I am frustrated with this piece of flat glass that came off a perfectly good zeroed out Stewart Warner speedometer. This is one of the metal ones unlike the new plastic ones. The glass seems to be etched. I can't feel any pitting with my fingers. It may be a glass imperfection. I have tried everything to polish it out but nothing is working. I even tried Turtle Wax polishing compound to no avail. The glass is 3 1/8" in diameter. I found a glass place on the internet and they want $50 for the glass. What do you all think? I bought what I thought was the right size glass off of Ebay and it was too big. The lady had a no return policy. My fault for not asking.
How much too big is the Ebay piece? Could you use the old one to mark the edge to size and then sand down to size?
You can sand that out but not polish it out. Just like polishing metals, die grinder, fine paper (start at 3000 and see if it cleans it up, I wouldn't go more course than 1000 personally to start). Then as fine as 7000 and machine polish. Keep the galss wet with a spray bottle with plain water in it. You may break it or ruin it but what do have to lose? Make a pattern first incase the heat shatters the glass. I have polished glass scratches (gouges) out of t-top panels and an expensive pair of Maui Jim sunglasses. Worth a shot, right?
Look further on the internet (possibly eBay?). I had an old vacuum gauge I wanted to fix and found a replacement glass much cheaper than $50. Actually, most of the cost was freight; I ordered two so I had a spare (or insurance). The place I found (about 5 years ago) had a large supply of different sizes and thicknesses.
I had a local stained glass maker/lady cut me some odd shaped turn signal lenses of red glass (provided by me) for 5 bucks each. trimmed and polished edges too.
A linishing belt will make short work of getting it down to the correct size. Make sure the belt is not too rough, and keep the glass cool. Have a bucket of water there and dip the glass very regularly. Don't let it heat up very much. It won't need to be perfect. The edges will not be seen. If you want to protect the faces from scratching while you work on it, cover with masking tape and mark the required size with permanent marker.
All great suggestions. Alchemy posted a link to Timesavers. To save time, I ordered from them at $2.75/ each plus shipping. Came in at about $10.00 total. Hope it is not too good to be true. Thank you all. I can always depend on you for solid advice.
I have been going to my local glass place for 30 odd years now and a small 3 inch or 4inch piece usually costs €2 or a packet of cookies . Flat 10 inch 3mm glass for round vintage French headlights he does for €5 or €7.50 each, depending on his mood . He allways uses new scraps. A few weeks ago there was a new guy who promptly went to the PC, did his calculations starting with pricing a new sheet of glass , calculating waste and all sorts of shit and came up with a total of €40. WTF, boss happened to walk in, went to the scrap bin and once again €10 for cutting two 10 inch lenses with their special tool for circles .
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