Hello everyone, I make silk string but I am not well versed in the silk supply chain in the US.
I will drop absolutely everything I know about silk string so far. I’m not that knowledgeable in the field of string making either to be honest, but I can at least tell you what I’ve learned so far.
I don’t know how many of yall I met at worlds, but I gave out a buuuunch of silk string. I’m hoping you all got to try it out. Silk actually felt very different from what I imagined it to be when I first made my silk string.
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Properties of Silk
- Silk is very dense. It’s basically as whippy as markmont cumulus foam when brand new. They break in very quickly and stretch a little bit. I’d say breaking the string in takes about 2 hours of throwing. The stretching isn’t too bad. I’d say on a 140cm (4’7") string, it stretches about 5cm (2 inches)
- Silk break in is really interesting.
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As I mentioned earlier, silk breaks in really fast. The string whippiness drops off during the initial 2 hour period and then plateaus. This in my opinion is the best stage in terms of playability. The slacks are fast enough for you to just guide it slightly and have it go where you want, but also isn’t too whippy to the point that it gets difficult to control the slack. At this state, I’ve had silk string last up to a month if it’s played on one yoyo every day for a few hours.
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The timing of which you change your silk string is assessed visually through a few things. As you can see in the graph, towards the end of the string’s lifespan, the whippiness drops off a little more whereas it finally starts fraying and loses its sheen. This is when you should swap silk out. Once it starts fraying and loses its sheen, it really doesn’t have that much left until it snaps. I am a lazy person and I use it until it snaps, and generally once the string is at this stage it can last anywhere from 2 - 7 days. So when the silk starts whipping less, take a look at the fraying and the loss of sheen to see if it’s time to change the string.
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Silk doesn’t really fray as mentioned above. Even towards the end when it starts fraying, it still frays less than any poly string after 10 minutes of yoyoing. But anywhere before this stage, the fraying is zero. I really like this property since it makes it feel less yucky even when using the same string for weeks.
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Silk has a metallic sheen to all of the colours. This looks cool, but under certain lighting, it may affect visibility. Sometimes I’ve had issues with light reflecting off of yellow silk in a way that it obscured visibility. From my experience, white is the best option for reliability, since it’s already white and reflections are just hidden behind the white background.
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Silk is not super soft and plushy. It’s slick on the surface, but since it’s so dense, it’s solid like a rope. Kinda imagine markmont strings, but since the twists are thinner, they’re not as grating feeling like markmont strings can sometimes do.
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Silk doesn’t become extremely thin after using for a long time. Unlike most poly that start out as fat strings and end up thinner than their thin counterparts, silk only thins down a very small amount at the very beginning break-in period but stays the same thickness throughout the rest of its lifespan.
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Where to Get Good Silk for Cheap
I get my silk from Korea. It’s from a company called “Hyunjinsa” which is a large retailer specializing in textiles. I’ll drop a few links and which type of thread to buy:
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Link showing all the silk selection: 실크(SILK)사 상품리스트 | 현진사
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Want a nice bright yellow or pink?: 견사,지누사,아나사 No.1 ~ No.48 > - 실크사(규방공예) - | 현진사
Choose numbers 7 or 16 -
Want a nice white?: 견사,지누사,아나사 No.501,506,검정,진진곤,백색 > - 실크사(규방공예) - | 현진사
Choose the white one (백색)
But before you buy anything, I need to tell you about the three different thickness of mother thread that they sell. Each are named 견사, 지누이도, 아나이도 in increasing order of thicknesses. So essentially using the thicker 아나이도 is somewhat akin to making trilobal poly in the sense that the mother threads are already twisted layers of thinner strands.
I recommend you ONLY and only ever use the thickest variant (아나이도) to make your silk string. Silk is pretty weak when thin, and it’s extremely easy to accidentally snap one of the strands when you’re twisting many small strands at a time which will require you to reset everything to the beginning of the string making process.
