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It is hard to get comparable data-sets between horn-sinew bows and carbon laminate bows. I've seen some which suggest horn-sinew bows can perform dramatically better than the best carbon laminate bows I've seen, namely bows built by Adam Karpowicz. This is far from universal though, as many well respected makers today don't seem to be willing or able to approach the edges of the performance envelope and so the numbers they offer APPEAR to be roughly in line with (or worse than) modern glass laminate bows. It is extremely difficult to get an apples-to-apples comparison in all cases though, so I'm a long way from certain that horn-sinew bows are definitively superior in performance.

What I can say though is that sinew's elongation at break is considerably higher than carbon's, which in theory allows for much greater pre-load on limbs. I've never seen data though on what the mass-tensile strength ratio is on glue-laden sinew. Remember horn is also worked in ways carbon fiber is generally not on bows, the radiusing of a horn belly allows more compressive load to be borne by less material and the grooving to improve bond strength and blunt the shear line are examples of this.

Again, a true apples to apples comparison is elusive to put it mildly. And all of this is very subjective of what apples to apples really is. You could always look at flight shooting records for respective bow types, the old Istanbul records against modern recurve records might give you the answer you're seeking.

It is possible that a glue line gave internally (there would not necessarily be any visible evidence of this), and this caused the bow's tiller to change and so it shed its string on release. It is also possible that some quirk of your technique that time, or an arrow bending strangely, or any of about a dozen other things could have caused the bow to shed its string. Either way, once a bow does this, it absorbs a lot of energy in ways it wasn't meant to. After doing this to a high strung Korean bow a couple times, you'll almost surely have broken it  even if it wasn't caused by an internal fault initially. By your description, no matter what initially caused it, it sounds to me like it is time to retire that bow as it is no longer safe to shoot.

It is important to note though, bows do not last forever. Generally the more high strung a design, the shorter its life expectancy will be. Also more modestly priced bows like the Kaya seem to have a higher failure rate and shorter life than the nicer Hwarangs, but it is hard to say for certain without empirical sampling.

You're welcome. Just as a follow up to anyone reading this, the PM system works but to my knowledge only if you look for it. You can go to:
http://www.koreanarchery.org/punbb/misc … page=inbox
To access your PM inbox.

You can also click on the little thing that says "PM" at the bottom of everyone's icon area in threads to get to links that'll take you to your PM inbox. There are no notifications for it though or any, again to my knowledge, direct ways to access it. *shrug*

Forum life seems to have taken it on the nose in the last couple years, with forum hosts getting worse (by hosts I mean companies and software packages that create the user interface we call a "forum") and users being sucked away by facebook and other social media which tend to be more attention-grabbing but generally offer shallower discourse. Whether places like this will cling on or not I think depends largely on the willingness of whoever pays for it to continue shelling out and dealing with the various crises which inevitably arise. Notice at the bottom the PunBB copyright at the bottom indicates 2009 as the most recent update we're using.

Shameless self promotion here, however we also provide thumb rings:
https://www.customthumbrings.com/

I believe we're the only western source of the Korean Male ring or Sugakji.

No, its a valid perspective. I just genuinely think you might have Armin figured wrong. He is a super friendly and nice guy, and I'd honestly suggest you reach out to him and chat with him about your concerns. He also has a disproportionately large voice for actually being a very small shop on a very very very small island. So far as I'm aware, his business is overwhelmingly local and from operating a shooting range, and not as a big retailer of asiatic bows.

As far as any given brand of bows go, I wouldn't claim to be an expert on failure rates of any of it. Overwhelmingly I shoot my YMG, really want to pick up more in different poundages actually. I've broken a couple bows over the years too, but unless a bow breaks during the reviewing process and affects the testing generally I don't mention it because it is an anecdote not data. As a reviewer, unless you had a dataset on hand showing a bow design was faulty or had generated it yourself, I wouldn't be inclined to re-broadcast that information just because I wouldn't consider it reliable.

Given the power of the interwebz though, now that you've got me thinking about it, I might run a facebook poll though for a month or so and try and aggregate data on who bought one of X bows, how many arrows had been put through it, and whether it was still working well or not. That way you'd step away from the reporting bias whereby users who break bows are much more likely to go complain about it, and due to the rarity the event is much more likely to stick in your mind. Maybe that'd be a good way to aggregate data on a potentially faulty bow group? I don't know honestly, you've got me thinking about this now. Just for background, I've spent some time bumming around the cutlery industry which is rife with this sort of thing. Couple reports of bad edge retention or folding edges or a broken blade or two and suddenly there is a panic over heat treat batch faults when in reality it was nothing. Bad sharpening, a dull grinding belt, whatever, but a couple strung together isolated incidents became "data" in people's minds because of the way the human mind likes to see patterns, even when they don't exist.

