I know that most people on this forum deal with glass in vertical application (windows, doors, curtan walls etc…) but we have had a few questions over the years about working on horizontal glass. Watch as I restore an unframed piece of glass removing minor scratches all over the surface and several deep scratches as well. If you have any questions about glass restoration, scratch removal or how to solve a specific problem you are running into give us a call at 888-769-0001 or give Alex a call at 862-266-0677.
Very nice video Glass Renu.
I never got good results with other methods I have tried on glass tables,but this looks like you have solved a lot of issues.
A couple of things I have a question about. Most tables are in a house or conference room of an office building, and the dust would be an issue if it were flying around. Picking up the table and moving it out to the garage or other possible work areas might be impossible. I have seen another tool with a dust-catcher on it. Do you have something to catch the dust before it flys?
Also, nice choice using Creedence for the background music. “I ain’t no fortunate son”.
Obviously we don’t want the dust to become suspended in the air and spread around. As you could see in the video, the majority of the dust ends up in two locations, on the glass and on the RenuDisk. The dust that is created is heavy and tends to settle right around the repair. As you could see the black non-slip surface I used caught a good amount of the dust, as did the RenuDisk. When doing a repair indoors we don’t want to do anything that could suspend the dust in the air for 2 reasons. The first is to prevent making a mess, and the other is to make sure that we minimize the exposure to possible inhalation of the dust. The biggest concern we have with the vacuum shrouds is that if you don’t have a good seal, or if the filter on the vacuum isn’t properly installed all you are going to do is spread the dust further. Also with the shrouds it becomes VERY hard to maintain an even contact patch. For the shroud to be effective it needs to make solid contact with the glass surface. We have tested different tools with dust collection methods, and have found that every dust collection method we tried either made it impossible to get distortion free results, or made more of a mess / spread more dust in the air than our current method.
Considering the majority of Glass Restoration that is achieved with our system occurs outdoors the dust is usually not an issue For indoor repairs we have found that the best method for maintaining a clean work area indoors is simply to just put down a drop cloth, and to tap your disk clean into a bucket. As always INDOOR OR OUTDOOR we [B]HIGHLY[/B] recommend you follow our advise to wear a dust mask with a [B]minimum rating of N95 [/B]durring all grinding for safety. That being said we have designed the RenuDisks to trap the majority of the dust and if you keep the disk flat against the glass you should not be sending the dust into the air. Hope This answers your question.
When we work indoors we try to mask off the area with painters plastic then after we are done we sweep/vaccume the area indoors. We make sure there is no customer furniture in the masked area and give it time for anything in the air to settle on the floor. This works pretty well and as long as everyone in the working area wears a mask its pretty safe.
Here is a picture of a 14ft sliding door we worked on both in/out.
We once did a big conference table (4x10, 7/8 thick) and moved it outside. It was severely scratched and created lots and lots of dust. The thing weighed 500+ pounds so make sure you have about 4 guys with kung fu grip. That heavy of a glass wants to slide thru your fingers. I dont think there is a 100% way to catch the dust when you get to the edge because the pad has no choice but to overlap. Possibly use a free standing dust collection unit, like for woodworking but they are expensive, or just move it outside, is the easiest and cheapest way.
Nice job Cody, looks awesome. How much was that piece of glass to replace? Sometimes on small stuff, it’s so cheap, it’s hard to be able to resurface it for much less than new. The bigger, thicker glass with complex beveling gets more expensive for sure.
Good video man.
Good idea Billy. That dust really wants to travel once it gets going plus the air from the Makita will blow it all over. Then if you have the door opened, forgetaboutit…it goes everywhere. “Its better to cover up than it is to clean up!”
Scratched on both sides?? How did they manage that?? What a nightmare!
It was originally a window the homeowners hired a contractor to come in and install the big 14ft sliding door. The contractor had a cleaning crew come in and shortly after cleaning the crew notified the contractor that it was all scratched. The contractor said his cost was 14000 to install it. He was adamant that he wasn’t going to replace it so that’s where we came on.
