Manchu Arrow Project (part 2)

Shafting with points and a single coat of tung oil. Byzantine thumb ring, in bronze, to show the truly massive scale. 

Picking up from PART ONE of the Manchu Arrow Project, I find myself on a quest for good arrow points, preferably at a modest price and available without a protracted wait. Searching online, there are a few options which stood out to me:

Nomadic Arts Archery offers some beautiful looking points, but the lead time of two months was too much for the first round of this project which I wanted to get a move on. We may revisit these at a later date if we decide to do some dressy shafts which would justify such beautiful points. 

Fairbow Shop NL also offers some attractive looking points, even having Manchu target points available in the correct diameter. We did reach out to them, but they declined the request for a sample for publication in this blog. We may yet acquire a few of them, because they look like the exact item we've been searching for, but with an unspecified long lead time (presumably hand-crafted to order), you won't find them in this post. 

While not necessarily optimal for this project, I did also stumble across a gentleman named Neil Burridge. Aside from some mouthwatering bronze swords and spears, he has another item I've quested after for quite a long time: bronze arrow heads. At five pounds a pop, and the pound not being what it used to be, that is a screaming good deal. I reached out to him requesting a socket diameter, trying to determine their suitability for this or any project. I did make contact, but unfortunately at the time of writing he has not provided the necessary dimension. I may well revisit this though. For the beauty, and at such a good price, I may well just take the gamble and build arrows special just for them. 

You may notice I'm waffling a bit here. Not finding exactly what I'm looking for, at least not at the price I want to pay and speed to satisfy my impatience, I decided the best gamble would be a cheap gamble. I grabbed half a dozen points of dubious asian origin off Amazon. 

Arrow in the lathe along with intended point

Regret might be the best word to describe the purchase. They're showing rust spots, are crudely made, and are too small. They're 8.25mm ID, and 9.7mm OD. That is .382 inches, and I would like .500 inches in a perfect world. Of course this isn't a perfect world, historical Manchu arrows were tapered, etc. Oh speaking of tapers, these have a straight walled socket, they're not tapered....... but you've got to piss with the cock you've got, so to speak, so we'll do half a dozen shafts with them. 

The straight shank for the arrow heads cut on the lathe, over-length, ready to be cleaned up and individually fitted.

First step is to chuck them in the lathe. The straight walled socket sounds like a good idea, but really is actually quite dim. It means, if you don't have a machine lathe or arrows with a perfect 8.25mm OD, free hand turning will be a slow and fraught process of guess and check. It also means the depth must be PERFECT. The point can only distribute the load effectively at the tip of the socket and at the rim. The straight walls will basically be along for the ride. Chuck it up on the lathe to start then, and guess-and-check your way to the correct depth on each one to fit. 

Fitted shafts ready for points to be bonded on. 

It was a little bit painstaking, but I used the belt grinder to fit the shanks to each point, clean everything up, and add a smidge of a chamfer to make my life easier. 

Points bonded on using bohning ferr-l-tite

I bonded the points on with a Bohning product called Ferr-L-Tite. It'd always served me well in the past, so here I am hoping it'll fill any gaps and do me right with these ridiculous straight shank points. 

All finished! points cleaned up, and tapers put on to remove that ugly shoulder. 

Back at the belt grinder I used a block to lift the shaft above the protruding corners of the points and put a nice taper on each to get rid of that excess shoulder. The result doesn't look nearly as ridiculous as I had anticipated. The irony, I actually rather like how this came out. Heres to hoping that they stay on and don't shear or get pounded further onto the shaft splitting it. 

Finish sanding shafting on the lathe

Next up on the menu is sanding, straightening, and finishing. These shafts start fairly straight, as they were sawn from straight blanks, however have a few minor undulations from how they were spun round.

