1 Topic by Deagol (edited by Deagol 2012-07-27 06:45:06)

  • Registered: 2011-04-04
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Topic: Kaya Kahn first impressions ::UPDATED! BROKEN!::

Hi!

::UPDATE::

It broke.

After a week shooting it, in the club indoor range, I was going to shoot my last arrows when the lamination between wood and carbon failed.

It happened when I was drawing the string, just before reaching my anchor point (fortunately, because I would have punched myself in the face...), the central part of the bow, from where the limbs bend, the bow splitted in two longitudinally across the union between the wood and the carbon.
I was very lucky because the leather grip held the two broken parts, avoiding them to completely crack at the center thus preventing the string to slip from the tips and the limbs to collapse upon me.

That afternoon ended only with a broken bow, but it could have ended with some serious injury... I was just lucky.

After examining the bow meticulously where it broke, I think that the failure could be due to poor quality and irregular gluing of the lamination.

Now I'm trying to get my money back, besides the seller and the distributor insists in replacing it by a new one I do not want it after that incident, given its severity.

My thoughts about the Kahn are now a bit contradictory, because it's still one of the best looking bows I've ever seen, and it shot really well, but I can't think about it as a reliable bow, I regret to say.


ORIGINAL POST:

Here are my 5 cents about the Kaya Kahn (Please forgive my english):

Why I chose this bow:
I'm principally an Olympic style archer, and the last 2 years I've been shooting some of the major tournaments here in Spain, but lately I haven't had time enough to train as much as I liked to keep my scores, so some months ago I bought a Kaya KTB to give me a breath from competition.

The KTB opened a new world of sensations to me! It was lighter and smaller than a longbow and fast and smooth as a recurve. And the"barebow" and instinctive shooting style made me forget about all the clicker and screws worries of the olympic.
The problem was that although its 35 pounds it was a pain in the… thumb to shoot it.  roll

So I decided to get the Kahn, as it combines the best from the KTB with the good wooden appearance of a longbow and its invaluable shelf, indispensable to shoot with three fingers with precission.


Firsts impressions:
When you receive the box, your first though is: Are you sure that insides this there is a bow? It's so thin!
But there is! A bow, a string, and nothing else.
Well, maybe one can't expect to have a super wonderful presentation for a 120€ bow, but it would be nice to have, at least, an instructions sheet… sad

At first glance the string was well made, and the bow finish good enough.
I missed the string bridges, but thankfully, Bluelake confirmed in this post that the Kahn doesn't have them.

So I headed to  the club indoor range to try it. The first difficulty I had was to string it.
It's not easy to string a 45# bow with the "crosslegs" techinque. And a 10cm wound in my left leg is good proof of this… So be careful!!!

After shooting for 2 hours I was completely exhausted but very pleased with the new bow.
Really fast and deadly accurate even for a noob like me in instinctive shooting.

But it had some  problems that I didn't realized before:

- The limb tips were super sharp, and they cutted the string servings. In only 2 hours the string was rendered unusable!  mad

- The arrow shelf was not protected so the friction within it and the arrows started to scratch the wood varnish.

So the next day, with my always handy Dremel I've sanded the tips a little bit to blunt the sharp edges and to balance a bit the two sides of the tips in order to correct a small dissalignment of the string.

Also went to the archery shop to buy a shelf protector and in a leather shop I bought a small piece of black leather to replace the grip cover, which albeit being good enough (And made of real leather I think) I found it to be really boring.
Furthermore, I stringed some turns of red thread in the ends of the limbs, just to cover the union between the limb and the wood ends (don't know its correct name), as the KTB has.

I have yet to make arrows for this bow, with proper spine and lenght, but as a preliminar review I can say that is a good bow given its price, very light and fun to shoot, although it needs a sanding of the tips before using it if you want to preserve the string more than one day.

Here some pics of it after my "tunning":

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8006/7492356560_6c0e0d3423_c.jpg
Bow by David.Peralta, on Flickr


http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8292/7492357266_8b9e03d008_c.jpg
grip by David.Peralta, on Flickr


http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8013/7492357862_208d061fae_c.jpg
Tip by David.Peralta, on Flickr


http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7269/7492358534_5502342d8d_c.jpg
Cuerda by David.Peralta, on Flickr

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  • Registered: 2012-07-17
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Re: Kaya Kahn first impressions ::UPDATED! BROKEN!::

Good work! I smoothed the edges of my tips, and put a felt rest on the shelf too.

