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#1
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How to smooth a rough glass edges into a sparkling smooth surface.
Is it possible to cut glass so straight and flat that when you slide the glass in
parallel that you cannot see the seems. I am building a magician's prop and I need to cut glass so that when I slide them pass each other the seems will fit so precisely that they can become invisible. The Japanese have done it. Also, I've separated glass into two pieces and join them temporary and the seems have disappeared. The trick now is to be able to slide them in parallel without showing the seems. This means that to two glass will have to extremely straight and smooth. What kinds of tools can I use to lap the edge of the glass to get it so smooth and flat that the surface of the edge of the glass is as smooth the face of the glass itself? Thanks |
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#2
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How to smooth a rough glass edges into a sparkling smooth surface.
"Sam Nickaby" wrote in message . com... Is it possible to cut glass so straight and flat that when you slide the glass in parallel that you cannot see the seems. I am building a magician's prop and I need to cut glass so that when I slide them pass each other the seems will fit so precisely that they can become invisible. The Japanese have done it. Also, I've separated glass into two pieces and join them temporary and the seems have disappeared. The trick now is to be able to slide them in parallel without showing the seems. This means that to two glass will have to extremely straight and smooth. What kinds of tools can I use to lap the edge of the glass to get it so smooth and flat that the surface of the edge of the glass is as smooth the face of the glass itself? Thanks Lots of variables here. How big are the pieces? How thick is the glass? Just POG (plain old glass)? No patterns or textures? Clear in color? This glass has to sit edge to edge in a vertical position and the top piece has to slide on the bottom pieces' top edge? If you are talking about pieces of glass that is the size of your hand, there are several people on this glass forum who do beveling and could do it for you. Any bigger, and I think you'd better be looking for someone who bevels mirrors or table tops. It is possible to grind the edges of glass perfectly straight..well, within reasonable tolerances, (a few .001"), and to polish those edges as smooth as the face of the glass. However, it seems to me that the edges would have to have some small radius to them, otherwise you'd be succeptible to chipping the edges and/or cutting yourself. And that small radius might be visible, even if it were polished, too. Any chance you could post a link to a photo of this prop? |
#3
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How to smooth a rough glass edges into a sparkling smooth surface.
"Sam Nickaby" wrote in message . com... Is it possible to cut glass so straight and flat that when you slide the glass in parallel that you cannot see the seems. Then he said --- The Japanese have done it. So the answer must be, "Yes, it is possible." What kinds of tools can I use to lap the edge of the glass to get it so smooth and flat that the surface of the edge of the glass is as smooth the face of the glass itself? It's called a "flat lap", and if you have to do it by hand, you'll regret trying. First, you'll need a lap plate at least as wide as the length of the edge you're lapping. Second, you'll need to perfect the skill of using Newtonian Ring patterns to determine flatness (which will be very hard, since you're looking through the whole width of the glass). Then, of course, unless you're grinding two flats to one-another, you'll need a standard flat against which to gauge yours. This doesn't sound like a fun exercise. I've ground flats for diagonal mirrors for telescopes -- it's a jitsy, itchy, long, frustrating process until you're quite skilled at it. Grinding a couple of flats won't get you up to "skilled", just down to "very frustrated". And you'll never make the seam disappear entirely. LLoyd |
#4
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How to smooth a rough glass edges into a sparkling smooth surface.
Sam Nickaby wrote: Is it possible to cut glass so straight and flat that when you slide the glass in parallel that you cannot see the seems. I am building a magician's prop and I need to cut glass so that when I slide them pass each other the seems will fit so precisely that they can become invisible. The Japanese have done it. Also, I've separated glass into two pieces and join them temporary and the seems have disappeared. The trick now is to be able to slide them in parallel without showing the seems. This means that to two glass will have to extremely straight and smooth. What kinds of tools can I use to lap the edge of the glass to get it so smooth and flat that the surface of the edge of the glass is as smooth the face of the glass itself? Thanks The 2 pieces will have to fit together so well that there will be no gap, and therefore no air in the gap to cause reflection and refraction. For a sliding surface, that level of straightness will have to be maintained for the length of the seam. Perhaps you can lap the 2 pieces against each other? D |
#5
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How to smooth a rough glass edges into a sparkling smooth surface.
wrote: The 2 pieces will have to fit together so well that there will be no gap, and therefore no air in the gap to cause reflection and refraction. (clip) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ How about introducing a drop of liquid with the same index of refraction as the glass? |
#6
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How to smooth a rough glass edges into a sparkling smooth surface.