Fixing this is part of the sanding process. This is better done longitudinally, but I'm lazy and have a lathe, so we'll use that. An electric drill can be used, however this can be done manually as well and the tools and processes are the same. These arrow shafts are half an inch in diameter, and sandpaper has thickness, so I did some napkin math combining the two and drilled a long deep hole in scrap piece of wood. This is then sawn in half leaving a trough. I then held the sandpaper in said trough, and applied it to the lathe-spinning shaft. The result? High points and minor inconsistencies in straightness are removed making smooth and beautiful shafting. Once completed it is a simple matter to run up the grits to achieve final finish. Before applying finish, a little reverse bending was applied for the "final" straightening.

Arrows with a single coat of Formby's Tung Oil

Turns out these shafts are too long for my dip tube. No matter, it is too cold out to hang lacquered arrows as well. So I reached for my old standby of Formby's Tung Oil, which is mostly varnish anyway, and wiped a coat on. Given that these are an experiment, that'll probably be sufficient. 

Shafts pointed, tapered, sanded, and finished. Ready for nocks and fletching. 

Final step was to cut the shafts all to length. Went with 39" on the nose, end to tip. And they clock in at ~1100 grains or 71 grams. I just can't seem to get used to these spears masquerading as arrows. 

Next up: nocks, fletching, and shooting..... probably in that order. 

Tongue Rings - Product Introduction

Tongue rings, here showing the short and long tongue variants

A historical oddity, inaccessible to most archers until now, we're proud to present our take on the tongue ring. What is it and how does it work I hear you ask? Unusually, instead of resting the string in front of the tongue, you rest it atop said tongue. The natural curve of the ring, relative to the narrowness of the tongue, encourages the string to remain on the tongue and off the soft part of the thumb making these comfortable rings to use. Upon release, the string rolls off the tongue, and drops like an absolute hammer. If you think Ottoman style rings feel snappy and fast, you should try one of these. 

Bronze Sword Project (part1)

Raw bronze sword blank as it came from the maker

Pertinent to this style of archery are the other weapons/tools/technologies used. Our interests certainly cross over. To that end, one of us recently acquired a raw cast bronze sword blank as a gift. Why not blog about the process of turning it into a finished weapon? I apologize in advance for the quality of the photography. The workshop is a place too dark for quality photography and with harsh lifeless lighting. 

SIZE UP THE PROJECT
I have the sword blank, what other parts and materials will I need to complete the project? Even more fundamentally, what are the goals of the project? Goals wise, I'd like a functional, but display quality, piece complete with handle and sheath. To that end I'll need to refinish the blank, source wood for the handle, and source pin stock. Pin holes mic out at 3/16", and I have an idea regarding contrasting colors to throw some real beauty in here against the wood. The handle is of a length that a roughly 6" wood blank will be necessary to cover it, depending on handle design. The sheath/scabbard will come later. I haven't decided yet to what extent I want to cheat and just CNC mill out the pocket for the sheath, or do it by hand. I should also add that, while the sword came with instructions, they are borderline illegible and not particularly useful diagram-wise. A to-scale pattern would have been dandy, but not strictly necessary. 
The photograph at top is the raw sword as it came. The edges clearly have been hit with an angle grinder, and it looks like someone vaguely scared the surface with a wire brush, but clearly we have a long way to go here. 

Handle layout

LAY OUT THE HANDLE
Lets lay out the handle blank on paper, by simple tracing, and then use some basic drafting tools (compass, protractor, square, etc) to draw what sort of finished handle design I want. I traced the sword handle a number of times, figuring I'd screw up a few. I started with just a sketch to see what sort of look I liked. From there, I went to the precision draft to get the exact pattern I'll use when cutting the handles. You'll note the holes are not well positioned, however the unevenness of the sword's surfaces conceal a secret: the handle is remarkably symmetric. The square butt of the handle isn't to my tastes, but nor are the heinous looking bulbs of a pommel which I'm told are historically accurate. I went for a mild arc which I'll keep the profile thickness of the rest of the handle. The space in between is room for a little personal flourish. Given the mysticism and magic of swords, I'm leaning toward a modern analogue of foxfire. 

