Etching Glass the easy way. 56K WARNING!!! Lots of Pics!

[LoneWolf121188]

TekeTorvo: That, my friend, looks f***ing awesome. Very, very nice job. How much did it cost you, if you don't mind me asking? People pay several hundred dollars for etching/frosting like that. Hey, you could start a buisness!

I may have to get around to doing that sometime...nah, it would ruin the view of my dual 6800GTs .

 

[TekeTorvo]

Cost;

Glass=Less than you think from a hardware store.

Sandblaster=12.95-19.95

Sand=3.00 or so, depending on where you get it. I thik it was 3 bucks at Home Depot.

Compressor=Borrow one, because they get expensive.

Self sticking Shelf Liner=5.95 at Home Depot.

Exacto knife=don't remember but I got the best Home Depot had, and it couldn't have been more than 10 bucks.


You will re-use everthing except for the Glass, so the cost involved is mainly to get started. One bag of sand will do about 10-20 projects. The same with the Shelf liner.

On the Hurricane Etch, I used a much different way of making a Stencil, and it is MUCH better! But it is also ALOT more involved. There are imperfections in the glass used for this write-up, that would not have been there had I used my original stencil idea. But I was trying something new in the process of doing this how-to. There is a very quick fix to that and it was posted after the write up. Go over the Shelf liner with Blue Painters Tape to thicken, and stiffen the shelf liner.

Enjoy.

 

[LoneWolf121188]

Hey, can you do this on a piece of metal, like aluminum or steel? Cause iirc, the metal they use for cases are just painted black or whatever over the metal's natural color, so if you sandblast the paint off in a pattern...hmm...

 

[NeoSpawn]

Yeah you can blast metal, just need to pump up the psi thats all

 

[LoneWolf121188]

^^ got any pics of it?

 

[tenchi86]

Nice work, think I will have to try this soon. I could get hooked on something like this.

 

[Brinnswift]

Wow that really is impressive, I just might have to try my hand at it.

 

[tbones1337]

edited

Nice work, think I will have to try this soon. Im hooked on something like this.

fixed for me


gah... im hooked and want to try this but dont own a compressor... !!

i could always rent one or.. wait a second, my moms friend has one i think..

could i get a detailed close-up of the etch?? i wanna see how it compares to my laser etched danger den water cooling keychain


edit: that hurricanes one is sexy... i mean...

oh god how did this get here... im not good with forums and talking about good looking etches... i mean what.?

 

[johnny5c]

Looks great!

When your sand blasting glass, it's a good idea to do it in light passes. When the sand hits the glass it creates heat and if it gets too hot it can crack. My brother owns a custom car shop and I've seen it happen to a rear windsheld.

 

[NeoSpawn]

Ahh good advice there thanks. Im guessing there would be heating with the plexiglass as well right? Cause it to melt somewhat?

 

[clocker2]

Looks great!

When your sand blasting glass, it's a good idea to do it in light passes. When the sand hits the glass it creates heat and if it gets too hot it can crack. My brother owns a custom car shop and I've seen it happen to a rear windsheld.

That's because it's "safety glass"...not the same as regular window glass.

Im guessing there would be heating with the plexiglass as well right? Cause it to melt somewhat?

Highly unlikely.
I've etched deeper than 1/4" into 1/2" plexi with no signs of melting.

 

[ThePCGuy]

About compressors, if you do a bit of picking day before trash is picked up, you can find alot of compressors being tossed. I just got another one last weekend. About 3 mos. ago my neighbor through out a brand new unit which I snatched rather quickly. He had bought it and ran it without oil (thinking it was oiless) and it siezed. I spent a couple minutes with it and got the compressor unseized. It works great, not a scrach on it. Nice job on the etching by the way, a friend of my Mom's used to do that on mirrors for people. She's got a large mirror with a little duck floating in a pond on it, pretty neat. Take care.

- Jim