My thumbrings

Very nice work! I make thumb rings from very hard woods like Ebony and Holly and Mesquite.

Hy Ilkai, I am glad to see you here!!!
Very nice thumbrings, you have good hand!
Can you show the inside part of the ring?

Gini

Thanks KenH,

KenH wrote:

Ebony and Holly and Mesquite

I wan to try hardwood. Cattle bone and horn proccessing very difficult and release bad smell. Cattle bon and horn looks good. I think ebony looks like water buffalo horn. How many pounds bow you use whit your hardwood thumbrings?

Thanks Gini,

Ginni wrote:

Can you show the inside part of the ring?

I can show you;

I'm using my thumb rings with a 48# bow. These two were made from a single 1" thick x 1.25" wide x 2" long piece of Wenge:
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Ipe or Brazilian Walnut is another good wood. It is even harder than Ebony, but easier to find because Ipe has become very popular for hardwood floors.

Very nice. I want to try like that.
Is IPE's name Lapacho? If it is ok, very easy finding in Turkey.

All these rings in this thread are really beautiful! :)

Yes - Lapacho is one of several other common or local names for Tabebuia serratifolia, which is native to Brazil, and much of surrounding South America as well as several Caribbean islands.

It is the hardest wood known to mankind. Ebony rates 3220 on the Janka scale, and Ipe rates 367 - about 12% harder.

Getting back to the original thumb rings in this thread, they are very traditional. I have several original rings that look very much like these. Many people have been making rings that are very Korean in their designs. These rings are much more in the Turko-Persian style.

Some collectors are very definitive about identifying rings as Persian or Turkish in the absence of provenance or identifiable decoration, but the criteria they use are lip length and depth and material. Lip length and depth are related to the style of shooting. Longer lips are used with a less strongly flexed thumb. Deeper shorter lips are used with a more flexed thumb. The materials from elephant ivory, morse (walrus ivory), jade, jasper, agate, bone, and bronze were used everywhere in the Middle East. Inlaid iron seems to be rarer and may have been developed for rings in the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt and Syria.

Bede wrote:

Lip length and depth are related to the style of shooting. Longer lips are used with a less strongly flexed thumb. Deeper shorter lips are used with a more flexed thumb.

Could you possibly explain the mechanics of this, I don't think I get it. My ring doesn't have a lip (it's just a ring) and my thumb isn't very flexed, it forms possibly a 30 - 40 degree angle from fully extended.

Daryush - your rings don't look like any of the above? Ilkayde's rings, and my ring on the right have relatively short, but obvious, lips, or beaks on them. They require that the thumb be more bent to get a proper grip on the arrow, than does a ring with a longer lip like my left side ring, above.

Your ring does not have a lip; it's just a cylinder? I understand there were Chinese rings made that way...

Although it is cylindrical, I wouldn't class it as a Chinese style ring. It is quite short. The horn is 2 mm thick which is thick enough for putting my string behind. If I bend my thumb a lot, the string is more likely to slap my thumb on the way out, and the way the ring is angled pushes the string into my tendon. Leaving my thumb nearly straight fixes these problems.

Bede wrote:

Getting back to the original thumb rings in this thread, they are very traditional

Thank you Bede. When My master Y.Metin AKSOY showed own bronze thumbring, I never seen any traditional thumbring. It was old and traditional. I make like that.
Have you ancient thumring pictures please show us.

Bede wrote:

These rings are much more in the Turko-Persian style.

How many tipe of thumbring know you? For exemple Turkish, Persian, Turko-Persian, Chinese,...
is Turkish and Turko-Persian style thumbring different? Or how different? Please explain to me.

Bede wrote:

Lip length and depth are related to the style of shooting.

I think so. And that are also related releasing of string.

daryush wrote:

My ring doesn't have a lip (it's just a ring)

Daryush, how many pound bow you use whit your thumbring?

I will photograph some rings for you. There ae quite a few ring types in the Grayson Collection database which is available on the web.

I am doing a typology of thumb rings at the moment. There are many types. Some are functionally different like long and short lipped ones. Others are different because the materials allow different shapes. For example metal rings can be made thinner than bone or horn ones. Some places have unique designs. The Korean ones usually have the lip tapered from the thickest at the tip to the thinnest at the opening for the thumb. Early Chinese lipped rings have very thick lips that are thickest at the opening and thin down to the tip. Manchu rings are cylindrical as are some Nubian rings from what is now the Sudan. Almost all cultures that used thumb rings knew how to make leather rings. The Turks and Persians after the Mongol invasion used very similar rings. This might be because there were many Turkish tribesmen in Iranian armies, particularly in the Safavid era. The rings used in India (the subcontinent, not just the country) followed Turko-Persian shapes in the beginning but developed curves near the ends of the lips in some areas.

Regarding Daryush's comment, there are what could be called very short lipped rings where the lip is vestigial. They are know on the antique market, but I have not seen any that have been archaeologically dated. here are references to rings like that being used by Turkmen.

Ah, I hadn't realised there were so many types of ring.

Ilkyade - I use bows between 55 and 67 lbs at my draw length

Bede, thank you for knowledge.It is very usefull for me. I saw many thumbring pictures on Grayson collection database (page 809) It is Very big collection about bow and arrow.

Daryus, I think if you use bow more than 100 lbs, you could have problem your finger.

Beautiful work. You have an excellent hand.

I've also been making rings from deer antler, steer horn and various woods.