HELP: mounting beveled glass in doors

Hello....I hope someone can give me some sensible advice here.

I have 4 older (80 years old or so) roughly 20x30 inch beveled glass windows that we removed from an older home we owned with the intention of installing them into a new home we built 15 years ago. I am finally getting around to installing these.

When we removed them from the old home, they were in an exterior wall seperating the home interior and the front porch of the house. After many years of getting very warm in the summers on the front facing porch, the heavy bevels were sagging a great deal on the bottom -- up to 1 inch out of the plane of the glass. We removed them very carefully an brought them into a stained glass specialist for repair. These folks "flattened" the glass, repairing some of the caming, and then they "wrapped" the perimeter of the sheets with additional came, kind of an I-beam shape on the cross-section, which helped stabilize the whole perimeter.

We havent had a place to use these until now. We are building a corner gas fireplace into our walkout lower level of our home. We intend to flank the fireplace with two bookcase style units on either side, about 33 inches wide. I would like to build doors to cover the bookcase units, and I would use the beveled glass panes in the doors. The panes are gorgeous (at least they were in the old house), particularly when backlit, which I intend to do from the cases.

Questions:

1) do you think I should "sandwich" the beveled glass between two sheets of clear glass, to ease cleaning and to protect against sagging? 2) if I do this, should I use tempered glass, or do you think window glass would suffice? 3) these glass panels are heavy, and will be moreso if i do any "sandwiching"; how heavy should I construct the oak frame around the panes? I am planning on using 1X3 and might layer it in 3 courses for 2 1/4 thickness. Is that adequate? Is it overkill? 4) what kind of corner joint should I use to prevent sagging of the frame? If I alternately layer 3 1X3s and maybe drill/screw/plug the corners and glue them with Gorilla glue, will that be adequate? 5) should I use any kind of "pad" inside the frames to float the glass a bit?

Any other thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks,

Tim (remove "DoesntWantSpam" from my email address to respond by email)

Reply to
Tim
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Tim,

in reply and by the numbers, (1) No, don't do it, it won't do either well (2) No, see (1) (3) Overkill, but so is using 30 wide X 20 tall beveled panels, see exceptions below (4) Mortise and Tenon is pretty darn strong, 1" thick wood with a 1/2 x 1/2 rabbet out of the back for glass (5) Why? Just don't make it a "press fit", give the glass somewhere to go when the wood swells in the summer.

Exceptions: If these are full bevel panels, they do have some weight, but nothing good oak can't handle, what I find strange is that with a bookcase full of books, the bevels will be an after thought in appearance. All that bevel work will be lost with all the titles. Do a test "look" first. By the way, there are a great many bookcases out there with beveled glass doors, yours is just a larger size and in opposite dimension. If the leading is firm and strong, you should have no bowing, and when dust gets between dual panes it is worse than anything else to clean. and with an older panel the dust will happen because of the older putty.

Reply to
Javahut

Java,

Thanks, good advice. A couple of clarifications:

1) the panes are 20W by 30H. they are complementary when laid end to end in opposite directions, so the finished doors, each flanking one side of the fireplace, would be 20W by 60H, plus the frames. they should look very good

2) i plan to backlight the inside to the bookshelves, probably with white rope lights right inside of the face frame. the whole cabinet should light up

i appreciate any other thoughts you or anyone else can contribute

thanks,

Tim

cross-section,

Reply to
Tim

Guess I was confused, I read " We intend to flank the fireplace with two bookcase style units on either side, about 33 inches wide." When you said either side, I was thinking one panel on each side laid 33 in. wide.

When backlit, bevels are best with the light at more of a distance, but you know what, if this is the only place you have to use them, I would do it. But you don't need to go crazy on the wood if you make good joints, (I like Mortise and Tenon), and don't make the opening for glass too tight to the glass.

Reply to
Javahut

Thanks again for your advice Java.....In our old house, at the right time of the day, these caught the sun and my gosh it was glorious! The light refracted and there were prisms cast all over the room. Its kind of a shame not to put them back into that kind of service.

Reply to
Tim

I doubt you will get the 'rainbow effect' if you install the bevels in a bookcase door! Can't you use the panels in or near a window so the sunlight can catch it?

Reply to
Elizabeth in UK

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