How to Cut Glass for Stained-Glass Projects

Video Transcript

"Okay, so when you cut glass remember, you are not cutting it like a razor blade cuts a piece of cardboard or a piece of paper. When you use your glass cutter what that cutter is really doing is just scoring the glass. It's causing a crack that's running through the glass along where ever you pass the cutter and that cut can be straight or it can have a curve to it or whatever shape you want. Then, in order to cut that piece of glass you are actually going to apply strain to it, apply force to it and you are now causing that glass to fracture along the line that you made. So, you really are breaking that glass along sort of a guide line that your glass cutter is making. And so for that reason it is important that when you make your cuts that you try to make them in a single pass. You don't want to start and stop. You don't want to kind of cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. You want to have a nice sort of line drawn on your glass, and that's what we are going to do, we are going to put one of our pieces down and draw a line. And then you really want to cut, make your cuts in one pass, following that line. You can do them slowly but you want to do it once. Because what you're doing is you only want there to be one sort of fracture and only one sort of pass that can crack when you decide to break the glass. Another point is, I just want to talk about this, so, look at this piece here. I am going to probably, most likely line this up against this kind of back piece of this glass and cut it out. But, I cannot cut, I cannot break glass with a ninety degree angle like that. Glass doesn't just work that way. That was kind of what I was showing you in some of the drawing before, that some cuts are impossible. So in order to get that piece I'm really going to have to make two breaks. I'm going to have to make one cut all the way across and then this cut or I could do it the other way around. I could make this cut all the way across then break the glass and then from this piece here, make the second cut and then break the glass. I cannot cut a ninety degree, I cannot cut and then stop and then again and break a ninety degree angle. Glass just doesn't work that way."