RE: String wear
If you are shooting a factory sting, it won't take that many shots before the center serving is toast...even if you keep it waxed. (And you should wax before every shooting session). The serving on my Terminator lasted less than 100 shots before it started to look ragged, as I recall. Sensing a real money pit I started making and serving my own strings as well as cables. Brownell's resin impregnated .30" crossbow serving material works well for me; as does .26" Halo made by BCY.It takes some practice to serve the string properly. It has to be under load when served. You can do that by removing the bow from the tiller and serving while the string is under load on the bow. Or, since I prefer not to loosen the bolt holding the bow to tiller, make a serving jig with a 2x4 some angle bracked, hooks and a turnbuckle to stretch the string after taking it off. I'd get a serving spool and some cheap serving material and practice on a used string. Then get the more expensive stuff I mentioned when you feel comfortable. The serving wear seems to come from 2 sources. The trigger mechanism claws, for one. Polishing the edges with some very fime emery cloth wrapped around a small dowl while the claws are down can help if the edges are rough. Don't overdo it, just polish the rough edges. You can cock the claws( without involving the bowstring) by using a piece of string and with the safety off. Getting it to release can be tricky. You have to depress the safety mechanism (which is normally depressed by the bolt) back and down with a dowl of bolt and keep it depressed while letting the safety off and pulling the trigger. You may also have to pry up on the claws gently with a screwdriver or such.(Three hands may be needed). The other source of serving wear is the cocker hooks. They tend to seperate the serving from outside in as they slide across it when cocking. That can be prevented somewhat by loading the cocker hooks as close to the sides of the rail as possible. I find that shortening the cocker rope 4-5" so the bowstring has to be pulled up several inches to reach the second hook prevents some of that wear. It also makes the cocking effort much easier by shortening the distance you have to pull the rope handles.
As stated, do not let the serving wear through so the bowstring itself starts chaffing. Once that happens your bowstring is weakened and can't be trusted; esp with 175 lbs of pull. Get a spare string or two (Cabela's has them in stock) and find someone to restring and reserve if you can't do it yourelf. Don't get discouraged. All crossbow servings wear; my Excal Vortex is no different. There is bound to be wear under such strain. A little p/m and waxing should extend the life of your string serving however. Good luck.
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Vortex, Phoenix, Cyclone, single shot rifles and handguns.
Only accurate guns- and bows - are interesting.
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