Thank You, master, for this wonderful demonstration! I am a Turkish style thumb archer, but I love the beauty of Traditional Korean Archery too and Korean Bows are great.
You guys doing classes in California still? This is very reminiscent of Turkish flight shooting. It would be a blast to take a class on a vacation if that’s possible. As far as I can tell the Korean bows from like daylite and Kaya are some of the best laminated horse bows on the market. Beyond that the Korean short bow is a great bow design period - small and snappy - bringing together some of the best design elements in asiatic recurves. The longer draw from its more western cousins like turkish or Hungarian styles really gives it that extra kick coupled with its short brace height and lighter siyahs you get a bow that seems to seriously out perform alot of other historical designs. It’s a similar philosophy to the Manchu bows which utilized large draw lengths to really push those arrows but the string bridges limit the brace height. By going for the tight brace height and ~31 inch draw you get similar power strokes to a 34 inch draw Manchu with a much more consistent anchor point. Oh and who doesn’t love the colors of the beautiful Korean bow covers which double as a quiver! Salute the flags! I can’t wait to one day visit your beautiful home country.
It's not easy to heat the belly because the string is in the way, otherwise you risk damaging the bow. If you use low heat for few seconds the heat will transfer through the bow, since heat has conductive property
Im guessing bows made for warfare weren't quite so finicky as this. This bow is probably a very high performance kind of bow. But a lot of severely recurved horn bows seem to require some amount of work to maintain and brace.
@@jacobpark2671 Bows around the 45 lb. level are the lower limit. The bow I'm currently using is my winter bow. Three months ago, it was 43.9 lbs. drawing 30.5 ins. Today, it's 49 lbs. That has to do with temperature and that's why I say it's my winter bow. It's had a large amount of horn shaved off it to get it to that level. Most bows are from 50 + to mid 60's. I'd say from the ease and how comfortable Master Kim unstrung his bow, it's problably in about the mid 50's. Another indicator is the angle that he raises his bow at full draw in order to aim and hit the target. High poundage bows shoot flatter and will have a smaller angle with the horizontal.
"Gakgung" is made of water cows horns. The elasticity is very good. In Goguryeo murals, there are murals of hunting and war using this "Gakgung". Traditional manufacturing techniques are also passed down. t1.daumcdn.net/cfile/tistory/23277B4355B303F228
To me it seems that Korea focused more on bows than swords. As a Korean person I know that a lot of korean swords look like Japanese or Chinese swords which probably make sense being that we used what was best to us. I also know that we focused a lot on bows too. Nowadays we see a lot of Korean people go in Olympics doing now and arrow competition. Just information that I thought was cool.
You're right. Koreans more prefer archerry than sword. So traditional Korean sword named hwando is shorter than Japanese katana because short sword is comfortable to shoot arrows. In Joseon almost people know how to use bow even women.
It's not so hard brother just cut your arrows correctly for full draw a full zone 3 draw and then to you will feel the bump in the field point as it goes over your index finger on the bow hand and you slow the draw at this point but you still continue the draw a few millimeters and release as you are still expanding as you twist slightly on your thumb lock and make the release clean and clear , the palm turns out the bow is still moving forward and follow through, the grip on the bows grip is very important and very important also is to remain detached never emotionally invested to practice often as if your life depended on it .
@@jareth7456 I know, it looks worse than it feels. It works great for slow shooting, but I usually shoot fast. So I don't dare cut the arrows that close 😁 And the shooting, yes a bit of khatra goes a long way. Also, I think he was doing some string twist as well there.
Amazing bows for sure. But the insane amount of adjustments before use just make it less practical. On the other side, it's probably an enjoyable process for anyone who likes bows. Very traditional.
newly made bows need delicate handling and heating to brace, but when an archer get used to his own horn bow, then he does not need to spend time in bracing procedure. As I watched at archery range, experienced archers who own 'tamed' bows does not need such complex procedure. Just string, check balance for a while and ready to shoot.
Becouse of the fletching of the arrows,allowing them to corect the "error" in time on that long distance. On shorter distance (ex.20m) the arrow doesnt have that much time. I would love to see a master grouping at 20m.
