If there is a need to drill glass, people usually turn to a special company. In fact, you can do this work yourself, using the appropriate drills or sand. It will also be possible to drill glass using less traditional methods.
What do you need to know about glass?
Glass production is carried out by supercooling the melt. The speed of such a process is very high, which is why crystallization does not have time to end. The result is a very brittle material. This fact must be remembered when starting to drill a glass surface.
There are several types of glass. Depending on the materials used, the products are divided into oxide, sulfide and fluoride. If we talk about the scope, then glass can be window, glassware, optical, medical, protective, chemical, etc. At the same time, industrial varieties further divided into several groups:
- potassium-sodium material has a low melting point and has a light structure;
- the calcium-potassium variety is quite hard and difficult to melt;
- lead product is quite fragile and expensive;
- borosilicate material resistant to temperature fluctuations and various substances.
Many people wonder how to drill glass. For this purpose, it is necessary to have a suitable quality drill, as well as a material capable of cool down the glass. Most often, specialists use one of the several types mentioned.
If you decide to do the work yourself, be sure to prepare the glass. The surface must be degreased with alcohol and wiped with a dry cloth. It is also important to make sure that the glass sheet does not slip on the work surface.
Drilling is carried out in several stages.
- It is necessary to mark the drilling point. For this purpose, a marker or construction tape is used.
- In order not to spoil the material, you should first practice on the fragments.
- As a rule, the drilling procedure takes a lot of time. In any case, do not put pressure on the glass in order to speed up the procedure.
- The material must be kept at a right angle. At the same time, while drilling one hole, it is worth making several pauses so that the product has time to cool.
- When you're done drilling, turn the surface over and drill holes on the other side. This will prevent cracks or chips from forming.
- Fine-grained sandpaper will help to eliminate irregularities.
To drill glass at home, you need prepare the following:
- a drill designed for drilling a ceramic or metal surface;
- screwdriver;
- turpentine;
- alcohol;
- plasticine.
The glass surface must be positioned so that it lies flat. Then you should insert the drill into a screwdriver or drill and make sure that it does not break the glass. After that, the surface is degreased and the right place is marked with plasticine. Next, you need to start drilling.
Using a homemade drill
To create holes in a glass surface, you can use a homemade drill. Its main element is a diamond roller located in a conventional glass cutter. Alternatively, you can take a metal rod in which a hole is prepared for the roller. This variety is considered a good modification of the diamond-coated element.
If you need to make a hole in the glass with a maximum diameter of 50 mm, then you can take any drill, and then grab it with pliers and hold it for several minutes over the flame coming from gas burner. When the shade of the tip becomes white, it is cooled in sealing wax. Thanks to such hardening, the product will be able to drill through almost any glass.
If for the first time you wondered how to drill glass at home, then when doing work, be sure to stick to simple guidelines.
Making holes with sand
If you think that a screwdriver or drill may not be effective, use ordinary sand. You will also need gasoline, lead, any metal vessel and a gas burner.
- Glass must be degreased using gasoline.
- Then wet sand is poured into the place of the proposed hole.
- After that, a funnel is made with any sharp object. A mixture of lead or tin is poured here and after a few minutes the wet sand is removed.
- After such a procedure, the frozen part will move away from the glass surface. To do this, the lead is preheated using a gas burner and a metal mug.
Unconventional ways to drill glass
If the above options are ineffective, then you can use other methods.
In everyday life, the need to drill glass is rare. Many people are afraid of such work because of the fragility of the material. In fact, there is nothing complicated here. Enough choose a special drill and start drilling carefully. You can also cut a hole in non-traditional ways.
If you need to drill glass, then the easiest way is to entrust this matter to a specialist. But firstly, such services are not cheap, and secondly, there are people who like to make their own. Let's try to figure out how to make a hole in the glass without damaging it. Consider what tools you can use in this case, how quickly and accurately you can do the work ahead.
Preparatory work
Before drilling glass at home, you must carefully prepare it:
- Using ethyl alcohol or turpentine, wipe the surface. This is necessary in order to degrease it.
- When working, it is unacceptable for the sheet to slide off, so this moment must also be foreseen.
- Choose a base so that the sheet is located on it completely.
- Before starting work, mark the place where you will drill. Use construction tape or a marker for this.
- If drilling glass with your own hands - new job for you, then practice on small pieces first to avoid damage to the main sheet.
- The drilling process is quite slow. No need to press on the glass to get the job done faster.
- Position the drill at a right angle to the plane. Don't try to make a hole right away. Let the glass cool down periodically.
- After the perforation is almost done, turn the sheet over and finish on the other side. This will give you a perforation. correct form and at the same time avoid chipping and cracking.
- If small roughness or irregularities have formed on the surface, processing the glass with fine sandpaper will help get rid of them.
How to drill glass at home with a conventional drill?
To successfully complete this task, you will need:
- A set of drills used for metal or ceramics.
- Screwdriver or low speed drill.
- Plasticine.
- Turpentine.
- Alcohol.
Operating procedure:
- Place the glass sheet on a flat surface.
