A lightly edited transcript of Henry’s spoken instructions. Obvious transcription and spelling errors have been corrected; the instructional meaning has not been rewritten.

0:04 Remove old glazing safely

All right, welcome to Country Life Projects. I’m Henry Reinders. In this video we’re gonna be showing you how to cut glass and most of your glass is probably gonna come from old windows just like this one here maybe aluminum but in most cases probably wood and I’m gonna show you first before we actually get into the glass cutting how to get the glass out of a frame like this without breaking it and how to do it easily so we’re just gonna lay this down now. You’ll notice, that with wood windows here we have the old glazing putty in here sometimes that will just fall out other times though it can still be quite quite solidly in there trying to get it out can be quite difficult you might break the glass but I’ll just show you on this one here it’s just.

Popping out so if that happens and you can just go through and keep popping it out just make sure you’re not hitting too hard onto the glass because it could break so you can see that one just giving a little stick here but it is popping out I got this one over here now here it’s a lot more solid down here so I’m suspecting it’s not gonna come out as easy but we’re gonna try it you can see that’s a lot more difficult so I’m gonna show you if that happens there’s a very easy way to get the glass out without having to chip the rest of this glazing out of here so we’re gonna do that.

1:32 Separate a stubborn wood sash

Next as soon as I clean up this a little bit of leftover glazing here so the way wood windows are built typically you have your pieces here pieces here with a tongue coming through here and what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna cut through this tongue and that’ll allow us to pull the frame apart so I’m going to do that and then we’ll come back and I’ll show you how to pull it apart you’ll be cutting through then you’ll want to use an old saw for this you never know what’s going to be in here or whether you get down this point here and hit the glass a little bit once you get to the end of the pin here you may hit the glass door through there. Now we want to tap lightly on.

This piece here to bring it out that way and it’s always a little tricky but you can see it coming apart. Now the trick is you don’t want to twist it this way or this way you want to stay in line with the glass because otherwise the glass can break so just pull steady and straight out until that piece comes out and watch the glass as you’re doing this because they can come loose might actually fall oh that’s our first piece loose and then we’re going to tap up start separating it that way and I’m quite used to doing this and I’m not wearing gloves right now but you should wear gloves glass could be very sharp this is actually not too bad I’m gonna actually put a.

Pair on because I’m gonna have to grab the glass here that’s a little bit sticky I’m gonna just turn this up remember this glass is potentially could fall out yeah you’re very careful we’re gonna pull this way a little bit and it’s going to want to separate from this section here so that’s a little sticky right. Now I’m gonna have to bang it apart a little bit more. Now if it’s not pulling apart easy you’ll probably find that by the time you get this piece here oh and you pulled on this the glass is gonna be fairly it’s not gonna be tight anymore you might be able to actually slide it out which we’re gonna do here make sure your flowing nice and straight out don’t bend it and there we have our first piece of glass. Okay, so we have our.

4:20 Support glass on low-pile carpet

Glass out and. You’ll notice, that I’ve got it on a piece of really low pile carpet that’s what you want because it helps you to work on the glass and lay it on the table you can kind of let it drop a little bit and it’s not going to break and also when you’re cutting it any fragments of glass that come off will go into the carpet and they won’t scratch the surface of your glass when you’re cutting it or moving it around so we’re gonna clean this piece off you want your glass as clean as possible before you start cutting all you need is a typical window scraper and after you’ve scraped the glass just some warm soapy water and a cloth to wash it with.

And then another cloth to dry it off and so you just want to make sure you get all these it’s a.

5:07 Clean and inspect reclaimed glass

Paint and everything off of here both sides and just kind of go over the glass make sure there’s no little spots of paint on there flip it over do the same thing and just over the surface once you’ve got that done just wash it up with soap and water get it nice and clean if we’re going to do that and then we’re going to come back and then we’re going to go over the glass cutting tools.

