Cheaper alternative for vacuum veneering bags
Around August last year I purchased a second hand Vacupress veneering pump that came with a 1500x1380 poly bag. One of the highly durable and stretchy 30 mil bags. It's great for smaller projects. Very hard wearing. Unfortunately these bags are extremely expensive IMO here in Australia through a limited few retailers and postage from places like veneersupplies is tough to swallow. $139USD for a 4x6' bag with $172USD postage for the cheaper pvc bags as an example.
After the suggestion was made to me I got in contact with a local Trucking tarp company here in SA, Academy Tarps. They were extremely helpful in my rather strange request for their business but I ended up with a 2.7mx1.37m 1mm thick pvc bag heat sealed (?welded?) on the sides leaving a single opening at the end for just under $150. A polyurethane bag or an off the shelf 'vacuum veneering' bag in a similar size posted to Australia would cost anywhere from $430 for the 4x6' pvc bag to over $1000 for the polyurethane bags landed in Aus. There is at least one Australia distributor I know of for the 30mil polyurethane bags at around $1314AUD in this size.
Even if this bag ends up with a few small holes due to less durability I could either buy another 10 times over and still be about even or just patch it up and keep on trucking (har har). I mostly posted this to give others a few ideas as to alternative bag sources and to praise the excellent job Academy tarps did. All I had to do was add a nipple to the bag to connect the vacuum pump to and purchased a C type closure to seal up the bag in use. First tests were successful and I have had no leaks with the bag since.
Wasn't really sure what part of the forum to put this in..
