really have knocked it out of the park when it comes to branding. He's helped me out with the I Am branding of the T-shirt line. So, like I said, I really appreciate his help because those designs are amazing and I definitely can't wait for my proofs to come in, so I can rock them myself. You know, I'm a barebow shooter now, so I figured I've

01:38got to represent. So, uh like I said, there's all sorts of different designs for all sorts of types of archery from compound to recurve, traditional to barebow, you name it. There's every even longbow. You name it, they're all there.

01:52Um and uh I'm really excited to finally have some nice-looking apparel available for you guys. Okay, so plungers. This has been probably the most requested thing out there and I think it's taboo.

02:05It's a bit more taboo and I think it's a bit less dark and a bit less secretive than a lot of people think it is. There's really not a secret to these plungers. You have to make sure you maintain them properly and you have to have them set up within a range, but then I can't tell you the magic sauce to make your plunger perfect for you. But nonetheless, I'm going to do my best to explain to you the working parts of a plunger, how to adjust it, how to set it up, and how to find the optimal spring

02:31tension for your specific setup. So, plungers are actually a fairly simple design. What the plunger does is you can adjust and set your center shot via this adjustment right here. And what this is doing is setting the depth, how far in or how far out it is adjusting on your bow. So, this is controlling the depth of the plunger itself, which is of course your center shot. That is a fairly simple thing to set up and adjust. I actually just produced a video

02:59about walk back tuning on how to find your perfect center shot for your exact bow and your exact setup. I'll put a card up at the top and there'll definitely be in a link in the description below in case you want to check that video out. I do also have another video specifically talking about center shot in regards to setting it up on a recurve style bow and there will be a link in the description below for that as well because I talk more about the theory of center shot and what it is and how to ultimately decide which direction

03:26to set up your preliminary center shot before you go do a walk back tune. The other main component in a plunger is a spring. The spring is very simple. It basically just absorbs the arrow flex and helps control how much that arrow is flexing as it is coming out of the bow.

03:43Many people are very confused as to which spring to use, how stiff to adjust the spring because on this side you have the adjuster. You can adjust preload, how much tension is loaded onto the spring internally based on how far in or out you have this adjusted. And like I said, it's really not as complicated as you think. To find your optimal spring tension, it really takes some time, unfortunately, and I'll explain to you how I do that, but I first want to really take apart the plunger and show

04:10you everything and explain how it is working. Okay, so these are two plungers that are completely broken apart so you can see the components. We've got a Biter plunger and an AAE Gold plunger. The top's the Biter, the bottom's the AAE Gold. This is what I would like to call the barrel. This is what everything is housed inside of for both of these.

04:27Your plunger tips, your plunger springs, which control the tension. This is an extra piece that is separate on the Biter, it's integrated into the AAE back here. And then these are the adjusters. This is a adjuster that goes on the outside of this barrel with clicks on the outside, and this one has clicks built inside of this mechanism that adjusts on this slide on the outside of the actual plunger barrel itself. On the AAE, this one here has an O-ring that helps keep

04:55the plunger tight so it doesn't vibrate loose and you can just put it on and off with your hands, whereas Biter supplies tools so you can tighten it on and off and keep these tools in your quiver. The plunger tips are definitely different. The Biters have different length tips.

05:09They also are in different colors. I don't think that they signify anything other than different lengths, so you can see that these are three different lengths. Whereas the AAE Gold has two different plunger tips you can put in it. This one up top has a hard anodized aluminum tip. This one has a plastic tip, which is made out of Teflon, I believe. So this top one is made for carbon arrows, this bottom one is made for aluminum arrows. I'll do another video here shortly explaining the difference between a Biter plunger and

05:37an AAE plunger, so that way you can see the benefits of the two, and then that way you get it'll help you make make a decision as to which one to purchase. But as you can tell in the springs, they all each have three different springs. The bite has a stiff, medium, and light spring, as does the AAE, stiff, medium, and light. It's a little harder to see on the on the AAE due to the difference in clear difference in size of the wire and how many loops the bite has. Um but, they still operate the same way. So, as

06:05you can see, the plungers are very simple. They're very similar and easy to adjust. There's really not a major difference um between manufacturers of how each one adjusts. But, there are differences and benefits and quality and things like that, which we'll do in another video explaining the difference between these two plungers in the future. So, center shot is pretty straightforward how to adjust, but I always get asked, "What about spring tension? Which spring to use?" Lots and lots and lots of questions.

