Heath's Woodworking Projects

[JPG]

. . .

Now I don't know what to do.

Just ignore the 'Naysayers'!:D

[dusty]

Just ignore the 'Naysayers'!:D

These folks are not natsayers. They are people with good, constructive comments and space balls. Capisce ?

[horologist]

All,

Beautiful doors. I'm glad you guys have access to good glass cutters. I will spare you my tales of woe from Ft. Myers to Tallahassee. There is one guy in the Tampa area that specializes in beveled glass for clocks, he does good work. All other "professional" glass shops I have tried have been somewhat worse than useless. The Lowes in Gainesville is pretty good as long as you get the right guy cutting the glass. One gets it close, the other will be off by 1/4"

Clearly I'm in the minority on the cut before or after debate. Truth is there are times when one has advantages over the other and I have used both methods. The only way to really get in trouble is to make black and white rules for everything.

Troy

[JPG]

These folks are not natsayers. They are people with good, constructive comments and space balls. Capisce ?

Si Senõr! They were not 'naying' all the time!

[swampgator]

Someone commented about sanding or trimming the glass to make it fit. After reworking many old wooden windows, often I break the top pane and have to take it to a local glass company, not a Lowe's or HD. They will look at the broken glass and ask the size of the opening. The size is where the glass actually seats. One time I gave the wrong size as they like to cut it with 1/16" in all around. One corner of the glass was not broken straight. So I thought that I could use a mill file and correct it. Took hours. I called the glass company about adjusting it and they volunteered to do it. They used a coarse grit sanding paper and kept the glass cool by spraying water on it. If it overheated, it would simply crack. I could have just chiseled a place in the window sash for it to fit, but I didn't have any chisels at that time. Now, if I get a piece of glass that has a defective cut, I use a chisel to adjust the wood.

One trick that I have learned to put glass in dados is to use a tube of clear silicon and squeeze out strings onto wax paper. After it dries, peal the silicone from the wax paper and cut into lengths about 3/4" long. These work as well as spacer balls. They are durable and insert them into the groove, dado or as silencers in rabbets.

I'll not get into the mix about which is the better time to get the glass cut as I think it depends on the project.

[heathicus]

Back to the task at hand. I didn't get this project finished in time for Mother's Day so I had to give her an IOU. I'm going to try to get them done by this weekend, but I don't know if I can do it as we're having a graduation party for my sister-in-law at hour house this Saturday and we still have a ton of stuff to do to prepare for that. But, I digress...

I got the glass (THANKS MickyD!!!) late last week. It was already cut to width so I started cutting it to length a couple days ago. I made a jig that would hold the glass in place and I could use spacers to set the straight edge that guides the glass cutter.



I miscalculated something and my glass came out about 3/16" longer than the plans called for. Good thing I cut the glass before cutting my wood to length! All I have to do is just adjust how long I cut the stiles and where I cut the half lap joints for the rails. That's a point for the "cut the glass first" argument.

I had already cut the rails and stiles to thickness and width. To get an idea of how everything would fit together, I mocked up one side of the stiles along with how the adjacent sides would mate. I laid the stiles flat and set a piece of glass on top of them. I propped the mating stiles (for what will be the adjacent sides) on top of the first set of stiles with the outside edges flush. Then I fit in another small piece of scrap glass on edge between the flat piece of glass and one of the side stiles. This was to test the fit of the glass as described in MickyD's attached PDF in post #32 of this thread. I'm not sure if my explanation made much sense, so here's a graphic to hopefully confuse you even further.

[ATTACH]8832[/ATTACH]

A note about the above image: I did this in Paint Shop Pro, not SketchUp, so there is no 3D view. It's just a flat view as I was looking down on it as laid out on my workbench. This represents viewing the INSIDE of one side of the lantern and how the pieces fit together. I didn't take time to make sure everything was to scale. The rails are not part of the drawing.

Fitting the parts together like this revealed a problem. The glass barely overlaps the stile on one side if assembled according to MickyD's image. Here is a closer view of the lower right corner of the piece of glass from the above image.

[ATTACH]8833[/ATTACH]

If I had the glass before cutting my stiles to width, I might have been able to check this and make the stiles a little wider to compensate. But I just don't like this fit. There's just too little overlap on one side of the glass and I fear it would come out too easy and make assembly difficult. So what I did was run the stiles through my planer again taking off about 1/16" from the thickness (leaving the width alone). This allowed me to move the stiles closer together giving me more room for the glass to overlap the stile. In the image below, all I did was make the adjacent mating stiles a little thinner, then move everything back together to fit, just as I did with the real wood.

[ATTACH]8834[/ATTACH]

Another point for the "having the glass first" argument. I can't make the glass thinner. I don't even want to think about trying to shave 1/16" off the width of the glass. But so far, I've been successfully working the wood to fit the glass instead of working the glass to fit the wood.

[mickyd]

Back to the task at hand. I didn't ......

If I had the glass before cutting my stiles to width, I might have been able to check this and make the stiles a little wider to compensate. But I just don't like this fit. There's just too little overlap on one side of the glass and I fear it would come out too easy and make assembly difficult. So what I did was run the stiles through my planer again taking off about 1/16" from the thickness (leaving the width alone). This allowed me to move the stiles closer together giving me more room for the glass to overlap the stile. In the image below, all I did was make the adjacent mating stiles a little thinner, then move everything back together to fit, just as I did with the real wood.

[ATTACH]8834[/ATTACH]

Another point for the "having the glass first" argument. I can't make the glass thinner. I don't even want to think about trying to shave 1/16" off the width of the glass. But so far, I've been successfully working the wood to fit the glass instead of working the glass to fit the wood.

If my brain is working right (and there is absolutely NO GAURANTEE there!!), reducing the stile thickess will not move the stiles closer together. That's a function of the 1/2" laps on the ends of the rails. Sketch out a top view and you'll see what I mean. I'll look at it closer at noon.

Also, made to spec, the glass should extend past the stile edges by 3/16" which is plenty.

[heathicus]

If my brain is working right (and there is absolutely NO GAURANTEE there!!), reducing the stile thickess will not move the stiles closer together. That's a function of the 1/2" laps on the ends of the rails. Sketch out a top view and you'll see what I mean. I'll look at it closer at noon.

The outside to outside measurement of the the stiles are dictated by the the thickness of the mating stiles, plus the width of the glass, plus the thickness of the glass on the adjacent side. The rail lengths (and their joints) should be cut to fit that measurement. The glass can't be made thinner or narrower (well, it could be, but with more difficulty). So the only measurement that can be adjusted is the thickness of the mating stiles.

I'll see what I can do in Sketchup later to illustrate my point. Maybe I'm just not explaining it well.

Also, made to spec, the glass should extend past the stile edges by 3/16" which is plenty.

I barely had 1/16" of the glass past the stile edge. After taking a smidgen over 1/16" off the thickness of the stiles, I had right at 3/16".

[heathicus]

Ok, here's the quick Sketchup I did. End view of the stiles on two corners and two panes of glass. Done very quick, NOT to scale or using accurate measurements.

The "before" picture. The horizontal pane of glass barely fits on the stile on the left.

[ATTACH]8837[/ATTACH]

The "after" picture. I did not change anything about the glass. All I did was make the stiles a little thinner (I did not change the width), then put everything back together.

[ATTACH]8839[/ATTACH]

Now, the glass has more room to overlap the stile on the left.

[tom_k/mo]

Very good resolution Heath. As they say:

There's always more than one way to skin a cat... (and the cat doesn't like ANY of them)