tempered, beveled glass engraving

[Bill Cunningham]

The TV show called 'Time Warp' (they use ultra high speed photography to see things that would otherwise not be seen) did a experiment using tempered glass. If you strike it of course, it will go into a million pieces. But... if you protect the edges so it gets little expansion room to shatter, it will shatter, but stay completely together.. They took a piece about 2' x 4' and ran a band of Duct Tape (the handyman's secret weapon) around the outside edge, folding it over the glass. This keeps the edges from expanding. They then took a center punch and dinged a edge through the duct tape. the glass shattered into a million pieces that ALL stayed together. They then used this shattered mosaic as the glass top of a coffee table. As long as the tape stays on, the glass will stay together, and stay solid.. Not really laser related, but a unexpected side effect of tempered glass .. It wouldn't surprise me if this experiment has already been posted on youtube..

[Dan Hintz]

That explains why, when an old friend (accidentally) shot his parents' sliding glass door with a BB gun, the glass didn't explode out of the casing. It did continue to crackle into smaller and smaller pieces throughout the rest of the night, though (or so I understand). After it happened we kept hearing this <crinkle crinkle> sound, but it took us an hour to finally realize what had happened and what we were hearing.

Interesting...

[Bill Cunningham]

Yup.. and if they didn't punch it out, that unique decorative bb created door probably held together for years..

"Daisy... Keeping kids off your lawn for over a hundred years"

[Jack Harper]

The TV show called 'Time Warp' ...

Speaking of that show, if you watch the intro you will see them pouring all sorts of things through a cut out of the TIME WARD text along with the words exploding from cast explosives. We did all the mold and template cutting for that project. Kind of neat to see your work on TV.

[Bill Cunningham]

Ya! It's cool when you see work you've done on display someplace.. So far, I've had stuff on the T.V. show "Rich Bride Poor Bride", and one of my engraving jobs is in the Carillon of the Washington National Cathedral.. and believe me, THAT was a complete surprise..