fitting leather under thumb ring

Justin,
you shouldn't need so much of a flap. also, you can file a bit of a groove across the ring that will hold the string a bit and keep it from biting into your thumb flexor tendons.

Justin.
myself, I wind up with the thumb-nail right under the IP(inter-mediate phalange)bone of the first finger.Lots of other folk here with more expertise will tell you better, I'm sure.
Boghadair

The leather insert really helped me fit my thumb ring better. I use a slightly loose ring so that it will not be to tight when the thumb swells. To remove the ring I simply pull out the leather strip and the ring is then loose enough to slip off.

Experiment with several different thumb rings until you get one that works just right. I advise making your own from some cheap material like pool balls until you get your design just right.

One thing I noticed about your thumb ring is that the tip may be just a tad to long. The very tip of your thumb should stick out past the tip of the ring a little.

It really helps to actually see a good ring fit on your finger to understand exactly how to position it.

Justin,
Did you get that thumb ring from Three Rivers Archery?

I had just recently bought a couple, but due to the heavy profile of the rings I could not get used to it. How do you like them?

It looks to me like the backside of the ring is too thick and bulky. I made several rings exactly like that and they always felt awkward. The bulk of the back of the ring would force the ring to torque from the inner bend of the thumb towards the palm, thus not giving a good, firm hooking grasp on the string.

What helped me figure out the best shape was using a Moose toe nail for a ring. A section of the moose toe nail is about 3/16ths of an inch thick and has a slight concave bend to it. I drilled a whole in it and gound it to the closest thing to a thumb ring. Since the toe nail wasn't very thick and was relatively straight on a sigle plane, the line of the thumb tip was almost the same line of the length of the ring. In other words it was more flat. It seemed to grasp the string better with less accidental releases.

If I could get a camera runnning I would post some photos that might help others out.

Hermit,
If you could get some pics that would be great.

My initial thoughts when buying the ring was that I would carve it down a bit after getting it, but it was so far from where it needed to be that it would require me to purchase some tools. So, I need to find a spot where to find the horn and invest in a dremel tool or something.

Here is a pic of a ring that I have had that is in my mind perfect.

[external image]

ravenbows wrote:

Justin,
Did you get that thumb ring from Three Rivers Archery?

I had just recently bought a couple, but due to the heavy profile of the rings I could not get used to it. How do you like them?

I did get it from Three Rivers, and it worked fine for me once I added some padding. Now I'm deciding between that and another ring for my right thumb. But I'm still using it for my left thumb --- I'm trying to train myself to shoot left-handed, and so the left thumb has some catching up to do.

That clear thumb ring you posted would be an excellent design. It is almost identical to the profile of the moose toe nail thumb ring I wrote about.

At the angle it is carved at it hooks the string more securely. The only thing I woory about with that design is durabilty. It looks fragile, but then again I have not had one break yet.

The only tools you really need are a drill(with proper bit) and coarse rat tail files, and sand paper. Drill a hole just slightly smaller than the thumb. Then grind the hole bigger in an somewhat oval shape, so that if you turn it 1/4 you can slip it over the knuckle, but when you turn it to the final position it is tight on the sides of the knuckle. A perfectly round hole doesn't seem to work as well for me. My thumb knuckle is wider than it is thick.

Justin,
From what you have written and the picture of the ring, I think you may need to turn your drawing hand more to the right. With that shaped ring, you normally have to turn the whole hand until the distal segment of the thumb is perpendicular to the arrow. The string should sit balanced about two thirds of the length of the lip from the tip. That is to say, the string should not be all the way back to the piece of leather, if it is worn as it is in the manner shown in the photograph.

As a general rule, tightening the index finger will produce shooting faults and probably injuries to the thumb nail. Flexing the thumb until either the tip of the thumb or the tip of the ring is touching the middle of the middle finger is the best way to increase the strength of the lock, while still ensuring a quick release.

That shape of ring turns up in 17th century Persian paintings and similar shaped one were made in Turkey and Northern India. It was usually used without a leather tab (kulak in Turkish), but adding one would cause no problems and does mean you can use the same ring in winter and summer.

Bede,
summer and winter? do mean remove the leather tab so you can wear a glove, or what?
Boghadair

Justin , it's crystal clear to me : the slope of your ring is too abrupt .
a ring with that shape may obtain a quick and clean release , but require a very experienced user .
my opinion .

In summer your thumb is thicker than it is in winter, so that a ring made for your thumb in summer would be loose in winter. The simplest solution is to put a leather kulak into the ring in winter and take it out in summer. In my experience, the kulaks tend to wear out over a period of several months so replacing them could have been normal maintenance. This logic could be applied to using thick and thin pieces of leather too. So you could shoot with the kulak all year round, but use a thick pad in winter and a thin one in summer.

