Hints and Tips When Working With Glass

We know, as a technician, you often have to do a lot of DIY so we wanted to try and help by offering you any hints and tips we come across from our team and other technicians we speak to. This first one comes from our resident technical support advisor, Jackie and offers a few hints on working with glass.

I would always recommend the following

Cutting glass tubing:

• Scratch the tube or rod at the desired point with a specialised glass cutter

• Wrap the tubing in a protective cloth to avoid cutting your hands. Place thumbs together opposite scratch

• Using little force, pull back on the tube and push thumbs outward quickly to break the glass

Glass bending:

• Protect hands from the heat

• Use a flame spreader on the Bunsen burner adjusted to a roaring flame

• Hold the tube lengthwise in the flame and rotate back and forth evenly until the glass becomes soft

• When the glass is soft and bends under its own weight, remove from the flame

• Bend into the desired shape, holding in position until hardened

Inserting glass tubing in stoppers:

• Wet the tubing and stopper hole with water or glycerol

• Wrap hands in towel for protection

• Grasp the tube near the point of insertion

• Rotate the tube back and forth while gently pushing it into the stopper

We hope you found this useful. If you have any pearls of wisdom like this that you would like us to share then please email them through to david.sedgewick@philipharris.co.uk and we will add them to this blog.