The two others have oil compartments fitted with a valve at the cutting head that will open up as you push down the cutter to the glass and lets out a steady flow of oil as you cut. Most glassworkers would have both kinds at hand, but as you start I would recommend the wooden one because of price and a few uses the "fancy" ones does not have. I'll get back to that. I went online to look for different cutter, and discovered that it's not easy to find my kind of wood handle cutter now.
I got mine a long time a go when I was still working at a glass shop. Most the model have the ball head, used for hitting the glass to open up the score made in the glass, a method I try to avoid since in my mind the hands on method has a greater success rate. You do not want to do "dry cuts" on glass, which I will show in the next step, so you need some kind of lubricant.
Glass shops normally has a thin clear oil specially made for cutting glass, but my experience is that they prefer to keep this for themselves. If you just need a few drops, and your wife has a sowing machine, you could beg her to give you some of the sowing machine oil. It's very similar to glass cutting oil, but gets a bit pricy if you want to do a lot of cutting. Since my wife has not been willing to share her sowing machine oil, and I am not able to purchase from Amazon I live in China , I've used WD It works ok, but is not ideal.
The bonus is that the long straw you can put on makes it easy to fill the oil compartment of the fancier cutters. You can also use vegetable oil or other oils found in the grocery shop, but they are most times too thick to put in the oil compartment cutters, and more messy and sticky. Flat work surface. You want the glass to be totally flat, and have good support everywhere.
The best surface should be firm and not too soft. The best is a wooden surface covered with felt or something like it. Measuring tape. Most glass jobs have little leeway, and you want to measure well before you cut. If you want a straight cut, you need a straight! You might be steady on your hand and good at following lines, but if you want a true straight cut, get a straight that you can put your cutter up against.
That means that the typical thin steal straight or angle will not work, since the wheel on the cutter will lift the glass cutters head too high up to lean on the straight.
There are many more things you can buy for working with glass, like circle cutter, suction cups, tongs etc. Measure, measure and measure. A lot of jobs I've done are down to the millimeter, so there is no room for failure. Now you come to the first factor where practice makes a difference. How much does your cutter differ from the size you want on the glass. My experience is that most cutters are 2 mm from the middle of the wheel to the edge left or right.
My wooden handle one is different from each side, but I never cut with the thick side since that's where the nut for changing cutting wheels is placed. Next is the lubricant. If you have a cutter with the oil tank in the handle it's just to fill up and go.
If you have a more basic cutter you got two ways of applying the lubricant. With a short cut, it should be enough to put some on the cutter, or dip the cutter in some of whatever oil you use. For longer cuts the best would be to put some straight on the glass the whole way where you want to score the glass.
Have some oil of choice in a cup, and use a little brush to tip in the oil and brush onto the glass. You dont need much, but be sure to have it on along the whole line. Putting on a lot will just give you extra mess to clean up after you're done cutting. I did some cuts with and without oil, to show how they look. The single cut is all without oil.
On the picture with three lines, you see one without oil, one with oil done by the wooden handle cutter and the last with my self lubricating cutter. The perfect cut should be close to invisible, but I'm a bit rusty. If you do a dry cut on a thick glass, pressing down hard as you score, there will actually be this crackling sound from the score after you have done it.
It's hard to record the sound though, so you'll just have to take my word for it or try yourself. This is it! I've always struggle to explain how hard to press the cutter on the glass, but I think I've found an OK way now.
This do require a flatt digital scale preferably with a tare function reset function , but can be done without the tare as long as you know your math. I placed a practice piece of glass on the scale, and pushed the tare button to zero out the scale. The few cuts I did I ended up with a pressure between 90 and OZ. Put the cutter on the glass and try to get a feel of how much pressure to use, as you cut, try to keep about the same pressure and speed the whole way.
