Alternative Glass Supplier?

[MoeM]

exelcomposites... Finnish company- but I`m even more dissapointed with the samples they sent me than with the Bearpaws (btw. made by "isosport" from Austria). Haven`t used the clear so far but black and white are only slightly through dyed and "covered" with black/white paper... makes me a bit scared of even trying the clear on a real bow^^

[Gundog68]

for a seminar i ordered glass for 10 bows. We could not get other glass in germany at this time so the shop send us the doubled length of glass we normaly needed. So we could look and use the best parts of it. We look through the glass with lamps so we could get the fail spots. At the end, we had noting to spare. So only 50% of the glass was usable.
Some time ago i ordered from KennyM, his glass (also the laminates) were good!.  Now my glass shop has also good glass. Several bowyer build a group and by together all the stuff.

[Gundog68]

Here is the link to the group:
   BB-Top

[JamesV]

Easy solution...............

Gordon Glass could cull the clear glass and sell the streaky glass as seconds for a reduced price. Not gonna happen because as long as you will by the crap at the same price, why change anything. Truth be known they probably do cull the glass and the big bow builders, Bear, Martin, Pearson etc. get the best glass and the little guy, well you know the drill.

I haven't bought a piece of clear glass in over 3 years

Just my take

James

[BigJim]

Well James, they actually grade and cull a high percentage of the glass and recycle it. Unfortunately there are so few pieces of truly clear glass that they would have to cull it all otherwise anything that wasn't perfect would then warrant a complaint.

There just isn't enough of what we do going on for them to justify a revamp of all their old equipment. If there was a good enough market for the glass, there would be more competition. As it is, Bear Paw is the only competition and their glass is so lousy they aren't even competition.

Apparently you haven't looked at the "Big bow builders" trad bows lately. Bear doesn't use clear glass and all of there colored glass is streaky. Martin probably does buy the seconds. The glass they use is very rough and I don't know of Pearson making any trad bows.

BigJIm

[monterey]

I can only buy from secondary suppliers such as Bingham.  My orders are small.

Maybe Bingham could bring that kind of pressure to bear and, maybe they have.  Maybe an order of clear from Bingham is as good as it gets.

If I were one of the Big Boys buying direct from Gordon, I'd be kinda perturbed if there was a whole lot of the streaky stuff!

[BigJim]

You guys need to look at all these "big guys" stuff before you start a movement to shun Gordon.
None of their stuff is better or even as good as what's available to the individual bowyer.

 I'm sure what staff they have allocated to the glass being made for trad guys could be better used and more profitable working with the guys they have building the compound glass.

bigjim

[Bow man]

The only two are Gordons and Bear Paw. Have not heard any much good on the German product. So we will be staying with the Gordons glass like Big Jim. It would be nice to see some one else come out with a good product

[LittleBen]

My take is really simple, if you buy twice as much glass and cull out the crap on your end, the price doubles ... If Gordon Composites revamps their equipment, they need to recoup the cost, and who knows what the price becomes ... 1.5x .... 2x .... 4x .... What it is now ....

Then again I guess that's an easy approach to take when not buying the glass.

I'll say for sure though, when I do make a glass bow which will be soon, I will definitely be buying extra glass .... God only knows what you can do with the stuff you cull out .... Mail it back to Gordon and save the planet or something ...

[Buemaker]

Too bad some good things don't last. Bjørn Bengtson AB of Sweden made the worlds best bow glass and it was 100% clear. It was more costly than Gordon's so bowyers of course bought Gordon's. Bjørn glass is no longer made, but luckily I still have some of it. Quality usually cost a little more. Bue--.

[Pago]

I have been trying to work out how to vacuum bag bows for a couple of years.  I was introduced to vacuum bagging in the RC hobby.   Many high stress load bearing composites can made relatively easily with a home bagging system.  That said this thread caused me to do some side research.

The most common glass for bow lams is plain weave E-Glass in bow terms stronger than carbon fiber and weaker than S-Glass, but just right for bows.

I see no reason why a person cannot make their own lams which would be very similar to common practices used in RC and other hobbies.  Probably best done with a milled mold.

Just thought I would share in case anyone is interested.