06:32In my experience, I can tell you that, in general, you will need a stiffer plunger spring for higher draw weights. And, you will need a stiffer plunger spring when you're shooting a high carbon arrow, like an all carbon arrow or an X10, something like that, because those arrows, I've been told, oscillate at a higher frequency, not a higher amplitude. Higher amplitude would mean it's bending too much, but the frequency

06:59that it is bending back and forth is higher on a carbon arrow. So, in theory, you need a stiffer plunger spring to help control that speed of the oscillation. What you are looking for when setting up your plunger tension setting is something that is acceptable for your bow's tune. Now, from the beginning of this tuning series, I've talked about the order of operations, how you have to do one thing before another, otherwise, you'll be chasing your tail for forever or compensating for

07:25something that was wrong in the first place. So, the plunger tension, or the resistance that the plunger tip wants to move in with, has a direct relationship to how stiff or weak your arrows are. In my opinion, it really is not something that I like to adjust to compensate for arrow stiffness or weakness, especially when bare shaft tuning. I always go to my bow weight first before I adjust my plunger tension. And then even still, I

07:52adjust all sorts of other things before I adjust the plunger tension. I talked about that specifically in the bare shaft tuning video, which I'll put a link in the description below as well. Um so you can check that out, too. So you understand what I am talking about as far as how I adjust. What do I adjust? My limb bolts first, my arrow length, my point weight, my string, my plunger tension, whatever it may be. I go down a specific list of of importance or of an order of operations and how to

08:18change my tune specifically to each setup. Now, when I say higher plunger tension or lower plunger tension, what do I mean? I can give you baselines off of these two plungers. Again, this is the Biter plunger and this is the AAE plunger. I use the medium spring in both almost exclusively. Very, very rarely will I ever use the light spring or the heavy spring. And in my opinion, if you are using the light or heavy spring, there is something that you're compensating in your plunger tension

08:45instead of in your bow weight or your arrow spine to get your stiffness weakness within an acceptable range. I adjust my plunger settings specifically for forgiveness or specifically for group size. I will be doing a video soon explaining how to do fine tuning, so bear with me. It's coming. Just just hold on a little bit. It's coming. Um but the plunger tension I adjust as I'm shooting at the distance I am going to

09:12be scoring at or the distance that is most important to me. Ranking rounds maybe shot FITA and then elimination rounds are shot at 70 m or maybe if you're a senior, you're shooting at 60 m. Or if you're shooting field archery, I tend to fine tune at a longer distance than the closer distance because in my opinion, you can always gain a whole lot more points at the longer distances than you would lose at a closer distance if you didn't have a

09:37fine-tune for a 10-m bunny. But, if you had it really dialed in for that 60-cm face or that 60-m shot, that really long shot, you can gain a whole lot more points at the long distance than you'd lose at the short distance. So, when I'm adjusting my plunger to adjust my group size, my tune is changing. I'm not always looking for a bare shaft and a fletched shaft to be touching at 30 m or 20 yd or whatever it may be. I'm adjusting my plunger and my nocking

10:05point independent of where my optimal tune would be in order to get the best groups. Now, many people would say, "Well, wouldn't that affect the arrow flight?" Yes, it would. The arrow may not be flying the best that it could possibly fly, but in my experience, not always do I have the best arrow flight and the tightest grouping. I oftentimes have the tightest grouping with maybe not the best arrow flight. It's still really good, and to the untrained eye, they would not be

10:32able to see a disturbance in the arrow flight. But, experienced archers, experienced coaches, people who know what they're looking for can see, "Hey, your arrow's kind of kick a little bit out of the bow, but they do stabilize really quick, but they have this weird, you know, movement out of the bow initially." And I always say, "Well, that's just where my fine-tune ended up, and that's where I shoot my best groups, and it's working for me right now, and I'd rather have the tightest groups despite potentially trading off arrow

10:57flight." So, my baseline that I will tell you to start with that I have found for me personally, and this is at a 45- to 50-lb draw weight bow. So, mind you, it's a very high draw weight with, you know, X10s.

11:15A carbon arrow, I would recommend on a biter plunger to start with a medium spring somewhere around 5.5 ish. Anywhere from 5 to 5.5 is where I always ended up. So, what that means is on this plunger, there is a graduation and on there's a flat spot cut onto the barrel of this plunger and they have the number five there. And then around this, they have numbers, so you can see, you

11:42can set it at 5.5. And I know that this plunger is set up the same as if I took this other plunger and adjusted it to be 5.5. It's going to be very close. There is machining tolerances and spring tolerances and things like that. So, they're not always the same. So, I always recommend to check them against each other to make sure that they're the exact same initial stiffness. Now, on the AAE Gold Series,