On my glass figurine, the glass pedestal has broken in two. Both surfaces of the break are uneven. How can I smooth the broken surfaces so I can align them for gluing?
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11 years ago
Broken pedestal of glass figurine
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- posted
11 years ago
ces of the break are uneven. =A0How can I
You can't, at least not easily or well. If you've lost pieces of the glass when it broke you'll always see the break and repair. Having a piece made would cost a lot, so I'd look for a substitute pedestal, whether of glass or stone. An upside down heavy glass ashtray might do the trick.
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- posted
11 years ago
surfaces of the break are uneven. =A0How can I
Seeing the break and repair is acceptable.
I was thinking about using an extra-fine sandpaper or file on both surfaces= until they were smooth and matching for gluing.
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- posted
11 years ago
s of the break are uneven. How can I smooth the broken surfaces so I can a= lign them for gluing?
It's probably better to just use a type of glue that can fill wide gaps, an= d there are special epoxies made just for glass that refract light by almos= t the same amount that glass does. One such epoxy is or was sold for fixin= g car windshield cracks (not the 1-part acrylic or polyester resin that's a= lot more common but is made only for bull's eye cracks; this 2-part epoxy = could also handle star cracks), or check fish aquarium supplies or crafts s= tores. Regular epoxy will also work but will be more visible. If you can'= t find anything locally, contact Loctite and 3M.
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- posted
11 years ago
Those edges may be uneven but I have a suspicion the two parts will fit together fine.
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11 years ago
urfaces of the break are uneven. =A0How can I
es until they were smooth and matching for gluing.
If the pieces don't fit together then no amount of hand sanding will have any appreciable effect in any reasonable amount of time, and will in fact ruin what is the best fit you'll achieve - the original clean glass break.
You'd be sanding for hours and it would look like crap and would not fit together as well as it does now. Glass is ground with a diamond wet stone. Glass and porcelain break with sharp clean lines and can usually be glued back together leaving only a hairline bit of evidence of the break unless there is some material missing. Even if there is some glass shards missing, there will be one way - the correct and only way - that the pieces will fit together. Glass also doesn't break 'bigger'. So there is no material that needs to be removed.
If you can't fit the pieces together, it's either because you haven't tried the right arrangement of pieces yet, or because there are pieces missing.
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- posted
11 years ago
The stem did NOT break cleanly so the broken surfaces do not align.
Why can't I use a diamond whetstone to get two flat surfaces that I can then glue together?
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11 years ago
glue together?
You can. Go for it. Getting perfect alignment may be difficult though.
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11 years ago
You mean pieces are missing and/or you can't figure out how to put Humpty back together again.
glue together?
Feel free. It'll work, but do me a favor and keep a log of the time you spend getting the two surfaces to mate better than they do now. Oh, and take before and after pictures so we can see the improvement.
You do understand that you're basically asking, "Hey, I had an accident with my car. How much time will it take to fix it?", right? If you posted a picture I'd be better able to tell you if you were going to waste a little time or a whole lot of time.
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11 years ago
the break are uneven. How can I smooth the broken surfaces so I can align them for gluing?
When I worked in a lab, to smooth cut glass tubing we would use a course wire screen to rub them down.
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11 years ago
of the break are uneven. How can I smooth the broken surfaces so I can align them for gluing?
That's interesting. Was the coarse wire screen coated with emery or other abrasive like that used for sanding drywall?
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11 years ago
Of course not. It was a 4x4" bit of steel screening (looks like hardware cloth) normally used as a support, on a ring, for heating the contents of a beaker over a Bunsen burner.
A few swipes with such on a freshly-cut piece of glass tubing smoothed out the cut.
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- posted
11 years ago
Exactly.
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- posted
11 years ago
I'm curious how you know what FRANK did. Oh, wait, you don't. Considering that I've never worked in a lab with glass tubing and wasn't sitting next to him, neither do I - that's why I asked the question.
