glass walls tiles

[White Room]

Like those mosaics Gary

 

[Max_Damage]

I came across some glass tiles today(100x100x8mm black with multicoloured glitter) that will not snap after scoring. A local tiler brought these to me because he was having problems cutting them.
Most glass tiles will cut without problems because the glass is relaxed in the firing process. These tiles were fired with tension stress making them impossible to snap cleanly.
So ,if you have problems snapping glass tiles, it may not be your technique. Try a different make of glass tile to check if it's the glass that's in fired tension.

 

[stevee]

just printed that off ,thanks dave

 

[Deleted member 1779]

We have been sent glass tiles in the past which proved difficult to cut and to drill holes into.

Please see example of tile that proved difficult.

Cutting Glass

Two attempts to cut the glass tile "straight line" can be seen above. The first (along the front of the photograph) was with an angle grinder. The idea was to score and snap the tile. However snapping this glass caused the tile to show a ragged edge. The second is a deep cut into the tile. At just over a 1/3 of the way in the tile snapped. This was attempted by a standard wheel cutter. To solve the problem the blade was changed to a high quality continuous diamond wheel.

Drilling Glass
In this tile you can see in the middle of the tile an attempt was made with a brick drill. This is not suitable

In the centre of this tile the hole is as ragged and chipped as the wetsaw marks.

To correct this you need to use porcelain tile drills. Not brick drills.

To drill glass tiles you need diamond drills with ultra thin walls and a high diamond content.

When it goes wrong:

In this instance the installer tried to drill glass tiles via the grout line using a standard masonry drill bit. He believes if he uses the edge nothing will happen to the glass. In fact the pressure on the glass causes it to instantly chip and fail. This is now an expensive exercise in tile removal, replacement, re grouting. If you look carefully at the hole you can see the guy had barely even started the hole...

In contrast!

In contrast to the first tile this second tile is looking much better. The hole is solid and no glass chips or failure. The difference is that the right equipment is being used for the right materials. Glass tiles need a bit of thought! Above the hole was drilled with a diamond tipped tile drill. Using them will "grind" a hole rather than "drill" a hole.

 

[CJ CERAMICS]

Here is a sample from my album of glass tiles which i done last year on a hotel job,23 bathrooms with one wall at least glasses,some with corners,internal and external,hard to cut too but dry cut with sigma lightly and broke no bother,i was supplied with norcross glass and mosaic fix to apply them,turned out very nice lucky enough,my pic are from my mobile only so some might look off but should be ok.

very funky tiles