How to cut a mirror at home?

In the interior of a room, mirrors play a special role: they expand the space and make the room more elegant. To create a real work of art yourself, you need to know how to cut a mirror at home. If you follow certain rules, then this is not as difficult and dangerous as it might seem at first.

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Technique safe when cutting mirrors

Before cutting a mirror at home, you need to take care of your own safety:

• In order not to injure your hands and not cut yourself on the sharp edges of the mirror, prepare thick fabric gloves. Additionally, you can stick strips of patch on your fingers.
• Eyes also need protection. For these purposes, use bicycle, construction or any other safety glasses.

Important! Before you first cut a mirror with a glass cutter, you need to practice on small glass elements, and after making at least some experience, start the critical part of the work.

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How to use a glass cutter?

Glass cutters are different, but there are two main types:

• Roller glass cutter.
• Diamond glass cutter.

Important! The diamond tool is sharper and allows you to make work faster and better. However, the roller will cost less, so choose the device that you can afford. Be sure to consider the estimated amount of work.

General rules of use:

• It is very important to keep the glass cutter correctly - at a right angle, but a slight deviation is still allowed (in this case, an acute angle will be working).
• The tool must be fixed with the thumb and middle finger and pressed with the index finger.

Important! The position of the glass cutter cannot be changed. Res should be made in one quick motion, because repeated actions will damage the mirror.

• The pressing force must be uniform, except for the edges: 5 mm to the edge should reduce the load to prevent slipping of the tool and the formation of chips.

Important! You need to cut strictly from the far edge towards you.

• A thin white incision means that the roller could not penetrate the body of the mirror to the required depth. A good cut has a dark color (this does not apply to diamond, since it leaves a thin light stripe).

Important! Do not try to deepen the unsuccessful incision - it is better to back off a couple of millimeters and make a new one.

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Necessary materials and tools

Before you start cutting your own mirror, be sure to prepare all of the following tools and materials:

• Glass cutter;
• Mirror;
• Long thick ruler (8-10 mm);
• Smooth steady table (chipboard plate is suitable);
• Small hammer;
• Fine sand paper;
• Canvas (an ordinary sheet is suitable);
• Pliers with rubber gaskets;
• Capacity with water;
• Alcohol, soda;
• Roulette;
• Rag;
• “Steklograf”, “Tecnolux” or other suitable pencil;
• Patterns made of plastic or plywood - will be needed only if curvilinear tracing is assumed.

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Mirror Cutting Sequence

To correctly carry out the cutting of the mirror at home, you must strictly follow this algorithm:

• Prepare the workplace and lay the mirror face up on it.
• Lay some soft cloth under the mirror, which can help avoid surface damage when pressed.
• Put the mirror in order - first clean it with soda solution, and then treat the mirror surface with alcohol.

Important! This must be done, since traces of spots and dust can cause a shift in the cut line and the glass cutter can go sideways.

• Mark up. There is one subtlety here: the marking line must necessarily correspond to the stroke line of the glass cutter, that is, move a couple of millimeters from the future cut line.
• After marking, attach a ruler to it. To control the movement of the glass cutter and to avoid displacement of the cutting part, you can slightly raise the ruler. The easiest way to do this is by attaching erasers to its ends.
• Check tool. For an inexperienced carver, only a perfectly sharp glass cutter is suitable, otherwise, the process will take a large amount of time, or even fail.
• Proceed directly to the cutting process. After making the incision, position the mirror so that it coincides with the edge of the table and even protrudes a little bit.
• Separate the cut part from the mirror. To do this, carefully press it to the table and break off the cut part with a sharp movement down.

Important! If you can’t do it with your hands, grab a small hammer and gently tap the bottom of the cut line from the far end. If necessary, resort to using pliers with rubber pads.

• Handle the cut thoroughly with fine sandpaper.

The mirror is ready! Now fix it in the frame and hang it on the wall.

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Figure cutting

How to cut a mirror at home, if you want it to be round or oval? Conventional glass cutter curly cutting is quite difficult. To solve such problems, they resort to the help of special glass cutters or structures made of several tools. As a rule, such a system consists of a glass cutter, a suction cup and a scale to determine the desired degree.

If such a tool could not be obtained, you can use a conventional diamond or roller glass cutter. In this case, the cutting process is carried out in the same way as in the above case, but using patterns.

Important! The main difficulty is that a curly section is extremely difficult not to damage when breaking, therefore it is crushed into several fragments, and then separated one by one.

In this way, you can create a beautiful, unique and useful decorative element in the form of a wonderful mirror.

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Stock footage

Now you are ready to cut the mirror at home. Follow the precautions, think over the design of the element you need in advance, clearly make patterns, and be sure to practice on unnecessary pieces of material. Then the result of the work done will be as you expected, although it will take a little longer.