Quiet...

The weather in the US has been unbelievably nice.  In Chicago we have had 80 degrees and low humidity the last two days so I have been shootin'.

The weather in the US has been unbelievably nice.  In Chicago we have had 80 degrees and low humidity the last two days so I have been shootin'.

Does anyone know if the range on Namsan is still open?  I would really like to see some traditional Korean archery while I am here.

Also, Bluelake thanks for the videos you posted.  The method of attaching sinew (Preglue and dry) is a lot more controlled than putting it on wet and having it shrink whaile you hope that it does not pull off the ever arching bow. (This should work well for original American horn bows.

Yongung,

Which videos are you referring to?

It was a two part video on making the horn bow.  I am assuming that you are the same Bluelake that taught conversational english at the university here in seoul.

It was all enlightening, but the part that I am referring to is the way the bowyer combed and saturated the sinew on a board and then allowed it to dry.  It was then transferred to the back of the bow.  With traditional American bows, the sinew is typically combed and glued right onto the bow.  The sinew shrinks, curving the bow.  If the curve is too much the sinew will pull off.  It requires permanent wrapping while it dries.  The wrapping adds weight to the limb.  Transferring the sinew after it has dried would eliminate the risk of having it pull off as it shrank.

"Ahhh...  Yes, I am that bluelake (although I have never taught in Seoul--Gyeongju, Pohang, and Gyeongsan, yes  ).  The part that threw me was your using the word "posted", which implies something put online; my videos are only available in DVD format.  In the past, someone had stolen my videos and had done that; I contacted the host and they were taken down."

There are still copies floating around the internet.  I searched youtube for "korean bow" or "korean archery" and they came up.  I just thought that you put them up there.  It is not right, but it seems to be the way of the world.  With apologizes to Ronald Reagan, "Itellectual property, itellectual property senor, we don't need no stinking intellectual property rights."  I have taught a few courses around the world on a very tiny corner of engineering.  It seems that whenever someone gets a copy of the training material they proceed to put it on the internet.

I took a walk up the old fortress trail today and on the way down, I stumbled across Hwarangjeong.  I met some of the nicest people.  They let me watch and one of the members took me down to their training center, where they have a bow museum.  I thought that 4 months of prcticing in front of mirror was a bit much before they let you shoot an arrow, but not so at that range.  You really need to be sure that anyone firing at the full length range is going to keep the arrows in the target area.  It was nice to see people of all ages, sizes and sex nocking the targets.  It is clever to have a microphone on each target.  When you here the time difference between the speaker and the direct sound, it strikes home how far away the targets are.

I mentioned to the member that was showing me around that the american indian bow was of a very primitive type and that there were other more elequent types.  They mentioned that there was room on the wall for other bows.  It wouldn't be offensive, if I made an example or two of other Penobscot, father and son bow and MODOC (Ishi) bows and sent them.

Any hints on how to word the letter in the package.  I really wanted to send them as an aprreciation for them taking the time to show me around.