Beginning the rough filing/shaping of the sword

ROUGH OUT THE PROFILE
File the sword to profile. This really is about as simple as it sounds, and only took me about an hour per side. Holding down the sword at its high points, so as to avoid bending it, I simply filed away the surface imperfections from casting while maintaining the cast shape. I also did some tapering toward the edges, since obviously you can't cast a thin edge readily. Historically these edges would have been forged to work harden the cuprous alloy, a double edged sword pun intended, however finding little information on how this is actually accomplished I experimented a little then abandoned it. 

Rough shaped sword, ready for finishing. 

Sanding out the file marks, particularly challenging in detail areas such as near the hilt

BRING THE SWORD UP TO FINISH
Interminable sanding. Seriously. EVERY LAST FILE MARK. This takes hours, and requires quite a bit of diligence. Perhaps if I were smarter I would have covered the blade in marking fluid to make it obvious where remaining scratch marks were hiding, but I did it by simply looking in the reflections off the blade for non-aligned scratches. I cheated here and used an oscillating detail sander to make my life easier rather than doing it entirely by hand. You sand in one direction, check for any scratches reflecting light going in a different direction than the scratch pattern you left, and scrub out anything you find. You then sand 90 degrees opposed and repeat the process. When you're done, no matter the direction you sand in, all scratches should reflect light as parallel. 

Where I stopped before attaching handles, 320 grit. Heating the handle will result in discoloration, which will need to be scrubbed out, not to mention working on tools runs the risk of adding scratches. 

DON'T FINISH TOO HIGHLY THOUGH......
High on the euphoria  of completion after hours work getting the file marks out, I started working my way up the grits. Seen above is where I stopped, at 320 grit, because we're about to attach the handles. This process involves heating the blade tang to form the wood scales to the complex shape. The result being you want the sword to be its finished shape, however you'll have to refinish it so no point in going to too fine a finish. Once again, for every grit, sand it entirely in one direction until the scratch pattern is parallel and then again 90 degrees opposed checking for any out-of-alignment reflections. 

That is it for now. We'll continue this project in a future blog post. Thanks for reading!

Bow Performance Project

First though, a quick announcement: you voted, we listened, and the two new ring colors are now available in all styles. Nocturnal Blue and Silver Gray. Nocturnal Blue is a deep rich blue-purple color and has got to be one of my  favorite ring colors. Silver Gray is stunning as well, possessing an almost metallic quality which is difficult to describe and even more difficult to capture. Both make for stunning rings. 

Our Hybrid ring shown in our three standard colors: Black, Silver Gray, and Nocturnal Blue

BOW PERFORMANCE PROJECT
Similar data sets have been published, by us, on our Facebook Page before. Now though, we have a much better platform whereby to consolidate and display it. While much is straightforward, lets recap the basics of what these charts are and what they show. 

View fullsize

Force Draw Data

View fullsize

Stored Energy Data

View fullsize

Stored Energy/Poundage

View fullsize

Chrono and Efficiency Data

THE STABLE
-Hwarang - Supplied by Thomas Duvernay, these bows are absolute gems. 
-Grozer Turkish - Csaba Grozer requires little introduction. This is a Turkish base bow from several years ago now. To my knowledge, this bow has some of the most extreme reflex of all modern reproductions. 
-Spitfire - Made by Chris Constantine of Spitfire Horsebows, this carbon fiber bow is also a few years old now but no less snappy. It is also nicely decorated. 
-Kaya - A maker of popular and inexpensive Korean style bows, this example is decorated in paisley patterned leather. 
-AF Tatar - AF archery is a, relatively, new player on the market. With beautifully made and inexpensive Saluki-style bows (Saluki style in that they're laminated and left exposed rather than wrapped) I suspect they'll rapidly grow in popularity. Many of their new designs have also grown in price to compete with the more expensive laminated Alibow offerings. Thus far, these have been cracking fast too. 
-KTB Kingdom - Another of the carbon Korean wunderbows, this time for sale at Freddie Archery, these are advertised with poundage at 31" and no max draw length. Somewhat surprising then how this bow begins to stack as 31" is approached, as it is smooth up until that point. It also, like the Hwarang, has a beautiful convex belly. A very practical bow, and a favorite of mine to shoot. 
-AF Turk - This is one of the more "premium" members of AF archery's lineup. Clear glass laminations, bamboo core, etc. A beautiful bow, full disclosure though this one shipped with a string too long for it. Twisting a string can reduce its length, however the amount of twist required in this case also has the possibility of inducing "stretch" thus robbing performance. 

