Traser Glowrings

Hi:

I know this isn't Good, Bad, and Ugly, but I just wanted to tell everyone what a great guy Bagheera is to deal with. I ordered some Glowrings from him a while back, and the whole transaction was quick and courteous. It was my first purchase from a fellow forumite, and it was really fun to send money to someone I've never met who lives halfway around the world. (I must be really slow at this stuff; I haven't even purchased anything on eBay yet!)

I've been off the forums for quite a while, and from the reading I've been catching up with, it seems that the search feature has been restricted. If you can search though, I doubt you'd find a single negative report about Bagheera.

Btw, the Glowrings are pretty cool too!

Best,

Ted
 
Glowrings are great! I bought one for each member of my family (from Bagheera) about a year and a half ago, maybe a little more. Don't get me wrong, they are a great product, and have served well, but...

The half-life of tritium is about 12 years leading me to surmise that the glowring would loose half its brightness in about 10 or 12 which would certainly be an acceptable rate for such a useful $10 toy. But not so! In a 1.5 years or so, all the glowrings in the family are about half as bright or less than they were when I first got them. I'm guessing the tritium slowly leaks from the inner vial, even through the thick plastic and that is the source of the problem. This is not a really big deal, but I'm still disappointed.

I also tried that "alien skin." Its really just a thick coating of phosphorus embedded in some medium, so it glows longer than most phosphorus-coated surfaces, but not by much. True it will "glow all night", but its so dim after a few hours that except to mark a post or step or something in pitch darkness it's pretty useless!
 
Hi Matthew,

If this is happening with your Glowrings, these should be replaced.

Matthew, I know that sometimes a Traser Glowtube can crack and you'll notice it by a fast diminishing glowing and the glass tube gets an "powdery" look, the Glowing will stop in a day.

The Tritium gas is inside the small glastube with an pressure of 3 Bar (3 atmosphers) so any problems with the glass and the tube cracks, still it would be a first for me (us) if the tritium would be slowly leaking out.

Matthew, if I'm correct you got the 6 Green Glowrings June 19 2001 and Traser ghives a 10 year guarantee on these babies.

I would suggest you return 2 Glowrings with diminished glowing to me (us) and I will compare them with the Glowrings that we are ordering before the end of this week.

I'll ask Traser beforehand if this is a known problem and if so I'll make sure they will send us 6 new Green Glowrings that will go your way I would then only ask you to return the remaining 4 so I can return them to Traser.

I'm not sure if you got the first model, the squarish plastic casing were the Glowtube was 'fixed' with an small drop of clear silicon glue or the later model with the casing consisting of two halves?

Anyway, drop me an email if you need my address to return 2 of the "half power glowing" problem Glowrings and we'll go from there.


Best Scouting wishes from Holland,

Bagheera

http://home.wanadoo.nl/fam.henskens
 
Hello Matthew,

I did some checking and emailed Traser about your Green Glowrings losing "Glow" and here are the answers to my questions:

1.xxxx do you know of any "slow" leaking of the Glowtubes? that could have occured in batches from June 2001 ?
This friend of ours is more then a little disappointed about the Glowrings loosing their Glow.

ANSWER: The lights inside the glowring will either glow or will not glow there is no in-between. If the glass breaks the gas will dissipate immediately. Sometimes a very low glow will remain for a few hours as some of the phosphor will still be activated by the gas but this will not last.

Anyhow, we know of broken Glowrings losing their Glow but slowly over a period of 16 months ?? ANSWER This cannot be true Piet the technology makes it impossible.
===================================================

So Matthew, please send me as requested a couple of the Glowrings that look like they have lost over half of their Glow and I can check them out evenn thow Traser thinks this is not possible.

It's just that I (we) stand behind Trasers Glowring product.

The latest news is that they changed from acrylic casings to polycarbonate casings and my Traser man writes about these new casings:

" we had some problems because Acrylic is a very hard and brittle
material. Polycarbonate is far stronger that acrylic but a softer material and will not break. I have personally tested ten of them which we have not even used glue on. We have thrown them all whilst being attached to different bunches of keys top heights of 10 metres and landing on concrete.
None have broken.

So I guess our new batch of Glowrings coming in will be even better :)

Best Scouting wishes from Holland,

Bagheera
 
Traser Glowrings have proved to be a BIG disappointment. I originally ordered two green ones. One of these had a gap at the bottom of the casing almost big enough for the tritium vial to fall out. I contacted the supplier, who immediately sent me a replacement. When I opened the envelope that it came in I discovered that the case was shattered at the split-ring. I sent these two Glowrings back to the supplier who sent me a replacement - again. This evening one of the glowrings, with nothing attached to it (not even the split-ring) fell 15 inches (I've just measured it!) from the sofa in my lounge to the laminate floor. The result - the vial broke! Lights out. Traser do not cover breakage of the vial.
So, I still have one left, which will be treated as FRAGILE. Be warned.
 
Steven, What happened to you is very rare. I lost one of the 6 that Piet sent me to vial-breakage too. It was one of the older style, but the other 5 have been fine except that they seem dimmer than they should, but this may be purely subjective on our part. Might they have seemed brighter when we first got them just because they were novel, and now (1.5 yrs later) they are not?

I proposed to Piet via email that he send me a new one (I'll pay for it) and I'll compare it to the 4 (of the 5 working ones I've rounded up here) I have and see if they look as different as we seem to think they do. The 4 I've found all glow with identical brightness, so if they are dimming, they are all doing it at the same rate - not a likely scenario which is why I would rather assume the cost of comparing against a new one.
 
Out of the 100 I got (mixed old and new styles)
One light blue vial smashed on a friend's keyring - she's not sure how.
One yellow vial cracked clean in half - in fact my brother called me to tell me that his friend's one had gone out today! (strange!)

That's 2 out of a 100 that I know of.

In all fairness, Traser sent me *three* replacements when I called about the light blue (I had already given my friend another one). I did not expect them to because accident happen etc etc etc, but they are cool guys who have a good attitude to Customer Service.

I think I will send both failures back to Traser so they can have a look.

I must point out that I have Glowrings on the ends of most of my SureFire Lanyards, on my keys, and right now, two on my neck-lanyard. My parents, bother, all of my friends each have one, and they are all very happy with them.

At the end of the day, they costed me £3 each which is a beer and a bag of peanuts. Even if they last only a few years, that's far longer then if I bought all my friends a beer and some nuts.

I think Glowrings are fantastic!

Al :D
 
BAGHEERA or STEVEN ANDREWS

Can you give me details of purchasing and sending to the US?
  • How much are they?
  • How much is shipping?
  • How long does it take to ship to the US?

I really would like to have a few of these, as I have Tritium night sights on my Glock, and my Luminox Watch. I would love to have a tritium keyring

Mike
 
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