Introduction to Glass Cutting

So, Jim, if a guy wants to get into glass cutting, what kind of safety concern should he have right away? Well, the most common, you know, and obvious is, is make sure you have good gloves for when you're, uh, grinding and things like that. And, uh, of course I wear because you can get fragments coming off the glass when you're cutting it or, um, you know, when you're running your hand down the edge of a piece of glass or something you want, you want your gloves on too. And, um, basically, uh, that's about it is, uh, having your, your, uh, safety eyewear on that very good. And what kind of, what kind of tools should a guy anticipate having to own in order to actually do a lot of glass cutting and both cutting and installation.

Well, I guess it all depends upon how, how heavy you're gonna get into it. You know, the novice could probably get by with, you know, just a, uh, a glass cutter and some alcohol, um, uh, straight edge things like that. Uh, when you get into the bigger stuff where you wanna polish edges and, and make a nice finish, uh, on the glass. Then you're gonna have to go to a, um, a big powerful grass glass grinder that's driven by water and electricity. And if not a cheap piece of equipment, no, they can, uh, they can run easily 2000 bucks and consumables too are kind of pricey belts.

Yeah, the belts are, uh, anywhere from 40 to 60 bucks a piece depending upon, you know, what, what type you get, you can get carbide, you can get diamond cut. You can, you can get cork for polishing and those get quite expensive also. So it might not pay for a guy to set up to do just his own car. Uh, but, uh, he could still use some of these skills and just, yeah, you're, you're absolutely right. Um, it is very costly and people think secondly of, but they still, the novice still wants to be part of it and, and they can be, and they, they can do it by making their own patterns, uh, taking apart their own cars.

Um, bringing somebody like me or a fabricator, the glass patterns and they, they cut them to size and then they can return and put them in themselves. And most, uh, most of us glass guys, we have no problem, uh, telling them how to go about it and if they get into the middle of a pro project and have a problem they can just call us and we can walk them through it. So, what are some of the tools that a guy would need to take his own glass out, let's say, uh, basically all you need is your, your common wrenches, your common screwdrivers and maybe you're gonna need some type of, uh, uh, instrument to take the door handles off because different door handles have different clip arrangements. Uh This is your most common, uh, for, especially through the fifties and sixties, uh, cars. Uh, there is a push type.

It'll, it'll push the pin right out of the back of the door, door handle. Uh, this one is more you get into your fifties and forties where you have to ge get behind it and grab it and pull it out. Uh, this is sort of a nice tool for that too. Um, some of your later model cars will actually have a screw into the center of it. So it's just a matter of inspecting it and see what you have.

You can always sneak behind there with a screwdriver to see, you know, what kind of clip you have back there. But usually most, most people get by with this type of a tool. So it gets the door handles off. What about windshields? Windshields can be?

Uh, I know I've tried a few over the years, had a, had a 55 Ford Crown that I once had a royal hassle with trying to figure out how to get that stainless off. What kind of, what kind of things should a guy think about there? Well, most, most of your older vehicles like that, uh, they're rubber set that they're put in with a piece of rubber like this. You have the glass that, that inserts into the rubber here. Like so, and then this is your body on this end of it.

So in most cars say you don't wanna save the glass, usually you don't, usually you wanna replace the glass with new glass. So the easiest way is just take a tile knife, you know, just a regular tile knife like this, cut, this outer piece of the rubber, just cut that off and then you can get inside and you can push the, push the glass right out of it. Sort of a simple dirty way of doing it. Yeah, some of the, sometimes the 50 year old rubber can get pretty hard and uh, trying to get it to flex out is almost impossible. And, and, and then you go with this type of a method put this against the, against the glass and you can generally just pop it off just in pieces.

It's just like a rock. The uh, and also when I go to, if you know, a lot of places will sell me a windshield. So if you know, let's say I wanna drop a windshield into my 57 desoto back home or another car, is there any special tools I need to actually install. Well, you should have yourself with what you call a Cotter pin puller. It's just a hook, we call it in glass.

It called a hook tool. Sometimes they'll come with a little bit of sharper curve, but this will be able to get between the glass and the rubber and you're just taking, go behind it like this to, uh, break it loose. You can get the glass out with it, this hook tool and you can also install it with that hook tool. And um, a lot of your cars will have the rubber that's on the car and you'll know that because it's got, probably have a zipper in it like this, this type of a rubber where it's got an insert that goes into the rubber. Once this insert is out, it relieves the rubber and you just take your hook and then hook your glass in this way.

So you just pull the rubber back, slip the glass in. And then also you have this method, if you put the rubber on the glass, you know, on the table and then insert this cord into the back of the rubber, which accepts to the car that what we call a pinch rod in the car, then you put the glass and the uh rubber up against the car you get inside, you have somebody usually on the outside, putting some pressure on it and then you just pull this rubber back like, so and then it pulls it right into the right around and then you can help it along with your uh cutter PP pa you've got some other great tools here when we would use a, uh, or a good question. This is what they call urethane. Um This is a structural adhesive. It's used in all the modern cars.

Uh This actually is structural. So if the car isn't put in with this stuff and you have an accident and that windshield pops out the roof of that car is butter. So it'll come right in on you. A lot of modern cars, windshield is actually part of, have to have structure. We also use it in the street rod world in the classics world, like in your, uh, in your fifties cars, 57 some of your 50 sevens even, uh, most of your sixties cars will be what it was actually a sort of a beetle set back then and they have to be replaced with Urethane.

