OK definatley not one of the ol timers and not even close to knowing half of it yet but heres my .02 on your questions. I unstring my bows when I am not shooting them. I unstring for the simple reason that with a bowstringer it is hard to damage your limbs in the stringing or unstringing process and they fit in my bow rack better unstrung lol. The newer string material such as dyna flight and fast flite will cut the tip off of older bows that are not designed for its use. The older string material such as b 50 has a little strech to it with every shot kinda like a shock absorber while the new string material such as dyna 97 have next to no give much more like a wire. The choice between 3 and 4 feathers is just a personal preference. You can get better arrow flight from a poorly tuned bow with 4 feathers just because with more feather surface the arrow will stabilize faster but if your setup is tuned properly it is just an asthetic choice. I always practice with field tips for my general shooting. The 8 grns per pound thing is total arrow weight. I shoot gold tip carbons and weight the front up fairly heavy. I shoot 65# and my arrows are right at 625 grn with a 125 head. I would highly recomend become the arrow by byron ferguson for a must read for a new traditional archer or instinctive shooting by G Fred Asbell. Both books are pretty informative and between the two cover almost everything pretty in depth. Just my .02 I am sure you have more opinions coming