I want to add some strengthening struts to an aquarium and will be using 8mm glass. They are quite small bits and no need to go to a glazier to get them but what I was wondering was is there a DIY way of "bevelling" the edges to make them safer .Not sure if bevelling is the right word but I want to round off the edges smoothly . Stuart
Proper bevelling (as you'd find round the edge of a mirror) involves some serious equipment to first cut the bevel and then polish it.
If all you need to do is to take off the sharp cut edge then you could use a fairly coarse, flat, grinding stone - probably safer to devise some sort of jig to hold the stone and the run the glass up and down along it (if you do it the other way and slip then you'll end up coming into contact with the sharp edges of the glass - which can be painful !). Use water as a coolant / lubricant.
Depending on how much glass you have to 'treat' - you might get away with wet-and-dry paper, used wet.
Don't know where you are - but if you have a friendly local stained glass bod (I'm in Ireland, if that's any help) then they will have a range of tools for doing just what you want. I'd either use a water-cooled diamond grinder to take off the sharp edges, or, geting 'fancy', could 'fire-polish' the edges of the glass in a kiln......
If there's not a lot of glass involved, and you're OK with paying the postage, I'll be happy to do it for you....
Regards Adrian
You can work glass with wet and dry paper, but it leaves rough edges. To get to polished stage you need proper equipment.
Wet and dry might be suitable for your purposes and it will only cost you a quid to try it.
Thx for the offer and advice Adrian .I'm in Glasgow .I'll try it with W+D to see how it goes .It doesn't need to be properly bevelled .So long as it isn't sharp it should do .
Thx Eric .I'll try W+D to see how it goes .
Let the glazier do it.
Use jewellers rouge on a buffing mop after teh valve grinding compund has done its trick.
Howevr, its cheaper to order them bevelled for a small one off job.
The glazier will do it for you, might not even charge.
Mary
No problem... One trick that might help you..... Take a piece of cut glass, and 'stroke' it along the edge of the piece that you want to 'blunt' - same action as if you were sharpening a carving knife (might be a good plan to wear strong gloves....)
If you're lucky, this can take off the sharp edges - won't leave as good a finish as an abrasive, but might do the trick....
Whatever you do - DON'T use your thumb to check that you've removed the sharp edges - Murphy's Law applies here....
As others have said - your friendly local glazier might be able to help - they often use a wet-belt sander, which does the job faster than you can type it !
Good luck Adrian
=============================== I once used an oil stone (general tool sharpening stone) with limited success. You might have more success if you only want a safe edge rather than a finished edge.
I'm a bit surprised that people should think that a glazier will do this for free as it's rather an expensive, labour intensive process.
Cic.
Our glazier does it as a matter of course, without our asking. It's part of his service. He does it while we wait and it doesn't take long.
Mary
------------------------------- Things have changed in Yorkshire, I think. The traditional but rather unfair and ungenerous rhyme about Yorkshire people used to sum it up:
"Hear all, see all, say nowt. Eat all, sup all, pay nowt. And if tha does owt for nowt, Do it for tha' sen."
Cic.
p.s. I would add a 'smiley' if I knew how to use them.
If all you want to do is take the sharp edges off, I have used an axe sharpening stone with considerable success. The stone is a coarse grit, long, round and bulging towards the middle. It is designed to be held by one end and run along the edge of the axe, but can just as easily be run along the edge of a sheet of glass. Wear heavy duty or cut-resistant gloves when handling the glass though.
Colin Bignell
Not at all.
That's used by Tykes of themselves, others have no inkling of its meaning :-) And it's "thissen", not "tha' sen" No idea what "tha'" means ...
Yes, we are like Scots with the generosity squeezed out to "others" but among ourselves we're very free with our generosity.
Mary
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Cic.
Since when has Manchester been in Yorkshire? :-)
Accordin' to when I wer' young, (and also "Talking for Britain" by Simon Elmes,) the Yorkshire dialect term is "thysen" (pronounced "thi-sen") or, if in the North, "thysel"
AFAICR, the long "a" is Lancashire (or, as I would have been exposed to, Derbyshire, but that's more like a double a...)
Bloody load of peasants
=============================== You didn't read my post, did you?
The rhyme I quoted was spoken BY Lancashire people ABOUT Yorkshire people. Mary Fisher said (correctly, I believe) that the same rhyme (allowing for minor variations in dialect) is also used by Yorkshire Tykes about themselves.
Cic.
What you want is called "polished all round", or PAR for short.
If you ask the glass people for Xmm x Ymm, PAR, they'll know what you mean.
You can do it yourself with a whetstone, if you've a mind.
Mary
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