FORCE DRAW DATA
This is simply the force required to draw a given bow the listed distance. It gives you a basic look at how the draw of the bow goes, notably smoothness. At the bottom, we listed two metrics in an attempt to empirically compare stacking. They are  the slope of the F/D curve in the last two inches, and the percentage of the bow's total poundage gained in the last two inches. The slope of the F/D curve is typically a reasonable indicator and comparator between bows of similar design and poundage, however as the Hwarang clearly demonstrates bows with a greater overall poundage are destined to have steeper slopes as they simply need to gain more ground over the length of their draw. 

STORED ENERGY DATA
This data set is, at its essence, the integral of the force draw curve. You're simply looking at a bow's ability to store energy. This represents your total energy budget with which to propel an arrow. Firing an arrow of hypothetically infinite mass, you would impart this amount of energy to it. More is better, hypothetically anyway, but what is the cost of this energy storage? 

STORED ENERGY/POUNDAGE
Stored energy divided by poundage at that distance. Simple concept, but what does it mean? In essence, you're looking at the adjusted price (per pound cost) of storing energy in a bow. Quite simply, higher is better because you're getting more stored energy for the poundage you have to hold. Bows with higher brace heights and bows which stack at the end of their draws tend to suffer here because the former store less energy and the latter spike late at a higher poundage. 

CHRONO AND EFFICIENCY DATA
This is really where the rubber meets the road. How fast is an arrow spit, how efficiently does a bow use its stored energy, and how light an arrow can you safely shoot? Different manufacturers have their own cutoffs, and it is worth asking yours for this number, but when people talk about minimum grains per pound (GPP) and minimum safe spine, this is what they're talking about. All the energy you store in that bow has to go somewhere, and that which doesn't go into the arrow has to be re-absorbed by the bow. The faster the bow has to move to propel an arrow, the more energy it must expend and subsequently reabsorb accelerating itself, rather than the arrow. This is why flaccid arrows, or lightweight arrows, tend to be less efficient. This efficiency number varies greatly by bow. Lighter laminated bows tend to be more efficient, but also more delicate. Solid fiberglass bows tend to be less efficient, but without a core to fatigue and fail they tend to tolerate absorbing more energy. My personal rule of thumb, is that laminated bows should run above 70% efficient and solid fiberglass bows above 60% efficient for their own safety, however in virtually all cases you'll experience rather startling hand-shock unless you operate above somewhere around 70%. Laminated bows which require greater than 75% efficiency to operate safely according to the manufacturer, as a general rule, I try to avoid as it indicates a design in need of reinforcement. Again though, these are my rules of thumb, not hard and fast rules, so please take all of this with a grain of salt. And, of course, hypotheses like this are always subject to change. 
Why are there more bows in the stable than are listed here? Well there are a variety of reasons. The short version though is that only certain times of year, due to temperature, are conducive to testing bows. Furthermore, we like to keep things fair and balanced. Given fixed mass arrows, some bows such as the Hwarang are not necessarily safe to even test with such light arrows and even if we did it would unfairly handicap the bow. Not to mention >100# spined arrows are hard to come by. The solution to this is to be determined. We will add to this list as time and conditions permit. 

 

Color Survey Roundup

Thanks to everyone who participated in our ring color survey and giveaway. The winner has been contacted. 

Two colors were overwhelmingly the most popular: silver grey and nocturnal blue. We should be adding those colors to the options menu shortly, as we bring them online. In the meantime, check out one of our nocturnal blue prototype of the popular Hybrid.

