If you follow our blog series, you’ll be aware of our Simsek Turkish style bow, which performed well but broke. This should not be judged too harshly, anything which exists so close to the edge will have a failure rate, and all good bows exist close to this limit as a result. What if a bow doesn’t exist close to this limit, wouldn’t that be better? No actually, it would not, because it would mean it has latent performance, it could have been better; performance is maximized by sitting close to that edge. I digress. The Simsek Turkish style bow pulled up a splinter on its belly, a compression failure, which progressively grew larger and it was clear would continue until the limb catastrophically failed. A shame, because it was a beautiful bow.

Simsek though handled the situation, and said they’d replace it. Given the comments in our review regarding the merits of a Tatar style bow, Simsek asked if we’d like their new not-yet-released Tatar style bow? A few months later and we had one of the new Cagan bows in hand.

First impressions are that the bow is still very much Simsek. Limbs are very narrow as are siyahs and grip. The bow, again, feels very slight and delicate in the hand. And both unstrung, strung, and at full draw it possesses absolutely sinuous curves. It is a very shapely attractive bow. This bow though, instead of having its back covered with leather and painting and its resin and glass belly exposed with voids visible, is almost entirely covered in what Simsek confirms is some sort of synthetic material. It looks rather like black painted cork. As it abrades away at the arrow pass, it reveals some sort of woven underlying structure, perhaps a cloth integral to the wrap? If I were to guess, I’d guess it is some sort of patterned vinyl wrap. Only the Siyahs are exposed, which have a better quality of finishing than the previous bow. New style larger nock inserts and more rounded string bridges are welcome improvements as well, reducing string fraying.

Upon first drawing this bow, there were some truly heart-stopping popping sounds. I’m not sure of their origin, and these sounds have diminished significantly as the bow has been shot, although they still occasionally occur. It is possible they are, not the fibers of the bow structure, but the fibers used in the covering. This is just a guess of course, but I have two reasons for suspecting this is the case. The first drawing was quite dramatic, with many popping sounds, and that was never repeated. First, surely these bows must be drawn for tillering and testing before shipping, and if it were the working part of the bow that would have already been gotten-over-with. However it is possible Simsek covers the bow as a final step, thus the covering hasn’t been fully stretched and would produce these sounds. My second reason for thinking this is that the original Turkish, which I believe has the same functional composition, didn’t do this. Third and finally the bow hasn’t shown any physical signs of failure or degradation, so it seems unlikely they originate from the working part of the bow. We will of course update the blog if any of this changes.

Shots from this bow, again like the Turkish, have an effortless quality to them. While the grip really increases the perception of force in the hand in all respects, arrows glide out with seemingly effortless accuracy. It is pleasant bow to shoot, requiring little effort or input to deliver arrows right to the target. They don’t seem to have any great sense of urgency though, and at range seem to always land low.

All this is brings me to really the first significant complaint about the Cagan: its maximum draw length. The previous Turkish bow indicated an optimal draw length of 28-30” with a maximum of 32”. The Cagan cuts off those last two extra inches, capping it at a mere 30.” And that really puts a pin in the style. Let me offer a somewhat simplified explanation.

The philosophy behind the Turkish style of bow was an optimization for arrow velocity, with some sacrifice in absolute efficiency and power. This evolved into a bow which was unusually short and fired arrows on the short-side of things. The Ottoman military used Tatar soldiers though, and so there was demand from Turkish bowyers for their style of bow as well. The Tatar bow was still a fast bow in the global scheme of things, but used longer heavier arrows and a greater focus on ultimate efficiency and kinetic energy delivery to the target than its Turkish counterpart. In that regard, it was more akin to the Korean military style of bow, and I think it no accident the two ended up rather similar in profile and size.

Why does that matter here? Well the Simsek Cagan has a shorter maximum draw than the Turkish bow it is replacing. And that lack of power stroke really hinders it. If we assume draw force were even (it isn’t), the specified brace height of the Cagan is about 6.7 inches (17cm), so you get a power stroke of about 23” and that is about 10% less than the Turkish. And even if you were to assume equal draw length, the bow is 2.4” longer and 7% heavier, at 362 grams. Once again little space or mass is wasted in the grip, so these don’t bode well for the bow’s performance. So one would have to ask, other than for style, why would you want the Cagan compared to its Turkish cousin? We did put this question to Simsek before publishing and their response was “…no bow design is better tnan the other. All have their advantages and disadvantages...” [sic]

But enough speculation, how does it actually perform? The bow was specified at 45#s, and it appears to be quite close in that regard. Initial draw weight is quite low, and having a measured brace height of about 8” doesn’t help put on those early pounds. I should mention, there are different points to measure from when indicating draw length. We measure as if it were the arrow, which is to say from near the rear side of the arrow pass area. Based on the specified 6.7 inches, I’m guessing Simsek measured from the rearmost part of the grip which would likely account for part of the discrepancy. Neither way is right or wrong per se, just different methodologies which produce slightly different results. Never the less, it isn’t unusual for a bow to have a brace height of greater than 7 inches, as our charts clearly show.

Where the Tatar style starts to shine a bit more is in smoothness, particularly in regards to those last couple inches of draw. The slope of the line for the last 2” of draw are better than average, though some of this could be attributed to the bow’s relatively low draw weight. The total percentage of the bow’s poundage gained in the last two inches though is just about average, which is good. There is a subtle issue indicated here though which isn’t obvious from force-draw analysis alone.