So, yes, you can, uh, install some of your, um, muscle cars. A lot of your muscle cars are that way and you just put it back in with Urethane and you don't ever have to worry about it popping out on you and the way you, um, you go a little bit farther with that to have this, you should have yourself not the normal cocking gun but electric gun. Uh, because that stuff comes out really heavy and So you end up with Popeye Arms by the time you get done. Um, and also to remove the, to back up to remove the glass out of these sixties muscle cars and stuff, you have to have what they call a cold knife and that looks, excuse me, it looks like this. It's just a yes, I've seen those and you can see that it's got an L shaped knife on it.

You keep that nice and sharp. This actually will insert when it's in the car, pretend like it's in the car. Now, forget about this. You get behind after you've taken the moldings off the car, you get behind here because the Urethane is on the back side and then you just pull that along one hand on this part of the handle and you pull with this part of the handle and you cut it all the way out of the car. And from that point on, you most likely will want to rece uh, uh retrieve all the old urethane that's in the vehicle at that point.

So you can start all fresh with the brand new urethane. So you wanna clean up all the surfaces, you wanna clean it very well and prime it very well. Otherwise you're gonna end up with rust on your pinch. Wes great. The uh I think uh this tools caught my eye and I can't quite place what it, what you'd use that one for Jim, that one is a vent puller, a vent, a vent puller that is uh to back in the day when every, all the cars had uh vents on their front doors.

We had the little vent glass there. Well, it was always hard to get the glass out of those small vents. Well, this will actually clamp on to a piece of glass. Say this is the molding of the of the vent. This will actually go around the vent.

This will clamp onto the glass like so and then this will take and pull the glass right out of the frame. So you don't have to beat, beat on it, hammer on it or anything like that. Yeah, it is. It's a, it's a unique tool. It's a right hand when you're working with old cars.

Ok? And of course, with nothing, it makes it very easy to install like windshields or even side windows. Sometimes when you're having a hard time trying to hold it into place, we have suction cups, everybody should have a suction cup to, to uh grab the glass and hold the glass. And these have uh it looks like they have a relief valve on you. Just, all you have to do is just once it's on the glass like so and it's pumped down, all you have to do is just take and put your finger underneath the edge of the cup and it releases the air or the vacuum.

I should say the uh, any, any other tools that you can think of that, uh, you know, you should have, you should have yourself a pop rivet gun and, uh, of course, pop rivets just small eight inch pop rivets. What are you pop riveting on? Well, this is when you get into the older cars where you want to put new whiskers in and you can take and you bend this to the, to the curve of the, of the uh door and everything and just drill holes in eighth inch, put your pop rivet in and what it, the reason I like pop rivets is because they don't break glass. You put screws in there like the old days and those screws eventually back out. And pretty soon you either got a scratch on your glass or it breaks or if you go to put these in, people were putting uh your uh channels, you know, it goes around the glass and they put screws through, they put screws up in there and sometimes they don't get them all the way buried into the felt or they work themselves back out.

And all of a sudden now you got a chip in the top of your glass. So my recommendation when you're putting in channeling like this is you just take a dab of automotive silicone, make sure it's automotive because it's non conductive to, to moisture and other your basic silicones, your tub silicones and stuff like that will attract moisture and you'll have rust. So, just put a dab here, dab, here, dab there and roll it up and roll your glass up into it and put it into place and leave it overnight and she's secure your channel. Stay there. Right.

And then if you ever have to replace it, it's very easy to take out. All you do is take a razor blade and cut the, the, uh, silicone, which cuts very easily and makes it very simple for you. So the installation part is not bad for the novice. And he just has to think his way through uh where, where the problem comes is like I say, you, you have to have the bigger equipment for actually cutting the glass. And uh that's why I guess we're around.

Well, I'm glad you are. Well, thanks Jim. It's been uh great learning about some of the tools and uh well, one more thing before I go, I noticed you've got a lot of this black tape here and uh that's setting tape. Uh And uh I apologize for not bringing that up. This is actually used when you're putting your channels on your glass, like your bottom channel that your regulator hooks on to.

Well, you gotta have a way of adhesing the glass to that metal channel. A lot of guys that aren't familiar with it, they will put silicone or something in that channel. Well, then from that point on you're sort of in trouble because now it's permanent on that glass. Whereas this is actually a very, very durable and once it's in there it'll set itself and it's removable. So you can pound it off with this type of a tool.

This is a channel remover. You see, it's got grooves on here so it'll catch the edge of a channel and then you can drive it off. You can see it's all beat up on the side here. You can channel on the bottom edge of a door, on the bottom of the door, right on the window, you can drive it off like that. And, um, it makes it very, very simple, but it's very important to use a substance like this.

Yeah, actually I've bought this before and I, and actually gotten home and put the glass in it and it's been kind of, uh, still didn't grab tight and it was a little time together then, ok, you know, if it comes in about four or five different sizes, I, I stock probably four sizes of this and that's f functional for me. There's a lot of times where I'll have to take a medium size and then a thin size and put it together to make a thicker size or, you know, you, you, you can do it, you can put as many on there as you want because it will mold itself together. So I had everything I needed. I just didn't know it. Yeah, there you go.

You bet you. And it's always nice to have a, what do you call a uh so Solo Hammer? And um because that's always nice when you're working around glass glass doesn't like metal. Well, thanks Jim. You bet.

Uh Great hearing about some of the tools you need and uh I'm sure some guys will want to take on this and other guys are just happy to finally know exactly what you're up to in the garage and, and most glass guys, uh, out there will be more than happy to help you. You know, they all you need is a phone call and they'll walk you through it. You bet you.