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Glass.
This mostly means flat glass, whether decorative or simple plate glass,
but we also get involved with bent glass. Glass blowing and glass
casting we don't normally work with.
Types we work with
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1) Plate glass |
This is by far the most common glass encountered. It is available,
however, in different colors other than the light green of iron-glass.
These colors range from blue to bronze to pink but also include
low-iron glass (a very clear glass with a light bluish tinge or a light
yellow tinge depending on the manufacturer), and water white clear
glass which is optically clear.
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2) Tempered plate glass |
This involves heating then quenching
standard plate glass. This introduces huge stresses into the
glass plate that not only dramatically strengthen it but if the glass
is broken by excessive force or impact it will shatter into small non-lethal
gravelly fragments that are much less likely to injure a person than the large razor-sharp shards into which plate glass breaks. |
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3)
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Laminated Flat Glass
Laminated Bent Glass |
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This is referred to as "safety glass". It's comprised of two or more
panes of plate glass that have been glued together with in
intersticial layer of some high-strength plastic that in the event of
breakage hold the broken glass bits together in the pane. This glue
layer can be manipulated by the manufacturer to produce a sandblasted
appearance.
Laminated glass is how most "bent glass" is produced.
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4) Decorative Glass
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There are many types of decorative plate glasses that have been cast,
ground, colored, or laminated by the manufacturer in order to produce
different visual effects. Bendhiem Glass and FJ Gray Glass are
companies with large selections of proprietary decorative glasses.
These glasses normally can be tempered and bent after acquiring them
from their proprietary suppliers. |
We
cold-work glass only - no glass blowing or glass casting. The only
hot-glass work in which we involve ourselves is glass bending and glass
tempering, both of which we contract
to large industrial firms with big equipment devoted specifically to
these processes. However, we keep ourselves responsible for the
precision and quality to which these are produced in the final work.
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Below are some images of glass work that we've built.
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This is a trophy case built for a private client. It is comprised of
two types of stone, a sandblasted glass pedestal, an etched back
mirror, a mitered glass box, and a mitered glass lid with a stone and
brass top knob. All the glass pane edges were ground to a mitered edge
and adhered together with UV curable optical cement.
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This is a detailed photo of the glass construction of the piece above.
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Not all our glasswork is small. This is an example of large glass work
that we've done. It is a glass wall in a museum. The glass is 1/2"
laminated glass panels with bolt-holes through which grommets and bolts
pass to fasten the glass to vertical structural steel beams behind.
Because glass is transparent all aspects of glass construction are
visible - the holes have to be clean and accurate, the grommets are
visible, the beams behind must be properly finished - there isn't any
aspect of glasswork that can be hidden.
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