Brian,

: 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.

Sorry to hear you've given up the sport, those are some pretty impressive archery credentials yer sporting there!!

I shoot a 20 year old Martin Cougar Magnum with an 82# draw weight and about 20% letoff. All my friends have moved up to slick new equipment and snicker at my old bow but it just seems like part of me. The only trouble I ever had with it was about 6 years ago in the late season I called in a large bull moose, I had one too many sweaters on and could only reach about 3/4 draw, I just started to laugh out-loud, I'd been bowhunting for 20 years and make a rookie mistake like that. The moose didn't see the humor in the situation and made a hasty departure. Hamburger Helper doesn't tase all that bad.
Between kayaks I'd like to build a nice, easy to shoot recurve. One of the contributors on this board, David Hanson, put me onto some interesting bow building sites.
I always find it interesting to find out more about the contributors to this board, hey, it beats watching sitcoms

Hope building and paddling kayaks is kinder to your back and shoulders.

Take care.

Ken

: Yup. Scary thought, ain't it?

: 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.

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

: 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.

: 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.