What's so hard about window shades?

[markba633csi]

Clowns belong in the circus, or so I thought

 

[WobblyHand]

Clowns belong in the circus, or so I thought

Sad to say, they are everywhere!

 

[rabler]

Have a 172 YRO house, so replacing windows would be a major issue, since there's 23 double hung windows with 1/2" muntins. These windows and muntins were hand made (in 1851 and in 1876). And yes, I'm in a historic district so I need to deal with that.

Yeah, we had a house in Atlanta with alternating triangular panes with wooden muntins, made in the 1920's, that became a historic district while we were there, so the windows couldn't be replaced, but they were casement windows so you could open them all up for quite a nice breeze through the house. We actually cleaned and stripped one frame but that took so long we just left the rest alone after freeing them up to open, they had been painted shut.

There was a time when every corner hardware store would cut glass to size too. Now a thing of the past.

 

[WobblyHand]

Yeah, we had a house in Atlanta with alternating triangular panes with wooden muntins, made in the 1920's, that became a historic district while we were there, so the windows couldn't be replaced, but they were casement windows so you could open them all up for quite a nice breeze through the house. We actually cleaned and stripped one frame but that took so long we just left the rest alone after freeing them up to open, they had been painted shut.

There was a time when every corner hardware store would cut glass to size too. Now a thing of the past.

I don't know what the big deal is with cutting glass, most of the time it's easy. (Not always!) Remember going into a heating supply store for a replacement glass sight tube for our steam boiler, and the guy asking me if I needed it trimmed to size. I said no, I'll cut it myself, and he looked at me like I was about to be fatally injured. (I had never even measured the actual length I needed, since I was planning to cut to length.)

Learned about cutting tubing in high school chemistry class, we had to make our own lab equipment, so we had to learn to cut and bend glass tubing. Just scratch the tube with a file where you want the break, and simply snap the glass at the scratch. Never had a failure or bad break. I asked the guy in the heating supply place how they do it, and he showed me all sorts of stuff/paraphernalia they used. I suppose if you have to do it a lot, there's a chance of stuff going wrong. I just make the scratch and put on some leather gloves and safety glasses. It's a snap, nothing to be scared of. If I recall correctly, you put the scratch side away from you, and your thumbs where you want the break and just push with your thumbs and pull with your hands. Works on 1/4" and 5/8" glass tubing just the same. You do need to have enough to hold onto, however, so it's tough to fix if you are 1/2" too long.

 

[rabler]

You do need to have enough to hold onto, however, so it's tough to fix if you are 1/2" too long.

A belt sander or belt grinder works to trim glass, obviously with some basic safety precautions. I've had to use that technique for making site glass windows of odd sizes for older machines.