Chinese Archery Thumb Ring - 四捷機 (sì jié jī)

A Chinese style archery thumb ring, recreated from written sources dating to the Ming Dynasty.

This ring was created by Gaoying (高穎), an archery teacher from the late Ming Dynasty, he preserved his knowledge regarding archery techniques and equipments in his manual 武經射學正宗.

In his manual he named his ring the 四捷機 (sì jié jī), which roughly translates to the "four advantages ring". Recreations of this ring is still quite popular in the present day, being one of the only rings with a detailed written source.

In his manual he listed his thoughts about his ring, which he views has four advantages:

1. The lip of the ring is long and thick up front so it doesn't take as much effort for the thumb to hook onto the string, and allows for a crispier release.

2. The front and back is thick but the sides are thin, allowing the thumb to sit closer to the arrow during draw.

3. Even though the sides are thin, the string guards keeps the string seated on the thicker bottom at the front of the ring, preventing excessive string wear.

4. The string guards prevent the string from pressing into the thumb, eliminating the need to wear an additional protective leather piece.

Actual historical examples of this ring has never been found. All modern reproductions are based off of illustrations, and illustrations from old manuscripts is like a game of telephone. We have many different drawings which are all clearly different, so recreations of this ring nowadays have wildly different shapes.

Luckily many libraries have now digitalized their old collections, allowing actual Ming Dynasty manuscripts to be viewed online. I have chosen to base my recreation on one such illustration that seems consistent across a few different manuscripts. For reference it is based on a scan of the manuscript published by 登龍館 in Nanjing.

The same drawing can be found in another source called the 經國雄略, which is a compendium of Ming military strategies/thoughts/equipments published right at the end of the Ming Dynasty. Interestingly, by the time it was published the Qing Dynasty has taken hold and the book was promptly classified. Which is actually lucky because the book was not widely republished at a later date, which means any manuscripts found can almost certainly be dated back to the late Ming.

Edit:

Finally had it sent out and printed in aluminum. The SLS process creates an interesting inside surface which I like, but the outside will probably need to be polished. Aluminum is fairly soft so it shouldn't be too hard to polish, doesn't really make sense go to a mirror shine as the aluminum will get scratched up anyways. I could have printed it in stainless steel, but I felt aluminum would be lighter and more comfortable.