Total stored energy is 43 foot pounds, which is actually the lowest of any bow on our list. Without context though, that is meaningless. Higher poundage bows store more energy, so energy storage relative to the draw force is what matters. Here the Simsek manages 0.988 foot pounds of energy stored for every pound of draw force at full draw. That is actually better than the the Simsek Turk, which managed only 0.963. (keep in mind Turkish style bows tend to do worse here, as they’re not optimized for energy storage) It is however below average, which currently stands at 1.05, and about 10% behind AF Archery’s Tatar style bows. There is also some indication that the bow is in the early stages of stacking, and had we drawn the bow past the manufacturer’s specified maximum draw length, performance would have declined rather sharply. And this is what I hinted at in the previous paragraph. If you look at the Energy Stored/Poundage chart, you can see there is something of a pack of the highest performers. The Cagan starts out at the bottom of that pack, but sticks with it managing to stay ahead of the KTB Kingdom, Grozer, and natural materials bows. At 25” draw length, it is still hanging in there with the group, albeit still at the bottom edge down with the Simsek Turk and one of the AF Tatars, but then things start going wrong.

In this graph, stored energy/poundage, you want as steep a slope as possible for maximum performance, because you want to store the most energy possible for a given strength requirement, but the Cagan’s is never that steep and worse yet between 25 and 27” the Cagan’s slope starts to level out. It is in this range where the other bows’ siyahs start kicking in to provide leverage and make this curve steeper. Look at how the JZW Manchu, the monster energy storing machine, has those siyahs working against you early in the draw to produce high early draw weight, and then start to kick in flattening the force-draw curve; the bow gains a only 13#s of draw force across 12” between 15 and 27” but gains 16 pounds in the early 4 inches of draw between 9 and 13”. That is huge, the most clear cut example of the power of siyahs I have. The Cagan though deploys this leverage poorly, not creating a high enough early draw weight and kicking in too early reducing stored energy and then running out of steam. By the time we get to 29” the Cagan has leveled out even more. But the last hurdle is always the last two inches where stacking is the enemy, and bows can lose a lot of performance here requiring a lot of extra force to draw just a short distance. You see most bows level off here, some even drop as their stacking dramatically increases required draw force with minimal energy gains. So for those reading this and saying “over draw the bow, damn Simsek’s specifications” I’d point out that doing so probably wouldn’t help. Given the flattening of the curve at 29”, I suspect we’d see a negative slope at 31” leaving the bow’s performance even worse than stopping at 29”. Also, give Simsek a little credit for knowing their own design. If a manufacturer tells you to stop, they may not be wrong, and the data certainly indicate they knew exactly what they were doing when they limited it to 30”.

So how does this translate to actual shots? Sadly, pretty much as predicted. Average arrow velocity was just shy of 160FPS, about 30FPS slower than the Turk with the same arrows. Now granted the Turk had slightly higher poundage, ending up at 8.7gpp, and the Cagan at 11.5gpp. So how about efficiency, since as we know higher GPP confers large efficiency advantages? Unfortunately, efficiency was poor as well despite the advantage of high arrow mass. The Simsek Cagan managed only 65-66% efficiency depending on how you measure it. (output energy/#s@full draw and output energy/stored energy respectively) Ideally this figure would be over 70%, the AF Archery Tatars managed 76-86% by comparison, one of them at a 7.8gpp. The Simsek Turk did better as well, managing 70% output energy/stored energy. Sadly at 65% this is actually the second lowest performing modern-materials bow we’ve tested, better only than the Grozer Turkish by less than 2%.

What happened here? When you get right down to it, I think there are a couple spots where the bow went wrong. The bow is just physically larger, and 7% heavier than its Turkish cousin. And if you’re going to spend mass in a bow, it needs to do something, and that something is typically to store energy. This bow just doesn’t store very much energy relative to its poundage. I have to speculate here, but I believe this is symptomatic of the siyahs both being relatively short and having a not-particularly-aggressive angle. Checked against a couple other bows hanging on the wall, it is less acute than the Simsek Turk, Grozer Turk, all of the Koreans, etc. It is about on par with the AF Turk actually, which was another surprise not-high-performer. (not that it was a horrible performer per se, but given the screaming performance of AF’s Tatar bows, we had expected more) The aggressive reflex in the grip area, with no compensatory deflex, doesn’t seem to have accomplished the desirable high early draw weight either, perhaps because the siyahs come into play providing leverage too early. The result is a bow which is pleasant to shoot and has beautiful curves, but sadly lacks in the realm of performance.

What would I experiment with to improve things, were this my bow? To be clear, I am by no means an expert bowyer and these suggestions could certainly be completely wrong, but here are my thoughts:

Move the nock closer to the tip of the siyah. Currently it is approximately 1-1/8” from the tip of the siyah. Mass in this area must be accelerated to the maximum velocity of the bow limb. Moving the string closer to the tip would provide additional leverage during the mid part of draw cycle and increase draw length by increasing effective bow/string length. All at no extra cost.
Increase siyah angle. Peak leverage seems to be kicking in too soon, not just relative to other bows, but relative to the elastic limits of the material, in turn reducing early and mid-draw weight. It also means the bow, even if the material could tolerate it safely, would likely not draw smoothly beyond 30”. Increasing siyah angle could increase early and mid-draw weights while reducing late draw weights, exactly what you want. The tradeoff here is overall bow stability. Simsek seems to be able to manage this with their Turkish style though, so why not here? That leads neatly into the third bullet point.
Add deflex to the limbs. Simsek’s extreme reflex is a selling point from an aesthetic perspective, certainly, but it doesn’t seem to be doing its job all alone. Early draw weights are quite low for the bow’s poundage, and maximum draw length is quite short for this bow style. Adding a little deflex here as a compromise could increase bow stability as a nod to both a more aggressive siyah angle and a longer maximum draw length all without increasing limb mass.

And that is it for this test. I hope it was an informative read. Catch you all at the next blog post!