How To cut diamonds for a French style window using heavily textured glass

January 2007 Cutting Diamonds On Very Rough Glass

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Glass Artists Newsletter - January 2007
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In December we were fortunate to get some photos of panels we completed a few months ago, but hadn't yet been installed.
The design of the panels were based on Greene and Greens architecture which was very popular in the bungalow movement circa 1920's.

You can see them by going to our gallery.

Several times, we've been called upon to produce several pieces of glass in a French pattern with many repeated diamonds in the design. This month, we show detailed instructions on how to cut many uniform diamonds for a window.

Cutting Diamonds On Very Rough Glass

When building French style windows, we need to cut many diamond shaped pieces and it would be tedious to draw around a pattern piece for each one. So we came up with a system for cutting them quickly. When we cut vecchio glass the challenge is even greater because of the roughness of the glass.
	As you can see in this photo, the glass has a lot of texture. It has a rough side, which I turn down for the cutting, but the smooth side has seeds and bubbles in it, so it's tough to get a clean cut.
	I take one diamond pattern piece and lay it out on the sheet of glass so I can get the glass oriented. I want all the pieces to run with the texture going up and down the height of the diamond, so I turn the entire sheet of glass so that the straight line I'll be cutting, lines up with the pattern piece.
	In this photo, I've already cut a few strips and I'm cutting one which runs the length of the sheet of glass. I dip the cutter in oil and run the wheel up and down the glass lightly to spread some of the oil on the surface that I'm going to score.
	I have to hold the glass from slipping with my left hand as I score with the glass cutter using my right hand. I exert more pressure than I do when cutting smooth glass and I try to plow through the spots where the cutter hits a seedy spot and wants to stop.
	Then I grab the glass with both hands and rock them apart to break the entire strip free from the sheet of glass.
	Then I slide the sheet against the strip cutter guide edge on the table to set up for the next strip.
	Once again, I'm able to use my hands to rock the two pieces apart. Many times I use running pliers when breaking strips of glass, but these are wide and the glass is uncooperative.
	This edge cut off leaving a piece that sticks out and I have to score and break off a bit of the corner before I can line the edge of the glass up against the strip cutter guide.
	When I'm done, I have a whole stack of strips.
	I then take the strips, one at a time and cut out diamonds. I take the pattern piece I started out with and line up the glass strip so that I'm cutting the glass at the proper angle and then I draw a line on the workbench using a sharpie marker so I can line up future strips with ease.
	After scoring the diamond, I use the edge of the strip guide as a raised straight edge to snap the glass off.
	And I layout the diamonds on my French design window pattern.