Several comments about "grouping" arrows. 1. The only grouping you are going to get in this particular archery form is with the missed arrows. These targets are covered with a rubber sheet one centimetre thick. The arrows that hit bounce off. Unless you film the incoming arrows that hit, there won't be any record of where they hit the target. 2. There is nothing official, but some jeongs (clubs) place a quarter size target 145 m from the shooting line. We've had one at a couple of jeongs I've been a member of. I know of two archers who have hit this size target five for five. That's five arrows in an area 1 m by 1.3 m. My best was four for five with the fifth arrow just clearing the top of the target. I've had my golden times with Korean bows, but I don't consider myself top archer. 3. Our jeong has set up one of these quarter targets about 30 m away so school kids can come learn something about Korean archery and try their hand at it. One of our members likes to shoot it as well. He doesn't miss, ever. What kind of pattern he lays down, I can't say.
Those small bows were traditionally used for beginners and women to learn practice the basic form and style of Korean archery. Those bows are small in size and portable to carry around so it perfectly fit for certain uses. In the war, Koreans developed much larger bow called 정량궁, which was much difficult to shoot and required strength and experience.
Korean bows were mostly small one, the bow in this video is called Gakgung, is for hunting and war. There were larger bow as you called Jungyang-gung (정량궁) which was for military use in Joseon dynasty. There were various types of bows in Korean history.
Higher than most traditional bows. Often between 200 and 250 fps using about 7gpp arrows. Korean bows are extremely fast, and use much lighter arrows than most other horsebows, especially manchu bows, which often use 13 gpp and above
I would argue that Turkish bows are way faster and also can use very light arrows but then who would want to use very light arrows in warfare when penetration is what is going to kill an enemy ...especially one clad in armor, enter the tartar bow that casts longer heavier deadlier arrows with great force "
google can help you to buy Korean bow. and it costs less than 200$. If you are a woman and beginner, I recommend you to start with 25 pounds bow. no more than 30 pounds. you will fail to learn or to build correct bow position if the bow is too strong for you. Archery needs muscles which we don't use in daily life. no matter how strong and bulky you are. Begin with 25 pounds or less will be great start!
Really late to the party, but here's the word on that leather loop. It's called a "bo goong" (보궁) and sounds like it's pronounced "boh geum". As to it being on his hand, his hand is merely a convenient place to keep it while shooting. At about the 30 sec. mark in the video, he places it down the upper limb and the string. This is to help the bow keep its tuning/shape when he is not shooting. Over time hornbows tend to go back to their natural resting state. Sometimes the bo goong is placed over the lower limb and string if that particular bow has a weaker lower limb and would bow more at rest. Bo goong come in pairs so they are put on upper and lower limbs to give even better control of the bow at rest, should the bow demand that. For really long rests, the goong dae (공대) (the bow cover he turned into a sash/quiver) is wrapped around the bow as you see at the beginning of the video. That's what we see at the beginning of the video. As to making one, the simplist is merely a length of stiff leather two millimetres thick, one centimetre wide and about 20 centimetres long. The leather is doubled over with the rough side inwards. The ends line up and holes are punched in the leather about one cm down the leather. A grommet is punched on to hold the two ends together. The resulting inner length of the bo goong is about 8.5 cm. Some archers prefer longer ones. Now if you were referring to the leather "finger sleeve" on his right index finger, that's another thing again. Although I don't use one, I have made a few for other archers. What I did was reverse engineer an old one, basically tracing it onto a piece of paper, cutting out the pattern on the paper, then tracing the paper template onto some leather. Vendors at competitions sell these and have basic sizes that they trim to custom fit the archer's hand. That's more or less what I also do. The one Master Kim has is made of two pieces of leather although one piece is possible, but much harder to custom fit. The wrist strap can be sewn onto or glued onto the main piece with contact cement. The finger portion has to be trimmed to the size of the finger with two overlaps of about a 4/5 mm (1/4 in.). Those overlaps can be shaved a little thinner - the outside of one and the inside of the other. These overlaps are glued together with contact cement. Master Kim's appears to be fastened on the top of his finger. One final comment of the finger sleeve. The leather should be medium stiff, whatever that means, but more importantly, have a really smooth surface or the arrows will eventulally wear it/tear it in short order.
@@SatsuRyu actually it's called an armgakji or a sootgakji (암각지/숫각지) and it's what the Koreans used to serve the same purpose as a thumb glove. Its essentially a thumb ring used since the draw is extremely heavy as to not damage your fingers and shoot smoother.
If your bow is vertical, you're not going to see the target as your hand and the bow's grip and limbs will block it out. In the video, 10 degrees is mentioned. If you have difficulty finding that, consider this little trick. Use the right edge of the lower limb and align it with the upper right corner of the target and the lower left. Mind you Master Kim raises his bow higher over his head than I do. My amount of lift lets me do this quite comfortably. This little suggestions came from a master/mentor who guided my early development as a hornbow archer.
