How to cut mirror tiles?

[D.M. Procida]

I'm trying to cut mirror tiles. I have a diamond-wheel glass cutter. I'm not having much luck.

I'm trying to make a periscope, by the way.

Daniele

[Ian Stirling]

As each diamond individually cracks off a bit of glass each time it goes past the tile, I reckon you've notched up around a billion years of bad luck per cut. Maybe this is causing your problems.

[BigWallop]

Make sure you have a good thick straight edge, timber or metal, and then score the glass with a good pressure and make sure you go out to both the edges. You should feel the cutter digging in to the glass and see it leaving a good deep mark in the surface.

Lift the glass on to the top of you straight and make sure you're holding the two parts on either side of the score firmly. Press firmly on only one part while you hold the other firmly down on top of the straight edge.

If you've made a good clean score mark and you don't let both parts move at the same time, then you should have a clean break along the scratch.

[D.M. Procida]

Are mirror tiles harder than ordinary glass? In order to make any impresssion on the the glass I have to apply quite a lot of pressure,

Daniele

[Jerry Built]

What is a diamond-wheel glass cutter? Do you mean a wheeled cutter, or a single-point diamond cutter (the one to go for), or some sort of circular saw type thing like a tile cutter? Anyway, get a single-point diamond cutter.

Aw. The danger of buying a house on a flood-plain, I suppose, or is it costal erosion?

J.B.

[BigWallop]

There shouldn't be any difference in the type of glass used for mirrors, but you might be using the cutter wrong if it isn't making any impression on the glass. I have known some mirrors to be made from toughend or laminated glass, but these are rare.

Make sure you have the cutting wheel firmly on the glass and that you're not just scraping the edge of the cutter along the surface. This may mean that cutter will be almost verical (straight up and down) if the wheel is sited in the middle of the cutting head, but most wheel cutters have the wheel sited more to one edge of the cutting head so that it allows you to place a finger on the top and get a bit more pressure.

Have a go with one of your diamond rings to see if it makes any difference.