I hope all that made sense. Again I'm not looking to be rude, stir the pot, or anything of the sort. Experience just has me leery of forum derived accounts of bad batches of products, and I also take a somewhat charitable view of Armin who as best I can tell is just a super nice dude trying to find his way in the world like the rest of us.

Howdy neighbor! You're just one state over. Welcome. Yes, things here are a bit on the quiet side, and it is a problem which feeds itself because it means everyone else checks the forum that much less frequently.

Armin (the gentleman behind that YT channel) is a nice guy and friend of the company. I don't think he means to mislead anyone. I also think he shoots a lot less powerful bows than most of us do, and as we all know less powerful bows tend to have much lower failure rates due to total energy reabsorption relative to percentage energy reabsorption.

Honestly though, I don't envy anyone who makes bows. Bows break. Some of it is random/unavoidable, some of it is time/wear, and some of it is abuse intentional or accidental. Get one person to announce their failure and another will come out of the woodwork. Suddenly a pattern appears to emerge and so does a prophet who announces some particular issue with a run/design/style of bow. *shrug*

Of course he doesn't test bows the same way I'd test them, obviously since we do testing too and ours are focused on the quantitative side more than the qualitative side, but I don't find any fault in his way of looking at bows from a shooter's experience sort of perspective. We try not to get deep into the whole longevity issue because a sample size of one isn't representative of anything, and I wouldn't blame anyone else who takes a similar approach.

Of course he has reviewed our products too, so if you'd like to claim conflict of interest, it would be a fair criticism.

Heh, it is normally quiet here. Sorry I missed this for so long. I actually replied to this here first:
http://www.koreanarchery.org/punbb/view … 5398#p5398

The issues were less with the bow (although there is a twist issue that causes them to flip to watch out for) and more to do with the company engaging in a variety of forms of monkey business/fraud. If you buy one, make sure you use a payment method that'll allow you some sort of recourse if the bow doesn't show up, or has some other issue. That is my best advice.

We actually tested one, but as the link notes we retracted what we published. The short version is that the performance is pretty poor, even for the low poundage, because the bow stacks and is very inefficient. That doesn't really matter for a trainer bow though, because it in inexpensive and incredibly durable. *shrug* Like I said in the other thread, we really wanted to carry the bow but were lucky to be able to walk away from this one without a major financial loss. We will not be doing further business with Elong Outdoors.

I hope that is helpful.

Ha! Thank you for the post.

To answer your question about beak length, one of our vendors who originally requested the design actually provided us with a technical diagram as a starting point. Much of the body:beak ratio came from that. Sculpting and tweaking the design from there was just a process of trial and error on the range. Because we'll adjust the size of the entire ring, we wanted to provide enough room for a a reasonable sized nock that'd fit a traditional (fat) string as well as a full index finger. The angle at which is it photographed on our website makes it look even larger, but really it is just about long enough for a nock and a good purchase with the index finger. Some of this, I should note, is due to string placement. If the string can be placed all the way up against the thumb (as in the ring has a flat top) there is much more room for the index finger and a shorter beak can be used. We opted for a slight lip to make the ring easier to use, but this increases the beak length.

There is a huge amount of variability in this design, really all around, but it was an interesting and fun project. I hear you on TRAS, I think we're all sufferers too.

Natural arrows banned at your club? SAVAGES!

I've seen several people who run in Manchu circles who have purchased them because, if you can't make your own arrows, there are precious few ready-made options for Manchu bows. None appear to be ecstatic nor feel like they were ripped off. If you wanted more information, that'd be where I'd go to ask if I were you.

Hope that helps.

If it worked well, it could actually be a significant tool for measuring performance. That said, it has limitations. Aside from the obvious audio pickup/analysis, at best the app could only hope to give you the AVERAGE velocity over the course of your arrow's flight. That isn't very good, because you'll get significantly higher results with improved form and minimalistic fletching. Ryddragyn's video is the perfect example of this in effect:
https://youtu.be/nj2Qsxov2tM

That said, a good chrono is expensive and shooting over a chrono is hard, so this may well be a great tool for a lot of people since just about everyone seems to have a smartphone these days......