Depending on the lip shape, deeper rings often need some skill to use. The flatter the curve, the faster the ring shoots and the more skill is needed to use it. By "flatter", I am referring to its relative curvature, not to the angle of the lip.

Bede wrote:

Depending on the lip shape, deeper rings often need some skill to use. The flatter the curve, the faster the ring shoots and the more skill is needed to use it. By "flatter", I am referring to its relative curvature, not to the angle of the lip.

Hmm, that's going to be tricky. If I'm supposed to keep the string on the surface of the ring lip (as opposed to cutting into the tendon) then I would have to angle my wrist so that knuckles of my hand face 90 degrees to the right of my bow. I tried shooting without tendon contact using a curved-lip thumb ring, but the string slides during the draw and makes me nervous that it will slip.

So I'm inclined to try shooting with leather only. I tried shooting with a thin, improvised leather tab yesterday; now half of my thumb is numb. The tab was sliding during shots, so I believe that made the release unclean.

After practice, a friend made me a thicker leather thumb ring that wraps around the base of my thumb. I'm going to try shooting with that later this week.

Hey Justin,

It is my humble opinion that one in your position would want to try something as thin yet protective as medical tape. About three or four layers of it around the thumb at the joint would suffice.

What you should do with it, is shoot this way enough to know what will feel good to you and what won't. The tape allows for the natural thumb to come into play and you can design and make a thumb ring that will act as naturally as possible.

All day I can shoot with a little tape(after the thumb gets built up a little) at 64# with no problem.

We are all different and what works good for me might not work good for you but you should give it a try. I swear that I have a better sense of the arrow and its path with a bare thumb. But the ring does provide a crisper release.

Making a leather tab that works for you takes some experimenting. The thickness of the leather and the shape of the lip vary with the shape of your thumb and weight of the bow. It is best to practice with light weight bows to get the technique right before moving on to heavier bows.

Deep rings can be used with the string back against the tendon on the inner surface of the thumb. It is just not efficient in the long term. If you fold the leather kulak over the surface of the string and put the string on that rather than directly on the hard surface of the ring, you can increase your control over the position of the string.

Turning the hand until the bone at the base of the thumb is aligned with the arrow is a common position. Paintings showing archers from the side often show the face of the fist pointing towards the viewer indicating strong flexure of the wrist.

There is another type of early mediaeval thumb ring that has the lip concave. This type of ring is much easier to use by beginners and removes the need for a groove like some Korean rings. It allows the positioning of the string in different places for different types of shooting.

The only Seljuk ring I have handled was made this way of silver. It would be easy to make one out of wood, horn or hard leather.

So here's the new leather ring I've been using. Black latigo, ~3mm thick, secured with a snap-on button. When shooting with the right hand, this new ring has not exacerbated the numbness from last week. Shooting with the left hand is fine; it hasn't become numb yet.

So far I'm pretty happy with it.

When I first started using a leather thumb ring, I found it extremely difficult to keep the string in place (i.e string creeps closer to the thumb tip) and it feels like it will slip at any moment. In the end, I end up modifying my thumb ring and cutting a swallow groove, for the string to 'sit still'. The thumb ring is getting old and has expanded and is very loose, and I have to use padding (above the thumb knuckle and under the leather ring) when I wear it to keep it snug

[external image]

I don't own any of those hard thumb rings. I do however, plan to get a horn thumb ring with a grove when I return back to Australia in January. I do wonder how the string is kept in place, using those thumb rings without a groove. Without one to 'try' its a lot of theory talk on my part.If the string sits behind the back lip of the ring (proximal towards you, i.e side of ring nearest to the base of hand), won't the string still crimp the skin since when you bend your thumb since the angle will change as the string shifts from sitting on the edge/lip on to your skin during the bend?

Using a hard ring w/o a groove is a little bit of a balancing act at first but you get used to it after some practice. What works for me for the typical lipped ring are to place the string just outside the opening edge and to avoid wrapping the thumb too far around the string (to avoid crimping the skin). You should not feel any pain if you have the optimal angle even though the string makes very light contact with the skin. Finally, the hard ring should have a perfectly snug fit. If it's at all loose, it will be hard to avoid pinching your skin.

Rings with a very steep lip like the one at the beginning of this thread require a different technique (one which I have yet to master).

With leather rings, it is often necessary to turn the hand outward more than you would think. The amount you turn it is dependent on how far you flex the thumb. If you do not flex the thumb much you have to flex the wrist more. If you do strongly flex the thumb, the wrist is not turned as far. The string will not slide towards the tip of the ring if the wrist is flexed.

I have an old Korean horn ring with a groove, which is less than 0.5 mm deep. It was there to show you where to punt the string, not to hold it in place. On the other hand, the bronze ring from Fustat in Egypt had a section custom made to hold the string in place. The only Seljuk ring I have handled had a concave lip that looked like it was based on a leather thumb guard and it required wrist flexure.