How To Cut Glass Without A Diamond Cutter
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Posted: Friday, June 18, 2004
by Paul S Umstead
Char's eBay Gift Emporium
Dip a piece of common string in alcohol and squeeze dry, or as dry as it will get without dripping. This string should then be placed on the already marked glass and tied tight. Light the string and let it burn off. Immediately, while the glass is still hot, plunge it into cold water. Be sure the container of water is large enough to let the glass to completely submerge, as well your arm up to the elbow, so as to deaden the vibration when you strike the glass.
METHOD 2 - This method rarely fails to break the glass cleanly, in the exact place you want it broken. First, scratch the glass with the corner of a file or a sharp engraving tool. Have a piece of wire bent to the desired shape you want to cut the glass. Heat the wire until it is red hot and lay it upon the scratch.Immerse the glass in cold water just deep enough to come to a level with the wire, but not quite covering it. The glass will break cleanly.
HOW TO CUT GLASS WITH SCISSORS: To do this you must place the glass under water completely, then with a pair of ordinary scissors, proceed to cut the glass as you would paper or cloth. This method is, or course, not as smooth a job as the methods described above. The edges will not be as smooth, but for getting a piece of glass down to a size and where the edges are not needed to be smooth, this method is satisfactory.
HOW TO DRILL GLASS: Get a piece of steel wire and file the wire to the shape of a drill. The wire-drill must be tempered as follows: Heat the end of the wire-drill on a flame until it is dull red, then place it in metallic mercury. The wire-drill, tempered in this manner, will bore through glass as easily as through soft metal. When drilling in glass, always use oil of turpentine with a little camphor to lubricate the wire-drill. As you drill, be careful not to drill all the way through from one side, as you will break the glass this way. Drill part of the way, or almost through, then drill from the opposite side to finish. Or, if you cannot do this, as when you are drilling bottles, etc., fill these bottles with water or place the glass in water.
CAUTION: When you make the drill, do not make the cutting edges so sharp or too acute. The drill will cut slowly, but you will have better holes with less breakage.
BONUS: How to achieve rainbow colors for bottles, vases, etc.: Use floating art colors obtainable from most paint stores. Take a pail and fill it with water and drop a few drops of several different art colors on top of the water. Now, take any article you wish colored and dip it into the colored water, move the item slowly back & forth. You now have a rainbow colored article. You can color bottles, vases, and many other articles this way.
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Top-level comments on this article: (8 total)Great Ideas. I'll have to try them.
I just tried it and when I lite the string, it just falls off the bottle where I lit it. Any suggestions on how to get it all burned at the same time? - It would be really great to get this to work but after trying it I just don't see how it's possible. I tried different kinds of string and this is a square bottle. Please help!Try leaving more alcohol on the string and perhaps lighting the string in multiple places if it won't burn all the way around. Te string is burning because u are burning the string instead of the alcohol
OOO,Nice.I tried the drilling trough glass, but i tempered the drill in galium.It still worked
This article is dangerous. Putting hot metal in mercury can be expected to produce poisonous mercury vapour.
"Captgrail" try using candle wax. Dip the string in candle wax and wrap it while the string is still drying. It will burn slower and hold it in place as well.
i have worked with glass for 6 years i am an experienced glass cutter and these methods will never work
Thanks and nice to learn from this article but My question is if we want to cut the Bottle from neck to Bottom in two pieces to see the Thickness of the Bottle Wals all the way. How can we do that.
Hope to get this problem solved in bottle sorting .With Best Regards, My email is fzal_fzal@yahoo.com.
This is really good. I run a blog and if successful i'll definitely owe this to you.
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