Hybrid thumb ring in Nocturnal Blue 

New Ring Color Survey

Surveys, ugh, I know. We'd like to add a new color though for our standard polymer rings, and we'd appreciate your help in choosing it. We'll run the survey for two weeks, and when it is complete we'll randomly select one of the participants to get 10$ off any order over 20$. 

In the survey box below, please rank your top three choices in order of most preferred to least preferred. The email field is optional, however without a way to contact you, you also can't win. We will never share or sell your email address. 

Color options: 
-Gunmetal Gray
-Silver Gray
-Nocturnal Blue (dark blue-purple)
-Blue
-Green
-Orange
-Red
-Burgundy

All done! Thank you everyone who participated. 
 

Manchu Arrow Project (part 1)

Rough poplar Manchu (1/2") shafting in the background. "Normal" sized rough cedar shafting in front. 

Perhaps this could be more accurately titled "heavy war arrow project," but I digress. This all was inspired by a for sale post from a gentleman I saw a while ago where he said he was selling his beautiful Manchu style bow because he was unable to source sufficiently heavy arrows for it. So this series of blog posts, which will only be on our website (not on our Facebook), we'll go through the trials and tribulations of making super high mass arrows. And before people ask, no, at this time we have no plans on selling complete arrows. We're really not set up to manufacture arrows large scale, so the labor, low volume materials, and thus price would be unreasonable. However, depending on how things go, we may sell raw shafting and/or a few other parts to go with it. 

So where to start? Well, given our science-forward way, lets start with a little research and some math. First off, how large do we need these arrows to actually be? I turned to two sources for this. The first is Peter Dekker's, who is an invaluable resource. THIS ARTICLE gives a fantastic overview. We find they are 92-105cm (36-41 inches) in length and can weigh as much as 100 grams or >1500 grains. These things really are more mini-spears than arrows it seems. 

For confirmation of these numbers, I ended up at Cinnabar Bow and Manchu Bows. In both cases, the Manchu bows allow a 36" draw, and given historical images a fair bit of arrow is expected to remain in front of the bow. Weight-wise Manchu Bows states a minimum grains per pound, henceforth GPP, of 12 while Cinnabar 8% higher at 13. Manchu Bows does however recommend between 13-15GPP. If 50#s were to be considered typical, a 600 grain arrow would be required, but a 750 grain arrow recommended. That said it is often suggested, but never cited, that the Manchu bow design doesn't start to generate significant benefit until one is over 80 pounds draw. That would require 1000 grain arrows, 1200 being optimal. So if we subtract off 150 grains for a point (I am assuming most people shoot targets, so want a target point not a spear head) and divide the remainder by 40 inches, we come out at 26.25 grains per inch. for optimal shooting with an 80 pound Manchu bow. Alright, that is somewhere to start. 

Researching inexpensive arrow woods, I came across poplar. Poplar has the advantage of being straight grained, durable, and comparatively inexpensive. Certainly as compared to cedar which, if purchased in something other than bulk, costs over 1$ per shaft in lumber alone for normal sized shafting. So I acquired a few relatively knot free, straight grained, good looking boards and here we go. 

Rough sawn 1/2" square poplar arrow blanks

Step one, align the grain, and then rough saw the boards into straight square blanks. This is the easy part. You make buckets of sawdust, but it is relatively quick and painless. Some setup is required to make sure you got the diameter just so, 1/2" in this case, but no biggie. As an added bonus, one round of this will produce enough paint stirring sticks to last you decades. 

Off-cuts (scrap) from arrow sawing. These stirring sticks will be put to use for decades to come. 

From here we have to convert the shafting to round. Some people use planes, and I used to as well, but this takes forever. So I now chuck arrows up on the lathe and just spin them down. Quick, easy, glorious. It does produce simply vast amounts of sawdust though. There is another secret advantage to this. Some percentage of arrows contain a fault hidden somewhere. On your bow is not where you want to find this out. Using the lathe applies a fair amount of torque to the arrow shafts, so in general if an arrow is weak it'll die here. Think of it as a convenient early pre-screening, before you've done a ton of work to the shaft. 