Important! Pay attention to the fact that the edges do not hang.
- Set the screwdriver or drill to the lowest speed.
Important! Drilling speed ranges between 250 and 1000 rpm.
- Clamp the desired drill in the chuck.
- Using an alcohol solution, degrease the surface, and then make a plasticine recess in place of the future hole.
- Pour some turpentine into it and start working with a drill.
- Do not apply too much pressure to the tool as cracks may form.
Sand use
This is enough old way. It was used when there were no screwdrivers and drills. To drill glass with your own hands using this unusual method, you will need:
- Petrol.
- Sand.
- Tin (it can be replaced with lead).
- Gas-burner.
- Metal mug.
- Sealing wax.
The algorithm of actions is as follows:
- Degrease the surface with gasoline.
- In the place where the hole is to be made, pour some moistened sand.
- Using a sharp object, make a hole in the sand, the diameter of which is equal to the size of the future perforation in the glass sheet.
- Melt tin or lead in a metal mug using a gas burner.
Important! If there is no burner, then you can heat the metal in a mug and on a gas stove.
- Pour the molten lead into the prepared hole.
- When the metal hardens, remove the sand and take out the hardened glass. The resulting hole will be perfectly shaped and will not need to be machined.
How to drill a hole in glass at home with a homemade drill?
For the manufacture of homemade drill you will need a diamond roller from a glass cutter and a metal rod:
- Saw a groove in the rod to insert the roller into it. You need to fix it so that it is motionless in relation to the metal rod.
- Fix the drill made in this way in a screwdriver or drill and start drilling. This is equivalent to the fact that you are perforating with a diamond-coated drill.
Important! If for some reason you cannot buy a factory-made drill, then you can make it yourself.
There is another way to independently prepare the drill for work in order to drill glass at home:
- Clamp conventional drill in pliers and hold for several minutes over the flame of a gas burner.
- After the tool is white hot, cool it with sealing wax.
- After the drill has cooled, remove the remaining sealing wax.
- With this simple manipulation, you get a durable tool that can make holes in a tempered glass sheet.
- To avoid cracking of the material, apply a little turpentine or honey to the surface at the drilling site.
- Do not press the screwdriver or drill while working, do not shake the tool from side to side.
- Take breaks of 5-10 seconds. During breaks, lower the drill into a vessel with cold water for cooling.
- If you choose between a drill and a screwdriver, give preference to the latter, since the drilling mode in this case will turn out to be more gentle.
- For surface treatment, you can use both a solution of ethyl alcohol and acetone.
- Do not forget about safety precautions - you need to work in goggles and gloves.
- The minimum distance from the point of drilling to the edge of the sheet: 15 mm for fragile grades, 25 mm for ordinary glass.
- It is desirable to place a glass sheet on a wooden surface.
Glass cutter application
With this tool you can create holes of large diameter or complex shape. The algorithm of actions is the following:
- Apply with a marker or felt-tip pen contours for further processing.
- Press the tool smoothly and evenly, do not make sudden movements.
- To fall off the cut off part, gently tap on the surface with the handle of the tool.
- To remove glass residue, use special tongs.
Important! Before you start working with glass, check the condition of the tool. It is necessary that the roller is in the center of the glass cutter, rotates freely and evenly.
Glass is a fragile, easily breakable material, but with a few tricks it can still be drilled through. The safety rule when working with glass is to wear safety glasses when drilling, because small and large fragments can get into your eyes.
When drilling thin glass, holes can be made at least 13 mm from the edge, and if it is thicker, then the indent should be about 25 mm, otherwise the glass may crack. For drilling glass, there are special drills with hardened tips.
Drill bits are used to obtain large diameter holes.
For them, you can use the usual hand drill or electric, turning it on at low speed (less than 350 per minute). First, degrease the surface with acetone or alcohol. In the process of drilling, you need to drip turpentine onto the glass, into the place of drilling.
It is necessary to exclude a strong beating of the drill so that it does not crack.
1) First of all, we lay the glass on a flat and stable surface. Having marked the place of drilling, we make a ring out of putty, lay it around the place of drilling, pressing it firmly against the surface of the glass.
Pour a little turpentine or vinegar into the center of the ring and start drilling with a little pressure, setting the drill at low speed. It is advisable not to drill through hole, but rather, having drilled a small hole on one side, turn the glass over, repeat the whole procedure on the other side. Using a thin, flexible tube wrapped in fine-grained sandpaper, we clean the edges of the hole.
2) If you need to drill a hole with a diameter of less than 4 mm and there is no special drill, you can use a conventional drill. To do this, the drill must first be hardened. We clamp the drill with pliers and hold it over the fire of a gas burner until the tip is white-hot. Then we immediately wait for it, placing it in sealing wax. When the sealing wax stops melting and cools down, we take out the drill and clean the adhering sealing wax particles. Now you can start drilling according to the previous method.
3) If you need to drill a hole in a small piece of glass, then first dip the glass piece into cold water. The container must be selected so that the product does not move in it, but sits tightly, and water slightly covers the entire surface of the glass. Now you can drill.
