Making holes

If you mean to make a small hole to pass a chain through to use the ornament as a pendant/slide then layer a small strip of 1/8" fiber paper between your layers of glass.

Drill it with a Dremmel type tool and a glass bit. Put about a 1/4" of water in a pan with some paper towels. Set the glass on top of the towels so that it is barely submerged. Takes less than a minute.

Drill wet with a small diamond bit in a Dremel - wet means using clay to make a dam to hold water. Buy a standard small diamond glass drill to use in a slower speed drill.

Buy a cheap drill press from the home center. Buy a center feed chuck from HIS or CRL. Buy a small sintered core drill from Amazing Glazing (CRL).

This is the cheapest and also best system. One core drill with a center feed chuck will last many thousands of holes. A plated drill in a bath will last a couple dozen, tops. Use a GFCI and BE CAREFUL. You can take off a finger or hand doing this. Go slowly, and lift the drill to let in water often.

I'd like to know what you mean by "center feed chuck"; I've never seen this phrase before, and it is unknown to Google too. It would also be nice to know what is referred to by "HIS" and "CRL". When I Google "Amazing Glazing" I get a bunch of window installers in the United Kingdom.

A center feed chuck can be purchased from CR Lawrence (crl) --which company BTW every glass maker should familiarize themselves with. They are probably the largest supplier of tools and supplies for the glazing Industry. HIS glassworks is familiar to most folks in art glass, Bob Stephan's company in North Carolina supplies all manner of coldworking supplies.

A center feed drill chuck is made for use with Belgian style (threaded)core drills and supplies water to the interior space of the core drill while drilling, similar to expensive drilling machines. It has a hose barb and valve on the side, and watertight bearings. I have drilled many holes in many ways and this is by far the best system for small studio use. The center feed chuck is about $150.00. Amazing glazing is a division of CRL.

PS. here's a link to to HIS:

I appreciate your very prompt response to my questions. C.R. Laurence appears to be a large industrial-oriented company that prefers to deal with companies rather than individuals. I am familiar with hisglassworks.com but didn't recognize it in the "HIS" reference. I see now what you mean by the phrase "center feed chuck" is a drill chuck with a water-cooled jacket. Kingsley North in Michigan used to sell those; they are not particularly inexpensive. For a small-time operation, it might be a bit cheaper and safer to go with a battery-powered Dremel and an ordinary core drill. For more precision, Dremel offers a small drill press which can be used with the battery powered tool if you order the adapter parts from Dremel (the drill press is advertised as being for Dremels powered by line current). Of course battery power means you don't need a ground fault circuit interruptor (GFCI) and I would think a small Dremel would be a lot less likely to "take off a finger or hand" too. Then again, if "Kelly in FL" needs to turn out hundreds and hundreds of drilled pieces then probably it would be worth it and would make sense to get a drill press, the water-cooled chuck and the Belgian type threaded core drills to go with it. I see that CRL offers a ninety-degree beveling bit that I might have a use for; thanks again for the prompt response.

Actually, it isn't a "water cooled jacket", it is a swivel connector so that water is actually fed into the center of the drill so it flows out at the bottom at the cutting edge. My real problem with this suggestion, although I haven't gone and looked, is the small size the originally questioner needs to install a hanger, perhaps 1/8" or 3/16". Do hollow core bits come this small for the system?

Yes they do. My catalogs are at my other studio but I looked this up for a friend a few months back. They go down to at least 1/8", and smaller as I recall. The life of the smaller core drills is of course shorter than the larger sizes, but still hundreds if not thousands of times longer than a solid plated diamond drill. Also, I would disagree with Bob Stephan on his site when he says you must use the center feed with a core drill. I used core drills for many years in a bath, and then with a water jet. I agree though they work vastly better with the center feed system. The problem was when I went to the center feed I had to switch over to belgians which cost more than anything else. But its a testament to plated core drills that I have never thrown one out, some of those shank style drills that I have are ten years old now and have drilled thousands of holes. The main trick is learning how to dress them right which I had to figure out.

Thank you! I have a dremmel and will use the clay idea to keep the hole area wet. Kelly