I know of only one person who has tried to drill a hole in tempered
glass.
He used a wood dowel or w piece of tubing (I forget which) in a drill
press. Made a dam of clay to hold a cutting lubricant and used an
abrasive paste for the actual cutting/abrading. Just as the hole was
almost finished ... BAM - the glass shatters in a million pieces.
He figured he did something wrong and repeated it again, only this time
slower .... BAM a million pieces.
On the other hand I recently ordered a piece of tempered glass with a
hole cut in it. The local glass shop ordered for me and delivered it
four days later. I did not ask if the hole was cut before or after
tempering. But a local glass shop may be able to give you some info.
As I recall, the safety aspect of tempered glass is derived by
pre-stressing the glass so that if it breaks it breaks into pebble
sized pieces. These stresses do not allow drilling or cutting tempered
galss.
-Roger
On Friday, August 29, 2003, at 07:20 PM, Dan Eiland wrote:
> Hi Listers,
>
> Is it possible to drill a hole through tempered glass without damaging
> the
> glass? I have been told by two local firms that it is not possible,
> but a
> company in the UK says they know people who have done it but they do
> not
> know how. I have seen some diamond blade hole saws made for drilling
> through
> glass. If I used lots of water or cutting oil do you think it would be
> possible to drill two 1/2" holes through my door glass without
> exploding the
> glass into a million pieces? The alternative is to remove some spot
> welds
> holding the "C" channel onto the bottom of my existing door glass so I
> can
> weld on the "C" channel that was mounted to the bottom of the glass
> from my
> new doors. If you are wondering what I am doing that requires this
> conversion, I am switching my JH doors for GT doors. The glass is
> almost the
> same but there are just enough differences that I need to adapt my JH
> windows to fit the GT doors. I am hoping some of my friends between the
> three lists will be able to give me enough information to at least
> keep me
> out of trouble, and if I am lucky I will find a way to make this all
> work.
> Thanks in advance for any comments.
>
> Dan Eiland
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