confused about public key strength

[Matt Kinni]

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Hello, I can't seam to figure out how the different bitstrengh of my
public key effects anything.  If someone encrypts something to my
private key, isn't the strength of the private key that matters?

So I have a 1024bit DSA pub and 4096 elgamal key.  Isn't the lengh of
the elgamal key what determines how strong the file is encrypted?


What does the size of the public key even matter?  I understand that it
can be used as a singing key, but I have an RSA subkey for that instead.
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