string twist on continuous strings: a little bit isn't bad?
http://www.ottomanturkishbows.com/2012/ ... d-bow.html
I think it should have more serving to prevent ballooning. I think I saw a museum ottoman string which had small serving parts, and Adam Karpowicz might've mentioned it on his book...
Instead of extra serving, modern bowstrings are twisted. maybe one twist per inch. Both for recurves and compounds. perhaps the turkish no-string-twist thing was... because their bows were more finicky? or just some sort of cargo cult or something
I think it should have more serving to prevent ballooning. I think I saw a museum ottoman string which had small serving parts, and Adam Karpowicz might've mentioned it on his book...
Instead of extra serving, modern bowstrings are twisted. maybe one twist per inch. Both for recurves and compounds. perhaps the turkish no-string-twist thing was... because their bows were more finicky? or just some sort of cargo cult or something
Adam Karpowicz, ottoman turkish bows wrote:
The serving is done as usual, best with the braided FF material on Dacron strings or with cotton or silk thread on strings made of natural materials. Then additional short serving is made in several places along the string to prevent “ballooning” during release. It is said the increased surface area, when the string threads spread-out in flight as a parachute, causes more air resistance and therefore a slower arrow. Old strings have such binding as well
Koreans twist the heck out of their traditional strings. From experimenting I think, for knotted strings, it is easy to have them very twisted but just as stable as an untwisted string if the loops are twisted just as much as the central part. A mild difference in twist on the loops can make the string appear to twist at the loops to the side when drawn (apparent in normal continuous strings), but if equal it looks fine.
I have an original silk Turkish string and it is served every few inches with a short section of red silk. The main purpose of this is to stop the silk strands getting tangled when the string is not on the bow. Several years experience making silk strings has shown me that they are the most prone to self-knotting themselves of any material I have ever seen.
The primary reason for using strings with no twist is to not waste energy in dealing with the extra elasticity that twisting provides. When ultimate performance was not needed, twisting was resorted to. One piece strings were always twisted. Taybugha recommends twisted silk strings as the best available in his day. He was no doubt thinking about general purpose strings for target and war bows. Additional twisting is a method to make micro-adjustments to string length. It would be interesting to test a stable bow with a chronograph to see if minor changes affected the velocity of the arrow.
Ballooning of the string is an interesting concept, possibly developed by the famous flight shooter Don Brown. He was using very strong modern regular flight bows. It is a wonder to me that he could detect any change in the shape of the string by eye at the velocity these bows shot. My own experiments with lighter bows and high speed photography have not shown any evidence of it so far. It is possible he saw photographs of shots where the string was blurred by the shutter speed (no digital cameras then).
Korean traditional strings are for target archery and are thick by most standards. Twisting them to consolidate the threads is good practice. The bows have sufficient efficiency to cope with small losses. I have several silk strings of Korean manufacture and they are less prone to knotting themselves than the untwisted, and thinner, Turkish style.
The Manchus served the whole string except for two sections to allow bending the string for storage. This probably originated in war and hunting bows to increase the robustness of the string in the field. There are some unexpected consequences of a fully served string. The compression caused by the serving makes the string behave as if it was stiffer. If the serving is of small diameter, it does not add as much weight as it would if it was the same diameter thread as the centre serving. I found that the arrows were faster than the same weight ordinary string and in target shooting more accurate. Without a much bigger sample than me playing around with a few bows, this is probably not significant, but it might point to a viable path for experimentation.
The primary reason for using strings with no twist is to not waste energy in dealing with the extra elasticity that twisting provides. When ultimate performance was not needed, twisting was resorted to. One piece strings were always twisted. Taybugha recommends twisted silk strings as the best available in his day. He was no doubt thinking about general purpose strings for target and war bows. Additional twisting is a method to make micro-adjustments to string length. It would be interesting to test a stable bow with a chronograph to see if minor changes affected the velocity of the arrow.
Ballooning of the string is an interesting concept, possibly developed by the famous flight shooter Don Brown. He was using very strong modern regular flight bows. It is a wonder to me that he could detect any change in the shape of the string by eye at the velocity these bows shot. My own experiments with lighter bows and high speed photography have not shown any evidence of it so far. It is possible he saw photographs of shots where the string was blurred by the shutter speed (no digital cameras then).
Korean traditional strings are for target archery and are thick by most standards. Twisting them to consolidate the threads is good practice. The bows have sufficient efficiency to cope with small losses. I have several silk strings of Korean manufacture and they are less prone to knotting themselves than the untwisted, and thinner, Turkish style.
The Manchus served the whole string except for two sections to allow bending the string for storage. This probably originated in war and hunting bows to increase the robustness of the string in the field. There are some unexpected consequences of a fully served string. The compression caused by the serving makes the string behave as if it was stiffer. If the serving is of small diameter, it does not add as much weight as it would if it was the same diameter thread as the centre serving. I found that the arrows were faster than the same weight ordinary string and in target shooting more accurate. Without a much bigger sample than me playing around with a few bows, this is probably not significant, but it might point to a viable path for experimentation.
Very interesting info, thanks.
So the one-piece Turk strings were basically just like modern continuous strings?
So the one-piece Turk strings were basically just like modern continuous strings?
I am extremely suspicious of the one piece strings from Dresden. Their use of ramie and the fact that the only other ramie string on a Turkish bow is in Karlsruhe and made in the Manchu manner makes me think some German prince had himself a Qing string maker to replace and refurbish his collection. There was a Manchu quiver and an shoe captured at Vienna so this establishes the earliest date that a Chinese string maker could have been in Europe. The Germans had many contacts in China in the nineteenth century and I think the strings may be older than that.
There may have been a trade in ramie thread that I have not come across and that would be a valuable discovery. It appears that linen strings are rare with composite bows on the steppe and in the Middle East. Though, Arab Archery's comment that the Egyptians like thin hard strings might suggest that linen was used.
My experience with linen strings in the desert was that they dried out and snapped. On the other hand in medium to high humidity they worked very well. I did over build them a bit though.
There may have been a trade in ramie thread that I have not come across and that would be a valuable discovery. It appears that linen strings are rare with composite bows on the steppe and in the Middle East. Though, Arab Archery's comment that the Egyptians like thin hard strings might suggest that linen was used.
My experience with linen strings in the desert was that they dried out and snapped. On the other hand in medium to high humidity they worked very well. I did over build them a bit though.