Qing (Manchu) folding bows

[loon]

May be a good idea for making 2pc takedown bows. Seems like a lot of stress on a small part of the bow though.

[Marc St Louis]

Those limbs in the braced bow look pretty thin.  Is it a natural material bow or synthetic?

[james parker]

to my knowledge, that is an all natural composite horn bow,,, the hinge is old design, but modern metals,,,the stresses are pinpointed to one small area, but installation of the hinge needs to be perfect in every way, for it to survive,, mostly depends on the  persons ability to install correctly... of all the horn bows ive made ,i still cant bring myself to cut one in half

[paco664]

i'll say this much... it's beautiful...

[Cloudfeather]

If you used something similar to take down sleeves on each side and had a good welder weld a hinge pin onto there. I don't see why it wouldn't work.. This is actually pretty inspiring. Thanks!

[loon]

Glad you all like it. I'm not even sure if it's synthetic. It could be a wide limbed, low draw weight horn bow. This is a natural materials composite horn bow by Zhou Xiaochu:

This kind of bow is not very common in the antique bows. The most obvious advantage is convienience [...] Actually, folding bow can not be a warbow in ancient China, just for fun and hunting, but it's enough in nowadays