Archers Thumb Ring From a Spoon

In this Instructable I'm going to show you how to make an Archers Thumb Ring from a Spoon.

A Thumb Ring is a device you'll need if you want to shoot bow and arrow in thumb release technique without damaging your thumb. Traditionally it is made of horn, leather or wood, but I searched for a cheap, easy and modern way, so I ended up with a spoon, because it has the ideal shape and is easy to get.

The thumb release technique is mostly used with horsebows. In contrast to other techniques you'll have to put the arrow on the right side of the bow, not the left, so this will unfortunately not work for standard recurve bows.

• A spoon, I used a teaspoon, if you have a larger thumb you should probably use a larger kind of spoon
• A vertical drilling machine
• Some differently sized grinder drill bits and normal drill bits
• A grinding machine or sandpaper
• A syringe or pipette and water for cooling
• A angle grinder or metal saw

Start drilling a hole into the wide part of the spoon with a small drill bit then make the hole bigger in little steps.

When drilling holes into metal never forget to cool the materials or you'll wreck your tools, I just used a few drops of water on the spoon that worked just fine. Put a bowl underneath your drilling machine or you'll get water all over your workplace.

When you run out of larger drill bits and the hole isn't quite big enough for your thumb to fit trough switch to grinder drill bits and continue enlarging the hole until it fits you.

Pretty simple: Take your angle grinder and cut off the handle. If you don't have an angle grinder just saw it off by hand, it'll take some time but it'll work.

Use grinder drill bits, sandpaper and your grinding machine to smooth all edges so you don't cut yourself while shooting with your new thumb ring.

If you fear that the string could slide off the ring to easily use a file to add a notch to prevent that.

I recommend trying to shoot with it before filing to much.

Good Luck!

And remember: always think about the safety of persons, animals and the things around you when shooting with bow and arrow.