Crimean Tatar Bow by AF Archery

Folks it's been a while since I've been reviewing bows but for the past few years a lot of things have changed especially after COVID. Some of these companies are starting to re-innovate by making other designs, by improving their quality or just making exotic products. So I want to start getting into some of it. This one is going to be about reviewing an AFR tree. Let's take it apart. So I got two bows here. One is a new fiberglass mongol bow but I'll do that in another video. And this other one is here. So for this video I'll be reviewing this AFR tree Tatar bow that they made. Very beautiful. It's got the blue glossy look on the front and the as you can see there's the logo right there. AFR tree and 50 pounds right here. What I don't like about this is that they don't write 50 pounds at what draw length. That's important especially in Asiatic archery if people want to draw 35 32. From the composition of course it's not a historical composition where it's sinew. So we got the wood core at the riser. Quite a modern design but sandwiched with bamboo on the front and the back. And then fiberglass I believe is the final sandwich between the front and back. But they use bear paw fiberglass so it's very high quality fiberglass. Now when you transition to the siya you start seeing the same thing with the bamboo goes all the way along and then you have a hardwood at the siya. So this is not trying to be you know historical in terms of material composition and because of how glossy it is the historical bows wouldn't look like this. They would have you know sinew on the back and then horn on the belly. Sometimes the horn can be glossy but the sinew usually is protected with birch bark. Not to mention the siya transition here. On the fiberglass bows at the very least the siyas are pure wood transitioned into the fiberglass bar. But on a laminate bow you can see it's quite a modern construction where it's still composite throughout where the bamboo the siyas it's it's the same consistent composition but just added the hardwood to create that static tips. So when it comes to the historical shape this when it's unstrung I wouldn't say it's the best representation of a tatar bow of the Crimean era because a lot of the Crimean tatar bows are heavily reflexed to give you a lot more efficiency but those are much harder to string and I can see the practicality of bringing it down a bit so that you know users can string this more easily than a reflex bow like those Korean ones. But perhaps those are the elite Crimean tatar bows. I would assume the less reflex bows were used for soldiers or when a bow becomes used for a long time it will start becoming more and more deflexed with these horn composites or when a bow is strung for a long time when you unstring it it takes a while for it to go back to the reflex shape. So yes this can be a representation of tatar bow when it's just strung but over time those Crimean tatar bows especially the elite ones will reflex back to the initial c-shape unless there's damage of course and depending on the the quality of the bow of course. There you go bow is strong and now it's a represents quite well as a tatar bow especially in Eastern Europe, Central Asia in the 15th century I'd say for a cavalry bow. Tatar bows in comparison to say like an Ottoman bow they shoot larger heavier arrows relatively speaking so an arrow like this for a tatar bow would be actually a little bit small but you wouldn't be shooting something I would say this big this this is a ancient Persian Iranian arrow and it wouldn't be this big so it'll be in between these two. The techniques you would use there are people mentioning Slavic draw with the one finger like this so this could could have been used according to Arab archery of course you can have standard Mediterranean draw mentioned by Byzantines you can with a chest anchor point here or a more conventional anchor point. Thumb draws of course would have been used as well. Yeah it's about 50 pounds to 28 it's a very light bow I would assume this arrow would shoot pretty fast. They also have takedown versions which is really good for people who want to travel. String is modern I believe it's some kind of it's not Dacron I think it's the the one that stretches less I think it's similar to the BCY material. There's only so much we can do indoors so let's get out and shoot this thing. it's similar to a lot of the other laminate bows of its type but it's very fast. I think archery does a good job now improving their quality and with the bear paw glass you really get that reliability um shoots pretty fast I'd say. There you go follow-up shot and then I'll do a thumb draw later. Oh that's powerful with that much power stroke it is shooting with power. 50 pounds at 28 thumb draw 182 fps 50 pounds 28 metatrain draw 171 fps. Well the bow is performing pretty good I like how fast it shoots for a laminate bow and as you can see with the chronograph um for the GPP it's not bad uh which is quite expected but for the price I'd say it's fair. Now cosmetically it's very beautiful as you can see performance-wise it's performing like any other bear paw glass um laminated bow I'd say from China which is decent quality and shoots pretty fast. I will say though I wish they innovated with more bow shapes um because the reflex deflex reflex this kind of shape gets boring over time. It'd be nice to experiment with some other designs like Cretan bows um some of them I've seen like the also the ancient Arab bows where it's just reflex deflex like a gullwing um that would be nice to see. There's other shapes as well Mughal designs that it seems like they took that off the market maybe it wasn't durable enough not sure there's a Persian designs um it would be nice to experiment with other uh shapes because the reflex deflex reflex um yes it's widely used but it's nice to see some other designs also I think bronze age bows don't get enough love and another kind of shape I think would be interesting for people is just a simple d-shape you know I think simple d-shaped bows made of quality laminate um designs with a historical handle I think would get much more love um because most of the d-shaped bows you see today are made of wood but it'd be nice to see them with laminate glass to see how they perform as well. A lot of the historical bows are made of d-shape and they're often forgotten because I guess we just think they're too boring. Another shape shape that I recommend is a Yurtsi bow which is a Syrian kind of bow of 2,000 years ago which is simple reflex it was static tips and then it wouldn't reflex here so the main difference is it's straight near the handle almost like a Turkish bow but then down here it starts straightening out with a straight static tips that would be nice to see also don't have string bridges on those designs be nice to see some other designs other than this the the Xiao Shao look the Tatar look that you get with a lot of these bows other than that I can't really complain too much it's shoots fast um just what you expect from a bear paw glass bow and I recommend this if you like the cosmetic look it also has a takedown option um you got the integrated uh string bridges you have lots of options to customize it to the look the looking you want and if especially if you're doing this for horseback archery competitions I think this would be a good bow to do because with a takedown design you can bring it on your backpack which allows transportation a lot better anyways thanks a lot for watching