I decided to treat the Hoyt as a restoration project. The history of this bow and the success archers had with it were the driving influence.
The limbs need nothing, but the riser needs some attention. Since it’s a target bow, a brightly colored riser is the norm, and this originally came in black, white, blue, and red. I think a metallic red would look great with the ivory colored limbs. I reached out to Duane, a magician with paint who has painted and touched up several bikes for me. I sent him a photo of the riser and told him what I had in mind. He agreed to do the painting, and he already had some very nice red paint, a dark Mercedes red metallic. Perfect. I packed and shipped the riser to him. It will probably take 3-4 weeks before I have it back and that’s fine. I trust him to work his magic and I have no doubt of the quality of the result.
We’ve emailed back and forth about what can be painted and what needs to be masked off, so I think we’ve got that sorted out. I have an arrow rest and a plunger ready to go on, and that’s enough to get started. I’ll get the nocking points set up and then see how well I can shoot it. I’m not expecting miracles here, I’m just learning. Given that constraint, I’ll go slowly and make adjustments as needed. Eventually I’ll (hopefully) be able to shoot it reasonably well.
Once I have the riser back from Duane, I’ll take some photos of it and of the assembled and strung bow. Stay tuned. If the shooting sessions go reasonably well, there might even be some photos of arrows in the target. If they’re missing, well, then you’ll know how much work I have to do.