fitting leather under thumb ring

[Bede]

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.

[Justin Ma]

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.

[J-Boon]

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



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?

[Justin Ma]

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).

[Bede]

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.