If I were in your shoes, I would get a Thunderchild.  You already know you liked it, plus its price is great and if you don't like it, you can sell it without losing much money.  Get it at a good, conservative weight in case you want a lot of potential buyers later on.  The money you would lose if you sold it would be cheap rent on a great bow, at the very worst.

No bad choice.

THUNDERCHILD. I am loving this bow more everyday. Shoot it better than my ILF recurve!

If ya don't like it those Thunderchilds re-sell reeeeal easy!!!

Another vote for TC, although I have never so much as held a Centaur, despite my screen name. Big Jim is easy to deal with and builds a great bow, both in looks and shooting characteristics. No doubt the Centaur is a great bow as well as lots of guys on here love them, but if you already know you like the TC, go for it!

Just try to shoot them all, and then the choice will be easy to make; because one of them will just fit you better.(or at least that is how it is most of the time)

Good Luck!!!

just buy em both. you only live once and cant take it with you when you go

All three are great bows that resale very easily if the weight is not too heavy.  My question is what is the waiting list.  

Last I heard Big Jim was about 10 months and that was some time ago.  Depending on the wait list you could put your name in with both bowyers and have quite some time to decide what exactly you want.  If the wait list for both was some time apart you could just do as what most of us want to do and buy both.  With a wait at almost a year it is easy to put aside the money for that something extra.

Not worth much but that's my $.02

Oh yeah, I have a Buffalo Bow and I can say that Big Jim is about the best I've ever dealt with be it in person or over email/phone.

QuoteOriginally posted by trad_in_cali:
As a lefty in a city where there is EXTREMELY limited access to trad tackle and forget about lefty, I had to make a lot of expensive decisions without trying a bow first. I would say that the grip has proven to be a MAJOR factor in whether I'll like/shoot a bow. Don't buy a bow new that you haven't tried. See if there's a try-before-you-buy program at all. It's worth the extra money upfront, to avoid waiting (9 months in Big Jim's case) and then having to get on another waiting list because the bow didn't fit you well (not to mention the financial hit). Just my two cents as someone who's had to find bows exclusively by buying without trying for years. Ouch!
Marco

I've been through this dilemma and these are words of wisdom, before you start dropping $800+ for a bow ask if they have a grip you can check out even if it's made out of a 2 x 4. The grip is want makes or breaks a bow for 90% of us, the rest of it is splitting hairs there are so many good bower's out there now days. Never shot any of Big Jim's but I've shot a couple Centaur's and they rock but so do a bunch of others like a MOAB,Whippenstick ect ect..go to one of the bigger shoots near you even if you have to travel 100's of miles with the sole purpose of shooting every vendors bow then start hitting up the shooters and ask to shoot theirs. It will be the best investment ever.