Another update of my Yuan bow

me

It has many of the qualities of a late Tang to Song bow. When you compare it to paintings produced through those periods, it seems to have many brothers and sisters. It really brings the paintings to life.

A remarkable bow. Very elegant and knowing you, probably powerful. Congratulations.

Great bow, Yokhua! Seems to be from the hun period. How long is it??

JJ

Hello Yokhua; Elegant bow; To my eye this is a bow earlier than Yuan. Of the five known Yuan bows none is over 60", 152.4cm. This nock is not typical of the five, the recurve is only reminiscent.

Yours has a Hunnic type shape so whatever dynasty of the era 1000-1100.

Liao? What is the overall length? Hope you make some pretty arrows to show with it. Will you bring it to Korea WTAF 09? Jack

Ohoo, now is visible ,that you can draw pretty long. :D Over 80 lb ?

mmm it is very well crafted bow indeed.
Excellent.

So, the guava wood seem to prove itself quite good for the siyah, that is nice to know.

Is there difficulty to take string off of nock?

Yokhua, beautiful and very elegant.
Also an interesting solution with the nocks, have you been inspired by the art or some actual findings?

Thank you Bede; Thank you JJ; Thank you Jack, If I go to Korea this Sept. you will see the bow..

Dusan, The draw weight is around 65#~75#, but because its long siyans, the draw is quite smooth.

Alex, Guava wood is very strong indeed, and the good thing is here in Taiwan there are plenty of Guava trees...

Ashbow, The shape of nocks is from some old paintings, it's a "copy"...

Jang,yuhua

If someone dug this bow out of the ground and asked me about it, I'd say: Song/Yuan period. Tang and Xiongnu bows had much broader limbs. The very limited working section of the limbs is not quite like the paintings, though.

Thank you Stephen; This is the first one, and I'll make the following works more alike... Or by removing horn from some parts of this bow, that will extend the length of working limbs..

I'd like to try more different styles of ancient bows..

If you can help me to reach the data of those ancient bows... Or if there are any bows you wish to make.. I'd like to take the challenge..

Jang,yuhua

This is a very beautiful and graceful looking bow. Kind of a step away from turkish flight bows and korean bows.
Can you comment on the speed/efficiency of the shot? Looks like a very large bow, but it has a lot of reflex.

yokhua wrote:

Thank you Stephen; This is the first one, and I'll make the following works more alike... Or by removing horn from some parts of this bow, that will extend the length of working limbs..

I'd like to try more different styles of ancient bows..

If you can help me to reach the data of those ancient bows... Or if there are any bows you wish to make.. I'd like to take the challenge..

Jang,yuhua

Did you see my original Yuan bow from Xinjiang? It would be great if you could copy it. Actually, this bow that you have made is very close to it: only that your bow's limbs are thinner (belly to back measurement.)

Beautiful bow! It does look similar to the bows in these Dunhuang (敦煌) paintings :

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Another findings from russian sites. Historical art work from Uzbekistan- "Orlatov boj"- Orlatov fight(or war) .
Bows is very interesting , little looks like Yokhua bow or khotan bow...

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Stephen,
There are some paintings of reasonable detail showing bows with short bending sections. I will have to look them up, but I think they were Five Dynasties just before the Song. However, to make it more difficult, they are depicting historical subjects even earlier.

I still haven't worked out whether the most common bow represented in art for a period represents artistic fashion, archery fashion or some local influence on the archer. With the invention of photography, we only have to look at the last two.

In archaeology, the survival of one bow is chance, but the survival of many bows represents some kind of statistical information.

The only thing that really separates this bow from earlier non-contact siyah bows is the angles at the grip. Limb width might be variable as it is between Turkish and Persian bows and yet still produce bows that look similar from a distance. Early paintings do show wide limbed bows and excavations seem to support that style of depiction. The Yrzi bow has similar limb to handle angles, but it is too far away in space and time and also has different siyah attachment angles. The hand grip to limb angles became smaller sometime during the late Song early Yuan times judging purely on artistic representation.