Update: I was scoring glass wrong for years and didn't know it

I was working on a big custom shower door in a Denver remodel last month, cutting a 3/4 inch thick piece of tempered. My cuts kept chipping at the edge, no matter how light I went. The homeowner, an old woodworker, watched me for a minute and said, 'You're pushing that cutter like you're mad at it.' He was right. I was using way too much pressure. I switched to just the weight of the tool and the next piece snapped clean. How many of you had to unlearn heavy scoring?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_grace29d ago

My buddy who does auto glass had the same thing happen with a windshield. He was leaning into the cut and getting a ragged line every time. A more experienced guy showed him the light touch, and it was like a totally different tool. Sometimes you just get stuck in a bad habit without realizing.

drew5528d ago

Yeah, and it's not just pressure. The angle of the cutter head is huge too. Like @the_grace said, a light touch is key, but if you're holding the tool tilted way over, you're only using one corner of the wheel. It'll skate and chatter. You want it almost straight up and down, so the whole wheel bites evenly. I see people death-gripping it at a 45 degree angle and they just can't figure out why their score is so weak.

wesley_adams29d ago

That's a great point about pressure. It makes me wonder, what other basic steps do people mess up because they learned it wrong the first time? Like, is there a common mistake with how you hold the cutter, or maybe even the angle you run it at? Getting the pressure right seems like step one, but I bet there's more to it.