If the product is too large, then place it on a hard horizontal surface. Then moisten the drill abundantly with turpentine and drill, making sure that the turpentine from the drill flows down to the drilling site.
4) If you only have a carbide drill, then you can also use it. First, we wet the drill in a solution of aluminum alum and acetic acid, or camphor and turpentine (1:1). We cover the place for drilling with a plasticine roller, pour liquid inside. Now the glass can be drilled.
5) If you do not have any drill at all, then you can drill a hole with copper wire. We insert the wire into the drill chuck and fix it. Now we are preparing a special paste, for which we dissolve camphor in powder in turpentine 1: 2, and then pour coarse-grained emery powder and mix everything well. We spread the paste on the drilling site and get to work.
In the same way, you can drill glass, replacing the copper wire with a straight tube. For this method, we install a ring made of plasticine or putty, with a diameter of 5 cm and a wall height of about 1 cm. Pour the paste prepared for drilling into the center copper wire and you can drill. With this method, the diameter of the resulting hole will be slightly larger than the diameter of the tube itself.
6) There is another way to drill with tubes. To do this, we need an aluminum, copper or duralumin tube 4-6 cm long. At one end, we need to hammer a wooden cork into the tube to a depth of about 2-2.5 cm and screw in a screw 0.5 cm thick so that its smooth part protrudes above surface by 1-1.5 cm, and then saw off the head of the screw. We insert the protruding screw into the drill chuck. On the other hand, we cut out the teeth using a trihedral file. Now we glue cardboard washers to the glass on both sides, with a diameter equal to the diameter of the hole. We lay the glass on rubber, sprinkle the drilling site with abrasive powder. We moisten the teeth on the tubes with turpentine and start drilling. When we have drilled 1/3 of the thickness of the glass, we need to turn the glass over and continue on the other side.
7) There is another way in which you can make a large diameter hole without drilling at all. We fry the glass surface with gasoline, alcohol or acetone. We outline the contour of the hole and pour wet fine sand so that it goes beyond the contour of the future hole. The height of the sand slide should be as high as possible. With a sharpened stick, the diameter of our hole, carefully make a funnel to the surface of the glass. Not a single grain of sand should remain over the area of the entire hole. We melt tin or lead and pour it into the center of the funnel.
After 2-3 minutes, the sand is brushed off. We take out the solder cone together with the glass circle.
How to drill a hole in glass. You may need skills in cutting and drilling glass without recourse to specialists. You may want to make your own coffee table with glass top. You have bought a new aquarium and want to make a hole in it for a problem-free drain of water. How to drill glass yourself without damaging it.
So, how to drill a hole in glass at home, you can use many options, we will describe the most famous below.
How to drill thin glass
IN thin sheets , when cutting, they can easily crumble, holes are made using ordinary sand and molten tin, or lead.
Melted in a metal mug small sizes a piece of tin or lead. While the metal is slowly changing from a solid to a liquid state, it is necessary to wet the sand with cold water, and then lay it carefully on the site of the intended drilling. In a hill of sand with a thin and long object, we make a depression of the required size.
Slowly pour hot tin or lead into the formed hole.
After five to ten minutes, the sand around the cooled metal is carefully swept aside. It is necessary to wait five to ten minutes, depending on the amount of poured metal, after this time the frozen piece slightly rises up. Along with it, a piece of glass of the appropriate size should be removed.
Presumably, this method should work, but minor errors are possible in the form of jagged edges of the hole and chips.
How to drill thick glass
Thick sheets require considerable effort. It will not work to loafer, as in the previous version. There will be no trick, but extreme caution will be required.
So, how to drill glass, put a piece of processed glass on flat surface, which will definitely neither tremble nor shake during operation. We put a mark on the place of the upcoming drilling, around which, using the usual, known to all children, plasticine, we build a not very high round rim. Pour turpentine inside the created "crater", and fill the hole with it to the end.
After that, we take a drill or a screwdriver, into which an ordinary drill is inserted, designed for working with metal, or something that has a sharp tip covered with a win. We insert the end of the drill into the hole and start drilling.
It is very important that no significant force is applied during drilling. physical strength and so that the drill works at the lowest speeds.
How to drill a hole in glass of any thickness?
The methods described above are distinguished by their unreliability and impracticality. After all, it is very difficult to predict the result of these experiments, and not everyone has the opportunity to melt tin at home or do something similar.
For the same method, how to drill glass: we need to invest a little in hardware store for the purchase of a special nozzle with a diamond coating. The principle of working with it is very simple: the nozzle is inserted into a screwdriver, which is set to the lowest speed, the glass is placed on a hard surface, a template is placed on top of the glass, poured into the drilling site cold water, and the drilling process begins. The template can be made in advance from an unnecessary small piece of glass or wood - this does not matter.
Water must be added repeatedly during the process, and a short break must be taken every one or two minutes to avoid overheating the glass surface (it may crack because of this).
When almost the entire thickness of the glass has been sawn, turn the canvas over and finish the work you started from the other end. So you will avoid the formation of chips and cracks along the edges of the hole.
