Advice, Help & Suggestions Please!

take a class at your local community center, community college, or at a local stained glass retailer. you'll find out if you like it, and how to do it, pretty quickly.

A class is a good idea. You will find that drilling holes is more of a problem than cutting glass and tuning the glass to make a pleasant set of tones is more so.

I don't know how durable glass wind chimes would be. Of course, that's part of the appeal of a hobby--the chance to design something yourself and see how it works.

Cutting glass is not hard. Cutting it without waste is harder. I'd try cutting a bunch of ordinary window glass before trying with the colored stuff--it can have textures and things that make it harder to cut.

A class isn't a bad idea, either. Many community colleges have good programs in things like this. Good luck.

Mike Beede

try a local framing shop. they usually love to get rid of scrap glass. Also, your local stained glass supplier probably sells scrap which will work for chimes. cutting stained glass is different than plate due to grain, etc. But it's a good place to start. You will need running pliers and a good (carbide) cutter. i prefer a pistol grip version. The drilling will be more problematic than the cutting i believe you will find. You need diamond drill bits and need to drill under water. m

On a slightly related note, I recall reading in some book sometime in the past (maybe in connection with cutting pieces of glass to make a secondary mirror for a telescope) that you could carefully cut *thin* pieces of glass under water using regular scissors without it shattering uncontrollably. I believe the offered reason involved the water cushioning the glass from violent vibrations that propagate during the cutting and lead to uncontrolled breakage, or something like that. (I also don't recall whether you were supposed to score the glass before doing this or not, though I don't imagine that that would hurt....)

Anybody here know if this is true?...I never bothered to try it, myself.

Of course, if it doesn't work, at least with the glass being under water, you wouldn't be able to

-Gene

yes it works, but not very well nor can you cut accurately. the scissor starts an edge fracture and it just runs in some direction.