where to place the string...

[Knight of Dissonance]

Hi!
About the thumb draw, I tend to have the string real close to the end of my thumb, so my index-finger only covers a little part of my thumbs nail. The string is not to close to the joint. I don?t tuck the thumb around the string. Is this wrong? Or is a question of personal comfort? By the way I use a leather thumb-ring or no ring at all.

[Bede]

If you are shooting bare thumbed or with a leather thumb tab, the recommended position for the string is as close to the distal joint as possible (i.e. in the crease). All Middle Eastern authors I know of suggest this. Moving the string towards the tip has two consequences. You will find that heavy bows are hard to control and the advanced index finger position leads to bruising under the nail.

There were special thumb rings made in India with a hook-like tip, but I have never seen one used. They possibly were intended for use with the string near the tip of the thumb. I have a flat Korean ring that has a shallow groove carved about 2 mm from the edge of the hole in the ring. The Fustat ring from Egypt had a shape that sat the string right in the crease of the thumb.

In general, thumb rings have more potential string positions that soft tabs. With my copper ring, I put the string several millimetres from the hole in the ring, but I hold the end of the thumb and the surface of the ring perpendicular to the plane of the bow string. With other rings, the position varies.

Thomas may like to comment on Korean male rings which are used in a different way to ordinary rings.

[Thomas Duvernay]

As for the sugakji rings that Bede referenced, you might like to look at:

http://www.koreanarchery.org/sugakji.html

and

http://www.koreanarchery.org/sugakji.WMV

Also, the amgakji:

http://www.koreanarchery.org/amgakji.wmv


For more general info:

http://www.koreanarchery.org/thumbrng.html


T

[Knight of Dissonance]

Great guys, this is really helpful!
But there is one more thing I?m wondering about, I?m quite tall, which of course makes my arms pretty long, and I can see in these pictures that the string is drawn back all the way to the back of the neck. But I?m only able to pull it to the end of my jaw-bone. Does this matter at all? Is it ok to just keep shooting like that, or would you recommend me to bend my other arm so that I can draw the string further back.

[Bede]

John,
There have been many styles of draw used with thumb rings over the centuries and drawing to the corner of the jaw is one of them. This is a perfectly acceptable position in some schools of Middle Eastern archery.