: Literally thousands?

Yup. Scary thought, ain't it?

: Did you work for a manufacturer? An archery shop?

I competed for ten years - six as a PSE Staff Shooter - and owned an archery shop for 4 1/2. I wrote the "Home Bow Mechanic" column for Bowhunting World and "Bow Pro Corner" for Archery Business, plus some feature articles as well. A lot of my photos have appeared in those mags, too.

We used to do a big business in custom bowstrings and cables, in addition to a lot of repair work.

: Plastic servings weren't much fun. Serving peep sights with dental floss we
: did a lot. (We were in high school, mostly--and it was cheap!)...I did
: literally...tens...

Only amateurs use dental floss! Seriously, whatever works is fine, but I always kept serving thread and tools handy.

: A couple of my friends used those stoopid ball-bearing releases, and they
: were hell on servings. I hated when they'd use them on my bow, even for 5
: or 6 shots.

Yeah, they pretty well suck. We refused to carry them in the shop, though we were more than happy to re-serve or replace the strings they trashed, then explain to the customer why it kept happening. We sold of lot of releases that way.

: I think if I get back into archery, I'll go traditional, anyway.

Well, I still have 14 bows, 6 of which I actually used (the others are semi-collectables I accumulated over the years). I haven't seen anything on today's market that excites me and I won a lot of tournaments with what I have, so I doubt I'd buy anything new.

Every time I toy with the idea of starting shooting again, my shoulders and back remind me that they're not fond of the activity.