Tips for cutting glass for picture frames

Glass cutting really is easy

One main function of picture framing that tends to give people problems is cutting glass. Everything you hear from people who know about glass cutting is that it's easy, why can't everybody do it?

There are just a few basic things to know to make glass cutting hassle free and works every time.

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Clean for easy glass cutting

Clean glass breaks easily and just where you want it to, but a little bit of dirt can cause a little break in the score and let the break take off for the north forty.

Glass cutter

Make sure that your Glass Cutter is fairly new and reasonably sharp. The cutter doesn't cut in the sense that a knife or a saw cuts something. A glass cutter actually scores the glass along a line of molecules, so it will break in a desired place, so the sharper the cutter is, the finer the score will be and the more likely that the glass will break where you want it to.

Lubricate your glass cutter. Any kind of oil will work fine. Sewing machine oil, motor oil, kerosene or stove oil will do the job.

Use a straight edge that you can control, so that it won't move at all while you're scoring the glass.

Make one and only one score from start to finish without stops or hesitations and break the glass immediately after you score it.

Making the glass cutting break

There are many ways you can make the break. You can slide a pencil or other similar item under the score and press on both sides. You can hold the glass over the edge of a table with the score right at the tables edge and while holding firmly down on the glass on the table, apply pressure on the overhanging part. You can hold the glass with a pinching action with a hand on each side of the score and apply a bending pressure with both hands, or any other innovative method that makes it break where it's supposed to. Another method is to hang the score over the edge of the table and while holding the piece that's hanging over give a good tap on the underside with the ball of the cutter, exactly under the score. If you're lucky there will be a good clean break, but generally you will need to tap the whole distance under the score and the break will be somewhat uneven.

Glass cutting pliers

Glass Cutting Pliers are a good idea for cutting very narrow strips.

Why glass breaks where it does

Now the nitty gritty of why the glass breaks where it does and the single bit of knowledge that helped me to cut thousands of pieces of picture frame glass with never a hitch or waste. Vibrating Molecules. When you score the glass with the glass cutter it sets up a vibration of molecules that is very narrow throughout the thickness of the glass and it breaks at that vibrating line. That's the importance of the single score, because if you made two scores, although the straight edge didn't move the molecules are so skinny that it would be virtually impossible to score over the same line of molecules twice and since you would have two vibrating lines with an infinitesimal line between, the break may try to jump from one line to the other and take off for who knows where.

Bad glass cutter, bad cut

If your glass cutter is old and dull it can make the vibrating line too wide and can cause a hootchy kootchy conga line back and forth until it gets unruly and breaks out of the vibrating line and goes cross country.

A damaged glass cutter can cause problems too, for instance a chipped cutter can cause a skip in the vibrating line and the break doesn't know where to go, so it could end up going in any direction.

Strike while the molecules vibrate

The score doesn't weaken the glass at all, it just sets up the vibration of molecules, so if you score a piece of glass and the phone rings or there's a distraction of some other sort and you leave the scored glass unbroken, when you get back to it, if the molecules have quit vibrating the glass will break wherever it darn well pleases instead of along the neat and well planned score.

Old glass can be very temperamental, so be sure that it's cleaned extra good and treat it extra careful.

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