Glass Seaming

[Jim Miller]

Over on Warped, the matter of seaming glass edges came up in an unrelated thread (sorry to hear of your cut, Donna), and several said they do not seam the edges of Museum Glass because the abrasive dust can scratch the optical coatings.

Seaming can be done with any rectangular knife-sharpening stone, by swiping it along the glass edges on both sides. Be sure to wear glass gloves to prevent injury in event of a slip-up. A glass seamer is a better idea -- a small, hand-held tool that looks something like a blackboard eraser. It contains two cylindrical grinding stones, each about 3/4" diameter and 5" long, placed parallel in a two-part holder, which is typically made of plastic or steel.

The procedure is to grip the tool tightly enough to squeeze the stones together, and lightly swipe the stones along the glass edges; two or three passes is all it takes to remove the extreme sharpness on both sides of an edge. Slightly round off the corners, too. After a couple of swipes, pull the holder's sides apart and rotate the stones. This reduces wear and makes the stones last longer. The stones are easy and cheap to replace when they become too grooved for the purpose.

In my shop we seam edges as a general rule because, no matter what kind of glass or frame is involved, slightly dulling the edges and rounding the corners (A) greatly reduces breakage related to edge-impacts, and (B) reduces the risk of personal injury. (Bandage savings might even pay for the seaming tools.) We always seam the edges of glass used in aluminum frames, because the metal rabbet/glass edge contact is much less forgiving in the event of impact.

If you want to seam the edges of optically-coated glass without risking scratches, stand the cut lite vertically on a tabletop, hanging over the edge of the table just a little. Seam the glass edges vertically, so most of the dust falls to the floor, and not on the glass. Carefully turn the cut lite and seam all four edges. Wear clean, soft glass gloves (such as those available from Tru Vue) and avoid touching coated surfaces of the glass during this handling.

Then, after seaming is done, remove any remaining glass dust by blowing it away with compressed air. (You do wear goggles when handling glass, right?) Do not wipe dust off dry glass, as that would cause scratches. If you do not have compressed air, remove glass dust by flooding the surfaces with cleaning solution and then wiping gently.

Because the optically coated glass products cost more, framers may be hesitant to risk damage by extra handling, such as seaming. However, seaming greatly reduces the risk of breakage, and that is a lasting benefit -- not only for us, but also for our customers, who pay the premium price to get the best glass. And by the way, the TruGuard UV-filtering coating, the same as used on Conservation Clear glass, is softer and scratches more easily than the optical coatings.

Personally, I think the benefit of seaming is even more important when using optically-coated glass, and well worth a little extra care in handling.

[CAframer]

... remove any remaining glass dust by blowing it away with compressed air.

One thing I would add ... when using this technique on Museum or AR make sure the air nozzle is held a good distance from the surface of the glass ... if the nozzle is too close the blast of air will make marks on the glass necessitating further cleaning.

[Greg Fremstad]

I couldn't agree more! Glass seaming saves more time than it takes. Imagine a sharp piece of glass moving around in a frame with 1/8 inch allowance - nothing to stop it. It shaves off little pieces of wood, leaf, or paint off the inside of the rabbet. This is a lot of the dust you chase in a frame.

Also, FrameSpace goes on the edge of seamed glass very easily. Watche the short FrameSpace "How to" video on the FrameTek web pages. There is a timer running on the video and I think it took only about 15 seconds to swipe a 14 x 18 piece of glass.

How long does it take you to open up a dust covered frame to chase the dust? Waddamess!

[Framing Goddess]

Glass seaming seems like overkill if you dust seal all of your work.

edie the opinionatedtodayonlytoday goddess

[Baer Charlton]

dittoedie

my "cuts" run 40:1 mat/paper:glass

seaming (IMHO but then I'm in the "not so anal retentive" camp) has always (even thou I have three seaming blocks at work) just seemed like a "time suck" that has no ROI.

And, if you wash your hands 3-4 times a day with Madge's Polmolive ("it's gentle on the hands, you're soaking in it), you won't leave those greasey finger prints on glass, matboard, customers art, or even inside your nose. :thumbsup:

IMHO I have never found those gloves to be anything but a neusence and slippery. Siliconed Ov Glove works better for getting large sheets of glass out of a box, as does the cheap blue dipped work gloves from HD. And both are more protective.

[Jim Miller]

Glass seaming seems like overkill if you dust seal all of your work.

edie the opinionatedtodayonlytoday goddess

Dust-sealing takes care of the debris created by sharp glass edges during fitting, if that's a problem for you, but that's not the only reason to seam glass edges.

Seaming is not a waste of time. It only takes a few seconds, for cryin' out loud. If seaming prevents just one edge-impact breakage of Museum Glass, or one run to the bathroom to a bandage glass cut, that would easily justify seaming a day's worth of framing glass.