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  • ~HUN~
  • ~HUN~
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Re: Kaya Kahn first impressions ::UPDATED! BROKEN!::

Sorry to hear this Deagol. I am surprised that the string nocks require sanding, also. Sounds like pretty basic, poor finish.
What is your draw length out of curiosity? Just wondering if it was longer than that specified for the bow. Bows do break and it can be very, very scary. My friend had a 120# warbow break at full 32" draw! He lived wink

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  • Registered: 2010-10-15
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Re: Kaya Kahn first impressions ::UPDATED! BROKEN!::

I notified Freddie Won of Kaya Archery of this thread back when it was first started; I also let him know about the updates.


T

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5 Reply by EM (edited by EM 2012-08-01 15:42:08)

  • EM
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Re: Kaya Kahn first impressions ::UPDATED! BROKEN!::

~HUN~ wrote:

Sorry to hear this Deagol. I am surprised that the string nocks require sanding, also. Sounds like pretty basic, poor finish.

Last week, I got to my local archery shop to see the new Kaya Khan that had just arrived for me.

And yes, I saw the very rough and sharp edges of the string nock, just where the string has to fit. And we also discovered that the upper wood part of one of the siya had a small open split. And also that the side of this siyah kept clear traces of a shock : the wood was smashed in one of the sides of the string nock (not the most protruding part of the string nock).

We (the seller and I) discovered this just after having opened the box. Actually we had to look closely : the defects were relatively small in size. Small, but apparently eager to grow with usage !!

The box seemed absolutely intact and brand new. The bow also seemed absolutely new, except this one siyah. The bow was probably badly hit on the side of one siyah during the making, or may be just before being put in its box.


This is my 4th problem in a row, in a few month :

- 1st : Windfighter strung by shopkeeper loses one of the oval string's supports (base of the siyah) ==> replacement

- 2nd : Windfighter breaks (crack appears on the back) after 2 or 3 weeks ==> replacement

- 3rd : Windfighter breaks (crack appears on the back) after 2 weeks ==> replacement with Khan (shopkeeper refuses further ordering of windfighters)

- 4th : Kahn doesn't pass first inspection by shopkeeper and I ==>   what to do after that ???

(and also, before the 4th event, my KTB broke, after one year of usage, but this is ~ok)


Meanwhile, I've used a longbow and at first I was pleased. But clearly, I prefer a very light bow, thumb release and long draw.

Hopefully I'll finally receive the jang janggung Kaya KTB that I ordered 2 months ago, and above all, I hope it will be resilient and survive at least one year, like my first KTB.

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6 Reply by Deagol (edited by Deagol 2013-01-03 19:49:45)

  • Registered: 2011-04-04
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Re: Kaya Kahn first impressions ::UPDATED! BROKEN!::

Hi all,

Finally and after having some "loud" discussions with the seller, who refused to return me the money of the Kahn and insisted in replacing it by a new one we reached an agreement, he received the new one and after selling it I got my money back.

He also told me that in a period of one month four Kahns have been returned broken to the store, and that he is probably not selling anymore the Kaya "traditional" bows.

To be honest, and 9 months after the Kahn incident I have not used again my KTB, mainly because I'm back to olympic style, and also due to a little fear of breaking it... Because I really like that bow!

I've been told that the recurve limbs from Kaya are of a very good quality, but I'm also sure that their traditional bows didn't follow the same quality standards.

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  • Registered: 2012-04-04
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Re: Kaya Kahn first impressions ::UPDATED! BROKEN!::

DEAGOL it´s really unfortunate this things are happening, but as HUN said this bow has a limit in drawing, if one does over stretch it it won´t stand it, i have a Windifighter and a friend of mine also has one, so far no problems, i also have a Hwarang YMG 53# that has a small problem, the string move away from the bridges, and if you keep shooting like 3 in a ow without fixing it, it´ll snap out, that´s how i discovered. The bow shoots well, but has this minor inconvenience, i can´t pass this bow along as this has this problem, i´ll just keep it, cos i know how to handle it.

EM what happened to your KTB after one year? What´s the lifespan of a bow?

I believe the Kaya, has to review this minor errors and try to sort them out, if it wants to continue their business, most complaints are regarding bad gluing lamination split  and so forth, thing which don´t look to difficult to solve. perhaps those wraps near the tips and grips could be a standard in all their bows.

