Bear Archery Question....

[Forest Archer]

Anybody got any info on where Bear Archerys products were made? For example where was the knife kits made at? How about the razorheads? The leather back quivers? Fred sold everything from bow wax to treestands with his name on it. Was all this stuff made at the Grayling factory?.... F.A.

[PAPALAPIN]

Not sure...but I think the knifes were by Western Knife Campany.

I would expect that the bows were made at the Grayling plant, but all other products were farmend out to contract manufacturors.

[Wade Phillips]

FA - At Detroit and Grayling, all the bows were made at the Bear Plant.

In 1933, when Fred co-founded Bear Products Co., his main items to sell to Archers were leather goods. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s Fred made leather goods for many other archery companies, Ben Pearson, American Archery Co. Wood Craft, J Ellis Mitchell, and others.

Bear's little known catalogs dated from 1937 to 1940 feature more leather goods than anything else. The first two known catalogs do not even have bows in them. Leather goods are what made Bear Archery up until the early 1940s. Even at the Grayling Plant, Bear made their own leather quivers. Unfortunately, the last leather hunting back quiver Bear made was 1971.

The Razorheads were in the machine shop in the Bear Plant. Fred designed the machine to made the ferrules and assemble the heads.

[seboomook]

Wow! thanks Wade. Fred showed a mechanical genius beyond bow construction.