And besides all that, the slow, smooth motion is soooothing therapy.:rolleyes:

[Framing Goddess]

If I were going to choose between seaming and dust-sealing, I would vote for dust-sealing.

The noise of the seamer running over the edge of the glass makes my teeth ache and the hair on the back of my neck stand up. *shudder*

I am not at all familiar with 'edge-impact break', perhaps dust sealing eliminates that? :shrug:

I find that how we handle glass and really, just handling it as little as possible is what will go far in preventing cuts. And seaming it means we have to handle that lite a lot. When I dust seal a frame package, I handle that glass very little, if at all. In fact, I do not even touch the glass edge. And I can dust seal a piece much faster than anyone can seam a piece. Wanna race...?

And I am going to second what Ellen said elsewhere: the less museum glass is handled, the less cleaning/polishing will need to be done.

I am not a fan of seaming.

edie the stillopinionated goddess

[Rogatory]

I don't see what seaming and dust sealing have to do with each other? I seam and dust seal. (or seal the dust)

The MAIN reason I seam glass is due to a real nice scar that runs clear across the backside of my thumb and hand. All I did to get that was to lightly graze it against the edge of a piece of glass. It took about 1/100 of a second, 7-hour operation to re-connect a few tendons and a couple of bucks. No matter how careful you are things can happen.

Another reason I seam glass; for whatever reason if it's me, another framer or (gasp) the customer opens the package; they are less likely to cut themselves.

Once I slid a piece of glass (not seamed) across a poster that didn't have mats and promptly shaved off the ink at the top 3"... oops

I just timed myself. It took me 15 seconds to seam a 30X40 piece of glass. A lot less time than re-hab takes.:thumbsup:

[Jim Miller]

[QUOTE=Framing Goddess;264000]...I am not at all familiar with 'edge-impact break', perhaps dust sealing eliminates that? :shrug:

Interesting thought, Edie. Eliminate it? No, we're talking about un-quantifiable degrees of break-resistance here. But if your dust-sealing consists of edge-taping with a thick tape, and if you apply it effectively at the corners as well as the straight edges, it might provide enough of a pad to reduce edge-impact breakage as much as seaming would. I'd still be concerned about corner impacts, though.

Some day when you have nothing better to do, here's a crude experiment to demonstrate edge-impact breakage and the effect of seaming:

Cut several pieces of glass all the same size, from the same piece of glass, using the same cutter, and all in one session.

Holding a piece of the glass in your gloved hand, deliberately tap the center of one of its edges on the edge of a table (or your metal glass-scrap can). Be sure to hold the glass vertically, and keep the locations and angles consistent with each blow. Start gently, and increase the force of your tapping gradually until the glass breaks. Practice this several times to get a "feel" for how much edge-impact force the glass can withstand before it breaks.

Now, seam the edge of another piece. Repeat the same procedure, and see how much more force it takes to break it. When I did that some years ago, I was amazed at how much seaming improved the breakage resistance. It seemed that more than twice the force was necessary to cause a break.

Now, apply your dust-sealing tape to an edge as you would normally do it for a frame, and try it again. I've not tried this experiment with taped-edge glass, but my guess is that it might work as well as seaming. If you do this experiment, let us know what you find out.

[Framing Goddess]

Yeah, Jim, but that means I have to run that seamer over the edge of the glass and my molars are cringing in advance!
I can see how seaming would make the glass less vulnerable to an 'edge impact break.' That is another thing I like about dust-sealing- I am sure it serves to do the same. I have not done your test- I can only speculate right now.

David, one of the cases Greg made for seaming is this from above:

"Imagine a sharp piece of glass moving around in a frame with 1/8 inch allowance - nothing to stop it. It shaves off little pieces of wood, leaf, or paint off the inside of the rabbet. This is a lot of the dust you chase in a frame."

It is my sense that dust sealing goes a long way in preventing that scenario.

I am not so sure that seaming would completely eliminate the situation that caused your cut. You still have to take the lite from the box to the cutter and then to the table before you can even think about seaming it. And it is from that point on that I handle the glass very little. I find that when cuts do happen, it has to do with getting stubborn lites out of recalcitrant boxes, having a lite overhanging the edge of a table or a dealing with scraps in a train wreck of a scrap bin. Just some stray thoughts....

edie the pleaseletitbefriday goddess

[Rogatory]

Hmm.. I guess I wasn't on the same page.
If what you mean by "dust-sealing" is putting tape around the edges of glass, then yea.. I don't do that.

[Bob Doyle]

I've been quiet because I only seam the regular glass not the mus and conclear. The bits get on the glass and yes I do hold the glass vertical when I seam it. The shards still get on the coated side.

I can understand not seaming, but the dust sealing doesn't really take the place of seaming. Run a knife along the edge of the table. It cuts in. Now tape the knife and run it along the table. Still cuts in. Takes awhile but it does cut in. I dust seal old customer frames, and the gilded edge frames, because invariably when using these #### gets under the glass and I spend more time taking apart and putting back together frames if I don't!

