Excalibur crossbows are prominently displayed in gun and archery shops across Ontario. The company’s distinctive recurve design is simple, tough, dependable, and accurate — it has clearly established an excellent reputation.
Excalibur dominates the recurve crossbow market and according to company product manager Jeffrey Baker, it’s one of the top three in the US.
Ontario’s hunters support a homegrown product and Excalibur’s founders, Bill and Kathy Troubridge. Their story is inspirational. After meeting in Kitchener through a mutual friend, they married in 1979 and moved to northern British Columbia in 1981 to, as they describe, live off the land. Kathy found bookkeeping work while Bill worked briefly as a sawmill maintenance machinist before getting laid off. They returned to Ontario amid the 1981-82 recession, and Bill reassessed his career. As a machinist, he had built his own muzzle-loaders. He had also hunted with a Daco Hornet crossbow. Unhappy with its design, he decided to build his own. Bill describes his “great granddaddy of our crossbows” as “heavy, ugly, with an absurdly complex design, but… still a darn good crossbow.”
Excalibur Crossbow
It wasn’t long before others started asking Bill to make crossbows for them. Realizing he couldn’t sell them without liability insurance, he and “Kath” met at a local restaurant and drafted their first business plan on a napkin. They chose “the cool name, Excalibur” because of Bill’s “British heritage and the…medieval roots of the crossbow.” Excalibur Crossbows was incorporated on May 13, 1983.
Relayer
Meanwhile, company treasurer Kathy released funds for Bill to develop a prototype. They cleaned out part of a pig barn by their rented farmhouse and set up Bill’s first workshop. There, he crafted a slimmer bow with a wood stock and single Daco recurve limb. They unveiled their Relayer at the Toronto Sportsmen’s Show in March 1983. Bill won the US National Crossbow Championship in Kitchener with it that summer. Through 1983-84, they made 100 Relayers and sold 65. Soon, Bill and Kathy moved into the house next door. They shared accommodation with the basement workshop, living room office, and upstairs showroom.
85 Relayer
In 1985, Bill won the US Nationals again in Colorado where the Hank Roberts Crossbow Company asked him to make “a new stylish bow” for them. Bill reshaped the stock, added an aluminum deck plate and automatic safety, and retained the Daco limb to create the 85 Relayer. Unfortunately, Roberts’ interest waned after the compound crossbow buzz at the Atlanta Shot Show. Bill and Kathy decided to make the 85 Relayer, anyway. They had 300 stocks and 100 Daco limbs ready for assembly when Daco declared bankruptcy.
Wolverine
Soon, they pivoted again. Bill retained the 85 Relayer stock to use up inventory and designed a two-piece split-limb system with a cast metal riser. With advice from Canada Fiberglass, he began making his own fiberglass limbs. Bill and Kathy used cedar sprig stencils to create a camo pattern on their new Wolverine. Since the smell of fiberglass impacted Kathy’s baking, they moved production to a bay in an industrial building on Hollinger Crescent, Kitchener in the fall of 1986. Within a year they made 500 bows, hired staff, and brought Kathy on full-time. By 1991, they had doubled production and expanded to three more bays.
Exocet
Bill and Kathy realized they needed to replace the expensive, heavy, and unreliable wooden stocks. They designed and created the tooling for an injection-molded stock system and contracted out production. In 1992, they introduced the Exocet as the platform for all models for years to come.
In 1998, Kathy’s brother, Brian Hackbart, brought his aerospace experience to Excalibur. They used their first CNC machine to finish their metal risers. This led to improved tolerances, tighter assembly, and better quality control. By the decade’s end, they had 15-20 staff, and had outgrown the Hollinger facility.
In typical Troubridge style, they designed and built their own plant at 2335 Shirley Street in Kitchener. It officially opened on the company’s 20th anniversary around the time Kathy’s sister, Carolyn Benyair, became company CFO. They added more CNC machines, honed production, made their own arrows, and expanded the facility.
Passing the baton
By 2009, Bill admits that “he was tired.” He felt he was holding the company back. Early in 2010, the couple sold part of Excalibur to Mangrove Equity Partners. This small Florida investors group specialized in helping companies with potential build their value for resale.
Mangrove delivered. In three years, they groomed replacement leadership from within Excalibur.
They improved manufacturing capacity, doubled sales, and launched the Matrix series in 2013. Most importantly, they resolved Excalibur’s longstanding challenge with the American Federal Excise Tax. US dealers could finally buy direct. Bill and Kathy eased into retirement at their new dream home near Elora.
A decade of changes followed. Mangrove sold Excalibur to Northwest Equity Partners in Minnesota in 2013. They also owned Bowtech. In 2020, Bowtech evolved into the Pure Archery Group, and was later bought by JDH Capital, a Texas-based private investment company. Throughout, Excalibur introduced exciting series like Micro (2015), Assassin (2018), and Twinstrike (2021).
These, however, deserve their own chapter.
Bill and Kath still own the building. The new owners recently honoured their role as innovators, advocates, and ambassadors by presenting each of them with the new 40th anniversary ltd. edition Wolverine.
Originally published in the Fall 2023 issue of Ontario OUT of DOORS
Can anyone tell me the correct draw weight without any cocking aids for a excalibur mag air. And the power stroke. I have never been so confused. So many conflicting statements from different sources.
Philip,
From Bowhunting Columnist Tim Watts:
Here is the info requested:
1) Excalibur advertises their drawing weight as if you are using the cocking aid. (“Drawing Effort”) The manual rope cocking aid that comes with the bow when purchased reduces the drawing effort by 50%. Therefore, the draw weight of the Mag Air is approximately 270#.
2) A crossbow power stroke is the distance from the trigger mechanism to where ethe string stops. The Air Mag is 12.4″. This is more than the Ontario minimum allowed of 11.8″. The Air Mag is perfectly legal for Ontario hunting.