If by any chance parts of the line was not scored, you can try to run over that part again. Hopefully you now have a nice clean score in the glass and can move swiftly to the next step. I say swiftly, because the score will "harden up" again if you leave it for a couple of minutes. Now, you'll find out if you did all the things above right. A nice clean score should make the breaking easy, but for those who have never done it before it can be a little scary thinking: How is that little scratch going to make the glass break open in a perfect straight line?
This is the last method I would choose, unless the glass is to thick or in a position where the two other methods are not possible.
I do not have any pictures of this method now, but can add later if someone want. The disadvantage with this method is that every time you beat the glass you risk that the cut will start traveling to the left or right away from the score, especially if you're not good at hitting right under the score.
Do not try this on any glass thicker than 5 mm if you don't have some experience with this method!!!!!! Only by the help of your hands, break open the score. Place your two pointer fingers on the underside of the glass one of each side of the score. Put your two thumbs on the top of the glass, one on each side of the score, and just break it open like you would break a chocolate bar.
The danger with this is your hands are surrounding the edge of the glass, and are more exposed to cuts if your not carefull, or have a little mishap. This method was the one my teacher would always tell me to do during my classes unless it was not possible because of reasons mentioned earlier.
This is where the wooden handle cutter of mine come into great use. I place the end of the cutter centered straight under the beginning of the score.
Then place one palm on each side of the cutter, resting them flat and firm on the glass. Then, when ever you have built up enough guts, give the glass a good push straight down towards the surface and it should "pop" apart in the blink of an eye.
That's how you cut glass. I hope this has been helpful to you and you have not had to break out any bandaids. This can impact your performance significantly if you get an overly viscous oil. Vegetable Oil Any type of vegetable oil can be used. Custom Formulated Glass Cutting Oil Due to the demand for good glass cutting oils, there have been in recent years custom formulated glass cutting oils that bring forth every benefit discussed above without any of the downsides.
These are by far the best options available on the market and if at all possible should be used. Leave a comment Name Name. Message Message. Back to News. The best glass cutters have durable, sharp cutting wheels that make consistent, accurate scores. Most of the top models use tungsten carbide or steel alloy wheels for the job.
Tools with tungsten carbide wheels are the most durable and will produce the best results, and they are usually more expensive than tools with steel alloy cutting wheels. While cutters with steel alloy cutting wheels will be less expensive, they might not stay as sharp for as long as tungsten wheels. Dull cutting wheels lead to improper score lines, which could make glass snap inaccurately. Some glass cutters have six-wheeled turrets with multiple cutting heads.
Just rotate the turret to a new blade when the old one gets dull. Cutting range refers to the thickness of material a tool can cut. Be sure you pick the right glass cutter for the job at hand.
To cut thin sheets of glass, you need a tool with a range of 2mm to 6mm. For medium glass thicknesses, you need a tool with a 6mm to 12mm range. There are also cutters that can cut thicker glass sheets with a range of 10mm to 20mm. Many glass cutters have swappable cutting heads, so you can choose the cutting wheel you need and put it on the tool. Multi-head tools let you cut a wider range of glass thicknesses.
Lubrication makes glass cutting simpler. Many of the best glass cutters feature self-oiling capabilities. These models have an oil reservoir in the handle, a wick that connects the reservoir to the wheel, and a compressible head.
When the head compresses during a cut, the wheel comes in contact with the wick, allowing the oil to flow onto it. Applying pressure over a long score line can wear you out in a hurry. Choosing a glass cutter with the appropriate grip and size will make a big difference in your comfort level and the amount of control you have. For beginners still building hand and wrist strength and endurance, a pistol-grip cutter may be the best choice. Below is a list of some of the top glass cutters on the market.
This pencil-grip glass cutter features a brass handle that doubles as a reservoir for automatic oiling. It comes with a head and cutting wheel set that can cut 3mm to 6mm glass.
You can buy another cutting wheel head that can handle thicker glass sheets. It has a precision-ground carbide cutting wheel that will stay sharp for a long time.
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