The edge impact breaking, I would attribute more to a burr in the wood or glass that stresses the pane at that point and breaks it. I don't really see how seaming will affect that one way or the other. I would think that being sure you have a good wheel in the glass cutter would be more beneficial than seaming if you wanted to solve the glass breaking issue. If a frame falls off the customers wall the glass is going to break, seamed edges or not! :) IMO at least. If it doesn't break I would attribute that to either luck or good distribution of the force at the time of impact. A burr in the glass in this instance would be more likely to break the glass than a sharp unseamed edge, again in my opinion.

I seam because I have had to buy replacement prints for customers after having shaved the ink off with the glass because the customer didn't want to pay for a mat. I seam all prints put together with UniFrames as the glass is out there to be touched. I also seam because I have bled too much on prints, usually getting cut while cleaning the glass. I seam customer's glass when they want me to reuse their frames and glass because I dont wan't to bleed for short money! Doesn't seem cost effective! I seam the glass I sell my artist customers because the hardware store doesn't, and the customer bleeds when they clean it! Some think I sell them "softer" glass because they get cut less on mine! Then I show them the seamer, I should keep a stock in to sell to them!

Seaming doesn't save a lot of time for me because I have to spend 10 minutes finding the seamer! But it does leave me with enough blood to donate some once in a while.

Teeth grating is not to be sneezed at! If it bothers you that much then don't seam! I have steered customers away from mat colors because they grate my teeth when I cut into them! So I am with you Edie! Don't do things that make you wince!

[RoboFramer]

Once I slid a piece of glass (not seamed) across a poster that didn't have mats and promptly shaved off the ink at the top 3"... oops


I've only ever seamed glass in my own ready-mades, but I've done the above more than once, so seaming - SOLD!

[Jerry Ervin]

I've been quiet because I only seam the regular glass not the mus and conclear. The bits get on the glass and yes I do hold the glass vertical when I seam it. The shards still get on the coated side.



I hate to be a 'me too', but me too!

I had a framer a few years ago show me the break test that Jim mentioned. I was sold an the idea. I spent several weeks fighting the dust and shards on coated glass, so I stopped.

I'm also a 'me too' with Edie, I like to seal the package with 810 tape before adding it to the frame.


Maybe philosophically seaming is the correct thing to do, however, in practice it didn't work for me.

[Baer Charlton]

Even IF seaming took only 5 minutes to do and clean up.... somedays that would suck an hour out of my day.... I need more production and less futzing thank you.

[Jim Miller]

Even IF seaming took only 5 minutes to do and clean up.... somedays that would suck an hour out of my day.... I need more production and less futzing thank you.

If seaming took 5 minutes, it probably wouldn't be worth the effort. But seaming a typical 20"x24" lite takes about 20 seconds, plus maybe another 10 seconds to turn the stones in the tool. That's about 30 seconds per lite. Of course, then we have to clean the glass, which might add about 30 seconds more, but that may be needed whether we seam or not.

Seaming is a choice, like so many other "little extra" framing tasks. Whether one chooses to do it or not, let's consider the pros & cons of it realistically.

[Baer Charlton]

Jim, that's more of probably a difference of "what we have at hand". My seaming stones need to be gotten out of a draw, yours are probably within reach.

You don't roll adhesive and mount fabric anywhere near the quantity that I do, so getting our the roller, glue, and pan is a time sucking chore....
My glue and preped roller is always within reach... I just need a scrap of mat/glass/paper to roll some more glue out...

So you can seam my share of glass, and I'll do fabric. . . . . Oh BTW, you can have my share of memory boxes too. ;)

See ya in Vegas.

[Kittyfaces]

I JUST gashed my thumb knuckle moments ago cleaning unseamed glass. That was fun.

[the glassman]

Just a suggestion. In the glass trade we always seam glass with a wetted belt/pad/wheel.
It does a much better job and does away with any (abrasive) dust. Dry-seaming may also build a static charge at point of contact making dust removal even more difficult.
For small pieces, you might just wash them off with hot water (and a tiny amount of mild detergent) after wet-seaming - followed with a gentle buff/dry with clean lintfree material. Larger pieces can be dealt with using denatured alcohol/water mix.
All the best
The Glassman

[Framar]

So.....

Would it then make sense for those of us with the little hand-held roller type glass seamers to dunk them in water before each use???

Sounds like a good idea to me!!! No static, no glass dust, no problem!

[Ron Eggers]

Sure, and then you'll be up to the five minutes per lite that Baer was complaining about.

Unlike the glass trade, framers start out with glass that's normally pre-washed.

A gentle swipe with a dry whetstone (that sounds funny) alone each edge, followed by a little soft, antistatic brushing toward the outside of the glass takes maybe 30 seconds and you're not mucking up glass that's already clean.