Restoring Wood-burning Stove Glass and Fireplace Insert Glass to Perfect Clarity - Redux
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- Опубліковано 1 жов 2024
- A heavily damaged ceramic glass window, from a wood burning fireplace insert, is cleaned and polished with cerium oxide to restore its clarity to a like-new condition.
Thanks so much. Just used your method on badly etched glass and worked fine. It does take time. Lots of time. Tip: Once the polish pad is loaded with the cerium oxide, just add water to glass to release paste again. You can keep doing that many times without addind add'l powder. Did I mention it takes quite a while to get clear glass again?
Yeah. You just have to settle in for 20 minutes of... yawn .. slow going. New glass is $200 - probably $250 now - so it's worth it to me.
With the exception of finding a better pad material ???, I don't think there is a better way. I was always frustrated when people would indignantly tell me I could just wipe off the haze with wet newspaper. Nope!
Looks great and certainly enjoyable seeing the fire clearly
Thanks!
Thanks for that. Good to know you can get the glass back to the way it was. Quite an expensive fix versus buying a new glass though if you have to buy the polisher and cerium oxide :-) It will teach me to be more careful about what I burn in the stove in future!
Thanks for sharing. Mine is going to be $100-$150 for a new high temp glass cut to ~11"X17". 8oz of Cerium Oxide is $12 on amazon, and an orbital sander is $10 to rent from Home Depot, or $35 to buy from Harbor Freight, so this definitely seems like the way to go.
You deserve to own your own orbital sander!
When I purchased a new glass, it cost me about $200. It seemed like they cut it to shape first and then fired it a final time. I'm not sure how the process works or how hard it is to cut to shape after the final firing. In any case, it's definitely not your standard glass.
-Good luck!
This is the ONLY technique I have found anywhere on the internet that actually works! I would suggest you alter the video title to include “gas fireplace glass.” I had a hard time locating your very detailed and informative directions because my search didn’t include the words “wood stove.” Thank you for posting this. It saved me tons of money!
That's great news!
How many times did you hear, "just use wet newspaper." Haha!
Quick question: is the integrity of the ceramic glass compromised by the polishing process? If you are removing a layer of the ceramic glass to get rid of the etched haziness, will the glass be prone to breaking if exposed to high heat?
Yes, you are removing some of the mass. No, it will not be more prone to breaking, practically speaking.
It's mostly the microscopic high spots and very little of the microscopic low spots. In polishing, very little glass is removed, so the overall change in the glass thickness would be hard to measure; you would definitely need a micrometer to do it. My guess is that if you polished the glass 50 times, you might be able to see a practical change in the breaking strength - but even that wouldn't bother me - mostly because I would have died of old age (ha!).
I have found that the biggest threat to glass comes from when you try to use it to push wood that doesn't quite fit!
When the glass breaks, it cracks with a somewhat straight line (it doesn't shatter like tempered glass). So the broken glass still provides a safety function as the fire burns out. Custom replacement glass costs around $200 as I recall.
-Best
You sir are a gentleman
You’re welcome!
Hi. Will this process work for gas fireplace glass?
Yes. The cerium oxide will polish (grind optically smooth) any glass (or ceramic glass).
@@Hullspeed thank you
kewl!!