How to Cut Stained Glass

Video Transcript

"I'm going to demonstrate for you, how to cut glass. I use a carbide swiveling head glass cutter, I place my glass cutter on the surface of the glass that is smoothest to me. After dipping it in some oil, even though I do have an oil reservoir, I press down, listen to the sink. I press down till I get to the very end, if you don't have control and you go off, that's o.k. I'm going to use for this particular breaking plier, a running plier, which I just squeeze. And because it has equal leverage on both sides of the score line, it just breaks it very, very easily. I'm next going to show you, what it's like to cut a piece of opalescent glass which has white in it. You can't see through, it's great glass for lamp making and a lot of people use pattern cutting when they're cutting this glass. Again, it still sinks, and to break this glass, I'm going to turn it around to the edge and I'm going to use my flat pliers. And again, just break it very easily. One of the questions I often get is about cutting textured glass. Well, this is pretty textured and the thing about textured glass is, number one, don't be afraid of it. Number two, what you want to do is just let your glass glide over the texture and take every little lump. Now it gets, see I'm holding the glass with my little finger. It sometimes gets difficult to follow a pattern, so again, often times people prefer pattern cutting when they're doing this type of glass breaking. But it too, is a very successful cut. A lot of it has to do with how comfortable you are, not pressing too hard and the amount of oil that you use. Let me just show that to you one more time. This time I'm holding the piece of glass with my left hand, I'm going for a straight cut, and I'm going to use my flat pliers, and a perfect cut every time."