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I did some years ago using diamond polishing paste. I was a tool & die maker and we used to polish plastic molds not something everyone will have.

There are kits to do it I have seen. Check with Eastwood. If you polish much you will for sure see a distortion in what you see through the glass.

 
Hello! Has anyone polished their glass pieces to get rid of fine hairline scratches. What polish/materials did you use and how did you do it? Thanks for any input!
I tried using the eastwood kit. All it did was dull the glass.. There are other polishing paste kits on amazon or ebay. They say if you can feel the scratch your fingernail or catch the edge of your fingernail on the scratch then it's to deep to remove without distortion.

 
Dull windows/Distortion...I wouldn't like that at all, and who would?! I heard about that, if your finger nail catches then scratches are too deep. A glass shop told me 100 bucks each quarter window. I haven't asked them how much for door glass yet. Will see!

 
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This is from a concourse restoration forum I also belong to.  Several very positive comments on this system.

Concourse Forum post:

I was looking into this concept again earlier this summer when I pulled all of the frames off of my side glass and began to clean all of them up, I was rather shocked to see how truly horrible they really were! I had already realized an issue on the inside of my back glass about a year or so ago and now have two date correct back glasses, BOTH with some rather serious scratches so I began to doubt I could ever find a set of dated windows for my Coupe that would be worth installing in the project.

ALL 7 windows NEW, and adding the dates to them seem to be absurd, I know I have no choice on the windshield but my budget would never allow for ALL NEW GLASS on the whole car.

FIRST: I tried finding a glass shop to do polishing. No luck. I tried local car restoration shops and the Internet for somebody in the 100 mile radius to take them to and nobody even returned calls or emails. Then, like others, I tried the $80 Eastwood Deep Scratch Kit and using a drill motor, results were essentially a swing and a miss. 2nd, I tried the same Eastwood kit on a buffer/polisher and had a friend who does granite/monument work and his guy gave the same window I had worked on about an hour, then gave it back saying he's not interesting in doing more. It had signs of improvement but the outlook for doing all of the glass was very grim at best.

Once again, I went to the Internet and found a guy named Pedro in Florida doing a YouTube video and it looked like not only him, but there were companies and individuals everywhere doing glass polishing successfully with similar discs like the ones found in the Eastwood kit and/or cerium oxide (powder or solution)... on buildings at least, and the results looked rather amazing, not causing distortion in the final product either. Yet, when I tried calling anyone, even Pedro of Florida, no return calls or emails when I stated I wanted to do Classic Car Glass.

I believed now that the real issue was Liability. Nobody wanted to take a chance on my "Classic Car. Date-Correct Glass".

Eventually, one guy somewhat local to me, DID call me back at least. He said he ONLY did architectural work (on buildings) and was only insured for the same but was having extremely good success using the GlassRenu System on those jobs.

I had already looked into GlassRenu Systems, I had even given them a call and asked for recommendations for local companies (this is where I got the name of the guy who ended up calling me back from).

So, I tried rolling the dice again. This time, I bought GlassRenu's "Professional Grade Scratch Removal System" (cost $250 +shipping).

BINGO! Now, it was recommended to use a variable-speed buffer in the many YouTube Videos on GlassRenu that I had watched and the variable buffer most often recommended was a Mikita variable-speed. I liked and trusted this choice since they offered the "numbers" on the wheel to help you to get to the correct RPM's for maximum success. Having bought that too, I am over $500 into this mess...So much for saving money, right?

The difference now is that I am successfully removing EVERY deep gouge and every single scratch and I am actually succeeding in removing sand-damage too! (My car was in the desert area all of it's driven life).

If you want to spend the money on new glass, that may be the "easy button" but since I was also hoping to retain all of the original glass without ALSO having the added cost/time to add in the etchings onto new glass, I feel it was the best choice to just buy this kit. 

Be sure to set aside a weekend or three.  You can put between 1 to 3 hours each window. (Actually less on some that have minimal issues). I think the time spent depends on how brave you are in process. You kinda learn as you go along what works best on what kind of damage so the learning curve may vary.

My glass at this time is progressing very well. The BLACK DISCS sent in the kit really do a lot of major work getting the glass readied for polishing, they are probably the most effective part of the process in the scratch removal process. Now, I have found some very deep pits from rock/gravel impacts that would take more time to remove but I have removed some VERY DEEP GOUGES, all minor sand-damage pitting and even DA sander damage (looked like 80-grit Da sander kissed a window at one time) and ALL of that came out 100% perfect in my opinion...NO DISTORTION I can detect at all. 

The "Grey Discs" are the most "consumable" item in the kit. I have since bought a 2nd 10-pack. My glass was in some cases as bad on the insides as it was on the outsides and I did not wish to use the black disks much at first, for fear of them being to aggressive but in hind-sight...I could have saved time and money had I chose to just do the whole window areas with extreme damage, using the black discs FIRST.

You should like the results. I really struggle to notice any issues at all with the glass now and everything I find wrong, a bit more time seems to ALWAYS remedy the problem...As I said, my glass was BAD NEWS, REALLY BAD NEWS to begin with!

The hardest choice I made was whether or not to buff through a Carlite Logo on the wing vents since the sand damage was on the logo-side of the glass on them. One side vent, I buffed through the damage including the logo etching and the other side, I did not (yet) buff through the logo but you can still make out the sand-damage.  You will likely have similar choices
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If you are thinking about this, do a search on YouTube for "GlassRenu" and watch some of the videos.

« Last Edit: September 13, 2018, 08:10:55 AM by 67gtasanjose »

 
Just went to their website from doing a Google search for GlassRenu and they have a map showing glass companies with their products across the US. I sent an email to the closest one to me to see what pricing might be. I also have some scratches in my side glass that if reasonable to get done I would like to give it a shot. That was mt last 2 point deduction at the MCA in Augusta, GA.

 
There is this company in the Netherlands called car-glass, that fixes the stones impacts and all kind of probs you can get with glass.

On my first t-bird, there was on driver side window vertical marks, fairly deep. They have this super translucent composite and

after a good cleaning they applied it on, dries in seconds and buffed it. I will not claim it was not visible anymore, but if the marks were on a scale of 10 a 6,

they were back to 2 or 3. It also stayed ok. Parked in the shade, you would not see the scratches anymore.

Its not a fix as a real polish does, but if you have only a few scratches, might be worth to pay a visit to similar company and see what they could do.

 
Thought I would share a tid bit of info on glass. I worked on the design and build of the current John Deere large tractor and combine cabs. They are mostly glass for obvious reasons so you can see. I worked on the steel structure and floor. While on the team I met the manufacturer of glass for Deere and asked how the actually made glass.

I am sure most have seen very old windows in homes that has the wavy glass. It was made by melting the glass and pressing and rolling the glass out to thickness and has distortion from the process. To make perfectly flat glass they figured out that molten glass would float on molten Tin. So I believe the first company to do so was in Europe cannot remember their name. They melt the glass and pour on the molten tin and it floats out to and even flat sheet of glass. Cooled enough to pick up then another pour.

I was also told by the glass manufacturer that glass is actually a liquid like it is in your car, lol. He claimed that very old glass in churches that are centuries old gradually gets thinner at the top and thicker at the bottom. That one I have no idea if that is so but was told that.

So now everyone to search and find out the truth, lol.

The Diamond compound will polish the glass for sure but expensive. I also use diamond compound when I lap the bore of a new rifle after I stress relieve it. Makes a huge difference in accuracy.

Old tool & die makers do lots of crazy things.

 
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