first draw was a little scary, because of crackling sounds. It isn't uncommon for bows to make a few cracking sounds the first time they're drawn, and I suspect this was from glue used in the addition of the leather limb coverings, but staring up at that massive siyah as you haul the bow back to 36" and hear crackling is sobering. Blissfully, it was a first-draw-only phenomenon, and the bow now silently, and impossibly smoothly, reaches 36" as the limbs go parallel with your arm. The siyahs are also noticeably further forward at brace, and generally run a more aggressive forward angle, than any other replica I've seen so far. This likely contributes to high early draw weight and late draw smoothness. The two metrics we use for that are percentage poundage gain of the last 2", and the slope of the last 2". Higher poundage bows necessarily have a steeper slope, but at 59#s full draw we're right in the middle of the pack so a slope of 1.5 is still quite good next to second best, the much lower poundage AF Tatar of 2.5. Gaining only 6% of it's total poundage in the last two inches of draw is also quite good, next to the second best AF Turkish which gains 10%. There is another interesting element to this though mentioned by the imitable Peter Dekker, in THIS article:
"Manchu bows are unique in that they have the highest initial tension of all bows, and thus are harder to pull at a given high draw weight than other types of bows. They typically are at 75% of their max draw weight at 20" pull already, where a longbow would pull around 45% of it's max draw weight there."
So how does this bow match up, given significantly less reflex than a horn-sinew composite? No dramatic buildup, it manages a respectable ~61%. That said, most of the bows we've tested were in the mid 50s, the AF Tatar being as high as 59%. While I'm out on a limb here, I'd posit that the Mughal bow, the other long siyah-extreme reflex design out there, might well also manage comparable high early draw weights. It is worth noting here that every bowyer places their point for draw length a little differently. We measure it as if it were an arrow, so 31" draw means a 31" arrow could be drawn this far. (middle of the handle) Given that this bow was sold as 55#s, I suspect the bowyer measures from the back of the bow.
With a minimum of 12GPP, notably 1 less than the Mariner, and a recommended 15GPP, this bow is overtly not for normal arrows.... even long normal arrows. 885 grains is more akin to a small spear than a typical arrow.