Converting square blanks to round shafting on the lathe. 

So now we have a couple rough shafts, how did we do? Well weighing a few and taking an average, it seems we're clocking in right around 25.9 grains per inch. I wish I could chalk it up to skill, years of hard learned lessons apprenticing, but the reality is that it was as much dumb luck as anything else. We'll lose a little weight to sanding, but gain a little weight from a nock, fletching, wrapping, and laquer/finish. So we're right on target. 

Square arrow blanks next to rough round shafting. Square ends can either be turned into something like bulbous nocks, used to mount points, spun/planed/sanded round, or simply cut off. 

Before I close out this blog post though, I want to do a little more napkin math. After all, what use beyond Manchu bows could such a heavy shaft possibly be? Well if you've followed our bow performance data series (which is about to get an update BTW), you'd know I have a ~110 pound Hwarang which I love dearly. If we return to Cinnabar bow and the Scorpius Turkish "flight bow," you'll see an 8GPP minumum. Extrapolating that to 110 pounds and you're into a 880 grain 31" arrow. Subtract off 100 grains for a point and you're just a hair over 25 grains per inch for the shaft. A 900 grain arrow though still seems impossibly heavy, right? Well, these Korean bows tend to be quite efficient at transferring their energy to arrows, typically over 75% even for the inexpensive ones. So extrapolating given stored kinetic energy, 75% assumed efficiency, and a 900 grain arrow you'd come out with over 204FPS. That is pretty terrifying if you think about it, that is huge power, and I every bit believe the bow could do it as well. I guess time will tell. How about a mere mortal's bow, like an AF Archery Tatar rated 55#s@28"? Assuming 80% efficiency, which is by no means a stretch for these bows given this arrow mass, that'd be a whisker shy of 170fps. Not the speediest arrow that ever hustled down range, but not exactly slow either. Just something to chew on. 

Stay tuned. This project, far from being over, is just beginning. In the coming days/weeks/months we'll post as this project evolves. Thanks everyone for reading. 

We've Launched!!!!!!!

Our current five styles, from left to right: Manchu, Byzantine, Ottoman, Hybrid, and Grooved. Seen at center is the Byzantine in Bronze (the historically correct material for the ring we modeled our Byzantine from).

Almost a year ago, we launched a Facebook Page to offer our services making custom fitted thumb rings. We were never expecting the success which followed. As we grew, not only were ring designs added and improved, but a whole suite of other products and materials. Obviously though, we've outgrown the Facebook platform as our page has become a mess of announcements, products, information, etc. It was time for a website, overdue even. So to all our customers, testers, and collaborators, thank you! 

Welcome to our new website. In order to streamline the ordering process for our customers, and open up additional payment options, we've finally gotten one set up. This changes nothing about our products. Everything is still custom made to fit you, and lovingly hand finished. Just a better organized and more streamlined interface. 

With the launch of our website, comes the discontinuation of two products, and the addition of two new products. Our old "Standard" and "Lipped" rings are being phased out. Customers who have their size known/established in those rings can still order them if they choose, however we encourage everyone to move to our new rings which are better designed, more comfortable, more rigid, and offer improved performance. They are the Hybrid and the Grooved. The Hybrid offers an unusual dual style release. It can either hold the string like the old lipped ring, or release off the top like an Ottoman ring. A very cool design. The Grooved ring, as the name would imply, offers a groove to aid in string placement.

All four of our, for lack of a better description, non-Manchu rings also now run on a new "universal" sizing standard. What this means is, once you know your size for one style ring, we can apply it to any other ring to get your size right without having to order another set of three. Neat huh? Along with this innovation, we've launched Ring Sizers to match so archery retail fronts, shooting ranges, etc. may have a quick and easy way to place newcomers into our sizing spectrum. 

So thank you everyone for making CTR a success, and we look forward to continuing to serve you through our new website. As a special thank you, use the coupon code "LAUNCH5" to get 5% off site-wide for the next week.