Bear with me please, I know fairly little about bows.

A friend of mine just sent me a Browning Nomad DeLuxe bow. It's disassembled, and some of the plastic on it has suffered from the transport. He's actually never used to bow, except for a few practice sessions and doesn't know much about it. There is no manual.

There are plastic strips on either side of the handle, where the limbs attach. They are "stapled" into the wood, and look rather flimsy. In fact they are cracked and corners broke off. I was wondering what the function of these strips would be? They seem to fragile to have any real function...will there be operational problems if I take these off? If they have a real function I'd be tempted to replace them with aluminium strips...

The limbs are sort of a laminate of two wood pieces, a thin black lacquered piece on top, and a much thicker light-coloured piece that forms the real body of the limb. The thin lacquered piece is cracked from the "base" to where the hole is through which the limb is attached to the handle. This is the case on both limbs. Would this be a serious flaw? The thicker parts of the limbs look OK.

I can't get the limbs on with the cable not twisted. This is probably just my clumsiness, and the cable need replacing anyway.

The arrow rest (one of those cheap glue-on thingies) has broken off, there are no sights (not counting the very peculiar looking "magnifying glass" with red cross hairs on it, that gives you a headache just by glancing through it),
so I guess this gift needs serious work before it becomes operational.

I guess I need to visit a good bow shop and have them check things out, right?

Frans

Frans, the best advice would be to take to a knowledgeable archery shop for inspection.