The Stovebolt Site Forums The Parking Lot Panels 'N Burbs Safety Plate Side Glass ??

** Am thinking of getting a local glass shop to cut Safety Plate glass { to replace the laminated glass } side windows for the 53 Suburban I'm working on. Looking for pros or cons about my thoughts. Thanks **

"Safety Plate" was a brand name of the Libbey/Owens/Ford glass company. It IS laminated glass. There are only two kinds of automotive glass, laminated and tempered, and tempered glass must be factory made to the exact dimensions of the desired window.
Jerry

** Thanks Jerry, I did not know that tempered glass could not be cut to a specific size/shape. **

Any competent glass shop can cut the glass to size and then send it out to be tempered. That is what I did on my '58 Suburban. The glass cannot be cut after tempering.

Regards, Mark.

Even the tiniest nick in the surface of a piece of tempered glass causes it to explode into small gravel-like chunks that don't have the sharp jagged edges of broken plate glass. Because of the slight distortion present when looking through tempered glass at an angle, it's not suitable for use in a windshield. All windshields, either flat or curved, must be made of laminated glass.
Jerry

Back when I was a kid, a buddy and I were throwing pebbles at a transformer. His mom's 58 Chevy was parked in the line of fire, and one of the pebbles hit the back window. It immediately cracked into a million bits, but stayed in place. Then it slowly started falling apart, starting at the curved parts on each side. Pretty awesome. I think it was tempered. We told his mom that we had no idea what happened.

Did the safety glass from the local glass shop work out ok? How was the price compared to just buying new windows?

This thread is over a year old - - - -If you get a response I'll be surprised. Any flat glass can be purchased locally for most likely less than special order, as long as you've got an original piece to be duplicated or a very accurate pattern. Once it's cut to your dimensions, you own it, whether it fits or not!
Jerry

I had two old original side pieces of glass to be used a template, cut local, fit perfect, and a lot less expensive then buying from one of the big three truck part guys.

An interesting bit of trivia- - - -since laminated safety glass has a piece of clear plastic sandwiched between the panes, once the glass is scored and cracked on both sides, the plastic is separated by squirting alcohol onto the crack and setting it on fire. The plastic melts and the cutoff pieces can be removed. Then the cut edge is smoothed on a belt sander. It's really interesting to watch a skilled glass worker make a window!
Jerry

Jerry, did you ever use the division bar channels and flexible channels that had a strip of nylon in the bottom of the channel for the glass to slide on and a more generous amount of whiskers on the sides? I haven't seen those sold for about 30 years. Interestingly J.C. Whitney used to have a very good selection of them. Glass installers around here commonly put graphite in the other channels (the ones lacking the nylon strips) to help make the glass slide better. Those generally have a plain felt bottom. Unless the cut edge of the glass is smoothed and polished very well, it will tear that felt up tout de suite.

When I was managing my brother's body shop, I found out pretty quickly that subletting all my glass work to a mobile glass shop was the way to go. That included rebuilding window track channels, etc. It didn't take very many mistakes by ham-fisted body men that resulted in glass breakage to suck up the profit margin on a job. On any work that involved doing repairs around windows, etc. we always removed the glass instead of trying to mask around them. An unbroken layer of paint under the glass always made for a better-quality job and since we specialized in high-end vehicles like Jag, BMW, Ferrari, Mercedes, etc. the cost of doing that kind of work was not a factor. If we didn't charge outrageous prices, the snobs we worked for couldn't brag about how much their toys cost! We were more than happy to accommodate them!
Jerry

Hotrod Lincoln, your comment about watching the glass guys cut laminated reminds me of how impressive some of the body guys work was! We had an informal agreement- They didn't mess with the glass, I didn't try to be a panel beater. John