My boss told me to never use a glass cutter on a cold windshield

He said it last winter when we had a big job in Buffalo, and I thought he was just being extra careful. I tried it on a frosty back glass last week because I was in a rush, and the whole thing cracked in a crazy spiderweb pattern before I even got halfway. It cost me the piece and a lot of time to clean up. Has anyone else had a temperature surprise ruin a cut?

4 comments

4 Comments

lucast811mo ago

Seriously? I've cut cold glass before and it was fine. Maybe you just got a bad piece or pressed too hard.

nathan_palmer1mo ago

Oh man, that's lucky! I had the total opposite happen once. I was trying to cut a cold bottle for a craft thing and it just exploded into a million tiny pieces, scared me half to death. It wasn't even about pressing hard, @lucast81, the whole thing just gave up. Ever since then I get nervous and run the glass under warm water first, just in case. I guess the quality or the type of glass really makes all the difference.

shanec611mo ago

Running it under warm water first is smart, but I've had good glass just snap clean from the cold. It seems more about the score line being even than the temperature. A bad score will pop at any temp.

mark_thompson1mo ago

Yeah that's a thing with a lot of stuff now, not just glass. It's like the build quality is a total gamble. You can buy two of the same exact thing and one lasts forever while the other breaks right away. I see it all the time with cheap tools or even phone chargers. Makes you wonder how anything gets made the same way twice.