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  • Registered: 2012-04-04
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Re: Kaya Kahn first impressions ::UPDATED! BROKEN!::

Bluelake what has Freddie said after your dropped him this complaints? You know, i don´t know if it´s done, but i guess it would be ideal to tests this bows before send them out for use, a single person should be in charge for that, if they want to hire me i´d go to Korea to do that hehehe.

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  • Registered: 2010-10-15
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Re: Kaya Kahn first impressions ::UPDATED! BROKEN!::

Gabriel wrote:

Bluelake what has Freddie said after your dropped him this complaints? You know, i don´t know if it´s done, but i guess it would be ideal to tests this bows before send them out for use, a single person should be in charge for that, if they want to hire me i´d go to Korea to do that hehehe.

He was going to look into it.  I had sent him the link to this thread, at the time, so he is aware.  Currently, he is at the ATA show in Kentucky, so it might be some time before he could reply again.

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  • Rawi
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Re: Kaya Kahn first impressions ::UPDATED! BROKEN!::

Hi, here's my new Khan (still in one piece  wink  ) in action :
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/540 … 160350.3gp

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11 Reply by EM

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Re: Kaya Kahn first impressions ::UPDATED! BROKEN!::

Gabriel wrote:

EM what happened to your KTB after one year? What´s the lifespan of a bow?

Hi,

(sorry for the late answer)

My KTB 52 inches 40 pounds it is still OK and ~intact after 1 year
[but I didn't even shot half the number of arrows that I shot last year]

Apparently I learnt something about shooting a KTB because the 'inexistant arrow rest' is much less worn out than in my first KTB. Or the cause is simply in the lesser number of arrows shot this year... Or maybe the cause is in the length of the arrows I used : 37 inches [I thought I would draw to 35 or 36 inches, kyudo-like. But it's already hard for me to draw this bow around 33 inches... and I feel a real big phobic 'fear of breakage' doing that, so I don't try that much].

Last year I also replaced the faulty Khan with a KTB 48 inches 35 pounds, just in case the KTB 52 inches would break. As I didn't have to use the KTB 48 inches, I can't tell if it's more resilient than the one that broke after 1 year.


Bye,

EM

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  • Registered: 2013-08-28
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Re: Kaya Kahn first impressions ::UPDATED! BROKEN!::

Hey folks, thanks for providing all this great information.  Bluelake, have you heard whether Kaya has made any changes to the khan in the past year or so?  I'm planning to get one, and I don't know that the mixed feedback in this forum would turn me off the bow, but it has made me curious.  Thanks much.

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  • Registered: 2012-02-01
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Re: Kaya Kahn first impressions ::UPDATED! BROKEN!::

I would suggest you to re-cosmetic a Kaya KTB instead. It 's cheap and good enough to be a project bow. You may add buid-up rest instead of cut-in shelf.

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  • Registered: 2010-10-15
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Re: Kaya Kahn first impressions ::UPDATED! BROKEN!::

As far as I know, the Khan has not been changed at all.  The bow is nice to shoot, but has had some glitches with several people.

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  • From: Innvik, Norway
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Re: Kaya Kahn first impressions ::UPDATED! BROKEN!::

I have owned and shot a Khan 50# for half a year now, shooting flight every day at 160 meters. It's a great little bow sold which I modified slightly, putting in place a grip similar to the traditional Korean bows using leather and bicycle cork. Absorbs shock almost completely working with the two dampers I made out of filt and leather.

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  • kaya1
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Re: Kaya Kahn first impressions ::UPDATED! BROKEN!::

They are a heap of junk. I bought one in December 2016 to add to my collection. I had shot it twice since, went to use it today and it delaminated...wrote to Kaya and they gave a 'velly solly' reply...what a poor product and company.

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17 Reply by oni

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Re: Kaya Kahn first impressions ::UPDATED! BROKEN!::

Sorry to necropost but I've got a Kaya 50# & used it on and off for at least the last 10 years. Dry fired 2x by accident .  Never even looked like breaking.  Maybe  a good vintage  big_smile

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  • Registered: 2016-08-18
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Re: Kaya Kahn first impressions ::UPDATED! BROKEN!::

oni wrote:

Sorry to necropost but I've got a Kaya 50# & used it on and off for at least the last 10 years. Dry fired 2x by accident .  Never even looked like breaking.  Maybe  a good vintage  big_smile

My windfighter was a tank. It's been dry fired 4 times, left in very hot & cold temperature, dropped, smacked, used to smack something else, pressed and so on. Then it delaminated after 3 years. I was upset  because it broke but it gave me more than what I paid for condidering what it took.

I guess YEMV.

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