I do stained glass work and have for, hell, 25 years or so. I started doing it as a hobby, did some work for some clients and got paid very well for it, thank you very much, and now it's a hobby again. I'm not a noob when it comes to glass. I have a couple of glass grinders and a small catalog's worth of glass tools. I apologize for not providing a more complete resume when I asked the question. BTW, glass-stud, what's your background?
What's your estimation of the cross sectional area of the glass tubing that Frank smoothed? Probably a very small fraction of one square inch, right? And was Frank trying to flatten the cut - that is, grind the glass to make two smooth mating surfaces where the joint line is approaching invisibility, or just knocking off the sharp edges so people wouldn't get cut? Very different things, no?
The OP is asking about grinding down glass and hasn't given any information about the size of the glass pedestal for the figurine and how badly the thing doesn't fit. I'm imagining there's something on the order of a couple or three square inches of mating surfaces. Might be more might be less, but that is a grinding job, not a knock off the edges job anyway you look at it.
There's also the question of relative hardness. Regular steel can vary between 4 and 5 on the relative scale and hardened steel is somewhere around 7 to 8. Glass on the other hand can vastly vary from as low as 5.5 all the way to 7+ all depending on the chemical composition. This is why people that work with glass use diamonds or something that is definitely harder than the glass. So they're not sitting there scrubbing away glass and steel slowly until they're blue in the face.
Have you ever seen a piece of glass break and the glass _distorts_? Didn't think so. Glass breaks cleanly. That is what glass does. It either breaks cleanly and all the pieces can be reassembled (assuming you have the time and patience), or pieces of glass go missing.
If the OP posted a picture he's already have a definitive answer. A diamond whetstone would work, but getting two surfaces to mate, and not introduce rounding or breaking the flat plane of the surface when they're mated is the real trick.
I have the right tools, so I'd just use my grinder. If I didn't have the grinder I'd use the edge of a diamond blade on a wet saw (tile or tub saw to some - and make sure it's _non-segmented_!).
You on the other hand, are a tool. Answering a question that was not directed at you, and making guesses about the intended recipient's answer IS an example of one of your many, many in-thread off-topic posts. You have obfuscation down to a science.
See? You did my homework for me. Thanks!
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11 years ago
So you used what was at hand to smooth the cut. Makes sense. Now we need to determine what you mean by smooth and what was involved.
Were you trying to flatten the cut - that is, grind the glass to make two smooth mating surfaces where the joint line is approaching invisibility, or just knocking off the sharp edges so people wouldn't get cut?
What's your estimation of the typical cross sectional area of the glass tubing you smoothed?
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11 years ago
Unless it's something valuable enough to pay a specialist, just use super glue. Done it many times with clean breaks. If there's more than a couple shards, it gets tossed.
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11 years ago
That is the part I don't understand. What's so special about the pedestal? Stupid things like upside down ashtrays/plates or even a piece of mirror might provide a suitable replacement if the thing is so difficult to repair. And, as usual, a picture saves a lot of wasted time getting to an answer that sticks.
Somebody should plagiarize another newsgroup's FAQ, modify it, and have some basic ground rules for newbie posters. It'd save everyone a lot of grief.
Rule #1: Post some damn pictures! Rule #2: Don't even bother reading Rule #3 unless you've completed Rule #1.
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11 years ago
What Rico says, post some pictures, they're worth thousands of words!!!!!!!!
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11 years ago
Just smooth it down to prevent cuts. Mostly about 1/4 inch but any size could be smoothed.
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11 years ago
Right. That's what I thought. The OP, for whatever reason, is unable to fit the two parts back together which means he's looking to create two new mating surfaces. On one of your lab tubes the cross sectional area is tiny. Link to obligatory handy-dandy tube calculator:
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The OP's pedestal isn't made from 1/16" or 1/8" glass, and consequently the area will be much greater, and grinding those surfaces would take...let me see...here:
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;)
The OP is asking a question like, "How much should a blue car cost?" He just doesn't realize it. That's why posting a picture, besides being obvious, is pretty much essential.
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