6:11 Identify glass that can be cut

Okay before we start cutting the glass so what I mentioned a few things that you need to know the method that I’m going to show you is good up to a quarter-inch thick glass anything thicker is problematic you can only cut plate glass this way you cannot cut safety glass this way and tempered glass tempered glass you’ll know because on the glass itself there will be a label that will specify it’s tempered glass safety glass you’ll know because you’ll have two layers of glass with a thin layer plastic in the center you can’t cut it this way that said so we’re gonna go over the tools a next time what you’re gonna need and it’s really.

6:52 Prepare the cutter and lubricant

Straightforward we have a glass cutter and we have paint thinner and that’s all you need all you have to do is take the cap from your paint thinner just put a little bit of paint thinner in there and just put it to the side so it’s easy to reach you just need a basic glass cutter like this you will find some we’ll have a little steel ball on the end I’ll show you shortly oh you use that this one doesn’t have one let that won’t matter and the important thing when you’re cutting glass is make sure that you got a little bit of carpet all the way around so when you run your cutter off the edge that it doesn’t drop or crack this part of the glass here and I’m.

Gonna grab a straightedge and I’m gonna show you how to do the first cut it’s really easy.

7:38 Score and snap straight cuts

Okay I’m using a level for a straight edge here but you can use pretty much anything you want as long as that’s straight or the shape that you want to cut now all you have to do is providing you got a fairly new glass cutter let make sure that wheels good you just dip a little bit in the paint thinner you start at the very edge of the glass and push down on your straight edge and then just a nice even cut you want to hear a nice solid screeching sound all the way through if you get a sound where it’s scattered like it’s like tick tick tick tick tick tick something like that that means that your glass is not gonna cut smoothly you bring it over to.

The edge of your table you wanna be careful here because this can snap off if you hold it over here just start tapping the beginning of the cut over here till you see it start to crack just a little bit there we go and then you just snap it like that you have a perfectly clean cut yeah. Now if you want to do a curved cut as long as it’s not a big curve if it’s just a slight arch I’m just gonna do a freehand I’m gonna show you you can do it the same way so if you have a window or frame of some sort that you want to get that shape you can do it like this so I’m just gonna go arch like that the same way just start it boom comes off.

Just like that and. Next we’re gonna do a full circle cut which is a little trickier you have.

9:54 Make circular glass cuts

To do it a little bit differently we have this little jig here that we’re gonna use no it’s not a jig tool for this and you’re not likely gonna have this but this is more just to show you that if you’re doing a complex cut of any kind that there’s a certain technique you have to use and so we’ll get this set up we’ve got the thinner on my cutter and lock it in place and you can hear that nice even cut all the way around now with a piece like this you can’t just break this whole thing out we have to have we have to break it into sections so on the outside of that cut and it makes some cuts these pieces will break off in sections.

And then we need to get into this cut so I’m going to take I’m going to get the wheel in it I’m going to take it off to the side of the glass that’s gonna be our starting point so there we go so now what you do you take these other cuts here and the one you’re working closest to get it started so you can see a crack and you go back to this cut over here that I went to the outside and you start there till it cracks and work your way around and off the top that part a little bit there’s our first piece and then we’re gonna tap this one there we go it started we’re gonna work our way around again tapping that cut and.

You’ll feel it start to break away it’s not quite coming across here there we go it’s just gently working your way around and the more you tap on this more likely these pieces are going to break off so you got to be careful there we go next one and then we do the same thing here and of course there we go it’s cracked and there the whole thing came off now one last thing we’re gonna use this visa scrap we got left over here. Now I did mention that I was gonna say what that steel ball is that you’ll find on most glass cutters you buy yeah cut across here and. You’ll notice, that I’ve been using the tip of the cutter to crack the glass oh the glass.

Cutters with the ball on the end that’s what you would use it for so instead of using the front like I am here you would be using the ball on your glass cutter so. As you can see, cutting glass really is a snap there’s not much to it you need a good glass cutter paint thinner good table to work on with a bit of carpet and one thing I. You’ll notice, I wasn’t wearing gloves through all this I highly recommend you do the glasses sharp I’ve worked with this a lot I know what’s gonna how the glass is gonna break what’s gonna happen you also want to wear eye protection. I have my regular glasses if you don’t wear glasses use safety goggles other than that you should find it fairly easy to do this and we’ll see you in the next video.

You.