a glass cutting drill bit. You can find them at hardware stores.
Discussion Forum
Discussion Forum
Up Next
Video Shorts
Featured Story
In this interview, Kimberley talks about the importance of proper training, current concrete trends in the Bay Area, and the history of racist housing policy in San Francisco.
Featured Video
Highlights
"I have learned so much thanks to the searchable articles on the FHB website. I can confidently say that I expect to be a life-long subscriber." - M.K.
Replies
What kind of glass doors.
Moder glass doors will have tempered or laminated glass. Most often tempered. And that can't be drilled or cut at all after it have been tempered.
.
Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
Some glass shops can do it; don't know what they do though.Cabinetmaker/college woodworking instructor. Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.
Can we ask....why?
Justin Fink - FHB Editorial
Your Friendly Neighborhood Moderator
LOL You are so tactful! Boring holes in bottles?Some new home construction technique, I'm sure. <G>
"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."
~ Voltaire
My neice asked me to bore a hole in a wine bottle, of course I had to empty it first and after emptying it I felt I could do anything so I said yes I would do it for her. She puts a string of colored xmas tree lights inside. It does look rather nice. After posting this, I went on the web and found out about "soft" glass and "hard glass". The hard glass (tempered) can't be drilled and since I don't really plan on doing any, I'm not worrying about it. They could not tell me how to actually drill the hole and that is the reason I posted the msg. here.
Buy a glass bit from HD or Lowes. Looks like an arrowhead. Drill slowly and with very little pressure. Make a weird scraping/grinding noise. Drill slowly and with very little pressure. If you make a mistake, well there's another full bottle in the house. Drill slowly and with very little pressure. A drill press work very well.
"When asked if you can do something, tell'em "Why certainly I can", then get busy and find a way to do it." T. Roosevelt
There are a few people saying tempered glass can't be drilled....I thought that too, but there are any number of glass shops now saying they can (google for glass shops that can). I don't know how they do it, but they say they can.
I also had someone tell me you can score a circle, fill it with lighter fluid or something like that, ignite it, and then you can drill the hole....we couldn't test it, so I don't know if it works or not.Cabinetmaker/college woodworking instructor. Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.
I have successfully sandblasted holes in glass but it's best to go at it from both sides, as the eroding sides don't go through exactly square. (obviously you can go only one direction with a bottle) Mask well first. Both the glass and your face. I'm not sure if I have done tempered or not . Try a sample first.Edited 12/15/2006 3:19 pm ET by Tom69
Edited 12/15/2006 3:21 pm ET by Tom69
"I also had someone tell me you can score a circle, fill it with lighter fluid or something like that, ignite it, and then you can drill the hole....we couldn't test it, so I don't know if it works or not."Some like that MIGHT work. Don't really know. But if it does what you have done is remove the temper, at least from that section of glass.I did find that place that tempered glass can be drilled, but the probably of sucess is very low."Drilling Tempered Glass - Not RecommendedTempered glass can be drilled, however, breakage may run as high as 80% to 90% depending upon the degree of temper in the glass. We do not recommend trying to drill tempered glass.The manufacturing process of making tempered glass results in the glass having a large amount of stress between various portions of the glass. The stress points might look much like a piece of wood containing lots of "knots", however, there is no outward appearance to indicate the hidden stress. Highly tempered glass will often crack at the stress points near the hole. Since the amount of hidden stress increases with the degree of temper, the success rate of drilling tempered glass reduces with the increase in glass temper.There is no way to know the amount of temper in a piece of tempered glass, so there is no way to evaluate the amount of risk involved in trying to drill it. Therefore, we DO NOT RECOMMEND attempting to drill tempered glass."http://www.diamond-drill-bit-and-tool.com/Diamond-Drill/Default.htm?DD1.htm
.
.
Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
You cannot drill tempered glass. You cannot cut tempered glass.
It is a physical impossibilty. It cannot be done because of the nature of the beast.
Tempering causes a center tension layer and a surrounding compression layer in the glass. When attempting to cut or drill tempered glass you must pierce the temsion layer - and as soon as you do you have a pile of little tiny glass chips on the floor.
Anyone who claims to have cut tempered glass is no doubt being totally honest in their belief - but they are simply mistaken or misinformed about the glass that they cut - the glass that they cut was not tempered.
There is no 80% or 90% "failure rate" in cutting tempered glass. There is a 100% failure rate because tempered glass will ALWAYS break when someone tries to cut it or drill it.
If a glass shop claims to be able to cut or drill tempered glass then that concerns me because that glass shop is unable to tell the difference between tempered glass and non-tempered glass.
Also, there is nothing that a homeowner or glass shop can do to remove the temper from a piece of glass. The only thing that a homeowner or glass shop can do would be to break it.
Edited 12/16/2006 7:13 pm ET by Oberon
Thank you. This subject comes up every once in a while and many folks still don't get it.
For the ones talking about a ~90% failure rate, equivalent to 10% success rate on cutting a piece of tempered glass. Yeah right, that's comforting. Maybe the 10% is the margin of error by the experts in properly identifying a piece as tempered...
you are welcome...and I certainly hope that there are no tempered glass manufacturers working to achieve a 90% success rate(!)
Considering why we temper glass then that would really be a concern...
Edited 12/16/2006 8:45 pm ET by Oberon
http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&p=32277&cat=1,180,42316&ap=1+Use a drill press at slow speed, light pressure, with water from an old cleaning spray bottle to lubricate.
If you do it very slowly you can sometimes melt a hole through a bottle with a propane torch. As it softens, you can take a tool of some sort and twist a hole through the glass. You may experience a substantial number of broken bottles.
I know it works. I did it a few times back around 1973. < G >
"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd."
~ Voltaire
I recently had to drill holes through glass tile to mount an elaborate shower head.
Started the hole with a dremel tool with a little grinding bit. It made an indent enough so the next bit wouldn't walk.
Next I used a masonry bit in a normal drill... not hammer drill. Took a while but it worked and the glass tile did not shatter.
Seen the copper tube and grit also. Try some valve grinding paste .silicon carbide?
You can't bore holes in tempered glass at all. the holes have to be there before the piece is tempered. I've never tried bottles but I've bought glass drilling bits at the harware store.
drill it underwater