Twisting together 4 layers of this string will give you something equivalent to thin string, and 5 layers will give you fat. You could make a medium thickness by using 4 layers of 아나이도 and one layer of 지누이도, but as I said above, it’s extremely prone to snapping the thinner strand when doing this. Honestly I’d just stick to either thin or thick since these strings don’t get skinnier over time like most strings out there.
Another thing you have to keep in mind is how different colours play differently. I’ve tried yellow, pink and white (The exact colours linked above). White is the most mild, and softest feeling whereas pink is really rough and super ultra whippy. Yellow is a nice middle ground. I found that the rougher the string, the longer it lasts, so pink and yellow would last longer than white. However, I personally don’t recommend going the pink route since I found it to be unpleasantly rough. I think for the vast majority of people I’d recommend yellow. I just use white because of the visibility issues, but I’m sure it will be a non-issue for most.
Each spool contains enough to make around 2.5-4 strings based on how long you make your strings. The price is equal between different thicknesses, and because of that you’ll see that the thinner strands have longer total lengths. Think of it as paying per volume.
Each of them will cost 3000 Korean Won which is about 2.18 USD at the current exchange rate. I think it’s great value considering the property of silk string and how long it lasts.
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How much do I twist?
So I like tightly wound strings. I’ve tried different tensions and what I’ve learned is that tighter strings last longer and are whippier. However, they can “self snag” in some tricks because the string is gripping the bearing too tightly. I’ve found a general eyeballing rule to make sure you can get the tightest string possible without compromising on anything.
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Layer 4-5 strings and tie it to a doorknob or your rig, you twist until you see 10% length reduction. Then you’re going to pull decently hard. Hard enough for you to be able to see all the unevenly twisted strands to level out, but not too hard to the point something snaps.
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After that, you’re going to keep twisting until 20% and do the same tugging thing. After that keep twisting again, but this time you’re going to twist little by little. If a string is overtightened, you can see a phenomenon where the already twisted strand twists upon itself once again like a coil spring.
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This is where you wanna stop and loosen the tension the other way a bit until you see that one last coil straightened out. What you wanna do is twist, pull, twist, pull, several times until you see some coils forming then you loosen, pull, loosen, pull until it’s all straightned out. Do the loosening step in smaller increments than you did for twisting.
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Keep the tension on the string tight and then fold it over a yoyo. The tension on the string needs to be tight the entire time since forming any slack can cause it to start twisting upon itself in only certain areas of the string, which will require you to pull and untangle it back out.
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When you’re done folding the string in half with the yoyo hooked onto it, you can’t just let go at this point either. You pinch the ends really hard with one hand, and pull the string taught. Then you’re going to use your other hand to pinch 30cm (1 ft) above the yoyo. Keep pulling the strings tight, and then let the yoyo start spinning along the string twist.
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Once that 30cm section above the yoyo looks about done twisting, you’re going to keep the pinch on the ends, but you let go of the pinch on your other hand and then you’re going to pull your yoyo away from the pinching hand, essentially pulling the string taught again. Once this is done, you can let go and let the string finish winding itself. You can accelerate the process by spinning the yoyo clockwise just like how you’d do a snapstart, but just around a different axis.
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When the twists are done, you can tie the end and the string is done.
You might be wondering why there is so much pulling in between. This is to 100% ensure that the twists come out perfectly without any lumps in the middle. This happens when the two string segments aren’t of equal length when the string is twisting upon itself. Since the string tension is still really high on this thing, it can twist upon itself a tiny bit during the last step and introduce kinks to the string. You can only fix this by undoing the twist completely and redoing it so it’s better to just build a habit of pulling the string taught throughout the entire process.
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I hope this guide helped and I really hope everyone can get some good silk to make lots of silk string. I think silk is an amazing material for yoyo string and everyone owe themselves to try some.
Lemme know if you have any questions and I’ll be happy to answer them.