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Glass Cutting. Tips for cutting Glass

Sometime in your life, you may need to know how to cut glass. Glass is used in various items, like picture frames, windows, in doors for cabinets, in crafts, in jewelry boxes, and in so much more. Glass makes items look more delicate, precious and opens the world of light to what ever is on the other side of the glass. Learning how to cut glass can be a great way to save money, to enhance the crafts that you make, and to fix that cabinet with the broken glass in no time at all.

You can cut pieces of glass, in straight, or in curved sections. Sometimes in crafts, in boxes, cupboard doors and in shelving glass will also be cut into circle or triangles, and even into hearts. If you take your time and practice, you can make some of the most fabulous glass cuts that are going to add that very special look to your home.

To make a straight cut in a piece of glass, you will need to hold some type of straight edge along the glass. This can be a ruler, a paper, or any type of thing that is going to make your edge straight. Some people do like to run a piece of masking tape along the glass that is not going to be cut, cut centimeters from the edging that is being cut, just in case your glass cutting wheel spins off and you make a bad cut. Therefore, you are going to be using your glass-cutting wheel between the tape and the straight edge for a nice straight line.

A glass-cutting wheel or a glasscutter, as some call it, can be bought in most all hardware stores and will only cost you a few dollars. If you are really into cutting glass, making crafts and using glass in various ways, you might want to invest in a heavy-duty glasscutter but if you are just working on a few projects, the regular cutter will do just fine.

After you make your straight line in your glass with your straight edge, and if you are going to use tape, you need to dip your glasscutter into kerosene or into lightweight oil, used for engines. This makes the glasscutter easier to use on the glass without as much effort. The correct way to hold a glass cutter is actually between your index finger and your middle finger so you have a good control, bracing the back of the glass cutter with your thumb. Leaning over the glass you will find that you are going to free up your arm so you have a long length to use to control and cut the glass as needed.

Press the glasscutter into the glass at the far edge away from your body. Move the cutter along the glass, along the straight edge until you reach the point to where you are close to your body. When you are cutting glass, and you are cutting a piece the is more than two foot long, it is good to have someone hold the side that will fall to the ground. Or having something stable under the side that will fall so you are not left with a huge mess of broken glass on the floor to clean up.

If you are interested in cutting glass with a curve, just draw on the glass with a grease pencil. Cutting the line on the outside of the grease pencil so you are only left with trimming up the glass on the design that you want to be left with allows you to work with the glass a little easier. Trimming up the glass is just using your glass cutter to carefully follow the edge of the curves that you have drawn with more ease than if you were cutting the glass for the first time.

It is important to remember that you should be wearing gloves when cutting glass because the edges are very very sharp and you could cut your hands, even your arms badly if you were to brush up along the glass in the wrong way. You also might want to consider wearing safety goggles if you know that you are going to be working on this project by yourself and you need to lean into the glass to see what you are cutting. As with any type of construction and craft methods, something could go wrong and a piece of glass could fly off and into your eye causing damages.