Sam
Not sure I understand what you are doing but the usual method that optics people use to hide interfaces is oil/glue of the same refractive index as the glass. Doesn't take much if you are using float glass, since it's already nearly perfectly flat. Mineralogists use oil to measure refractive indexes so you might ask around in that part of the web. Water works pretty well for a lot of applications, like the old disappearing quarter illusion where the glass circle sticks to the bottom of the glass by surface tension and is virtually invisible. I'd try it first, since it's cheap and readily available. If you're not doing close up work, you can be a lot less picky. A couple feet of distance will hide a lot of mismatches. A few distracting parallels will help hid things too. The eye tends to ignore repeating patterns (probably part of our rodent ancestors filtering out the leaves to see the predators), so you can hide a join in plain sight if it's part of a pattern. Sounds like an interesting project. Jim |
#7
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How to smooth a rough glass edges into a sparkling smooth surface.
Take it from a guy that does optical glass work that you'll never get a fit
good enough that you won't see the gap except at a very narrow angle. However, you can put some oil, cooking oil or such, on the joint and it will go away on you real easy. You don't need much oil to do the job if your glass is good and flat but you can't touch that surface with anything else or you will wick up some of the oil and thus have a problem You do need to grind and polish the edges flat to at least 1/4 wave of flat and parallel to each other or the effect may not happen. You also need to keep the corners of the edges as square as you can which means that you're going to have to handle those edges very carefully as any chips will happen with a mild touch with something hard and the chips will show badly if not destroy the glass. Don't even plan on hand edging the glass but rather do it on a machine so that the long length will be flat. I'll note that large diameter flats (6" and larger) tend to be rather expensive as they are flat over the whole area and you're going to be even more expensive because the work won't be common work that is done by the shop. You might want to specify that they do a dozen of them at a time which will bring the cost of each piece down by that amount. Also note that an optical shop will normally chamfer an edge so you will have to specify that the edges be fully sharp and this will be helped by doing a bunch of the surfaces together. -- Why do penguins walk so far to get to their nesting grounds? |
#8
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How to smooth a rough glass edges into a sparkling smooth surface.
"Sam Nickaby" wrote in message . com... Is it possible to cut glass so straight and flat that when you slide the glass in parallel that you cannot see the seems. I am building a magician's prop and I need to cut glass so that when I slide them pass each other the seems will fit so precisely that they can become invisible. The Japanese have done it. Also, I've separated glass into two pieces and join them temporary and the seems have disappeared. The trick now is to be able to slide them in parallel without showing the seems. This means that to two glass will have to extremely straight and smooth. What kinds of tools can I use to lap the edge of the glass to get it so smooth and flat that the surface of the edge of the glass is as smooth the face of the glass itself? Thanks Ahh this is a much bigger trick than the trick you'll be using this for is my guess. -- JK Sinrod www.SinrodStudios.com www.MyConeyIslandMemories.com |
#9
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How to smooth a rough glass edges into a sparkling smooth surface.
"glassman" wrote in message ... "Sam Nickaby" wrote in message . com... Is it possible to cut glass so straight and flat that when you slide the glass in parallel that you cannot see the seems. I am building a magician's prop and I need to cut glass so that when I slide them pass each other the seems will fit so precisely that they can become invisible. The Japanese have done it. Also, I've separated glass into two pieces and join them temporary and the seems have disappeared. The trick now is to be able to slide them in parallel without showing the seems. This means that to two glass will have to extremely straight and smooth. What kinds of tools can I use to lap the edge of the glass to get it so smooth and flat that the surface of the edge of the glass is as smooth the face of the glass itself? Thanks Ahh this is a much bigger trick than the trick you'll be using this for is my guess. -- I'm thinking I know somebody who is just itching to sell this guy a wet belt sander. Wouldn't that do the trick? :) |
#10
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How to smooth a rough glass edges into a sparkling smooth surface.
One trick from woodworking (or somewhere... I can't recall where it is
that I used this) is to grind the two pieces against each other. No need for a reference "straight" piece -- the two will self-correct for any non-straightness. But it sounds like that would be awfully hard to do with glass by hand. |
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