How We Craft: Part 3 Cutting the Glass
How We Craft: Four Part Series
Part 3 Cutting the Glass
Prepping the Glass
The glass is soda lime sheet glass. It's delivered by crane into the building in boxes weighing 4,500 pounds. The glass is cleaned with white vinegar, a great non-toxic cleaner.
Cutting the Glass
There are two ways Annieglass cuts their glass; freehand and by waterjet.
Our master craftsmen, Carlos & Raul utilize the score and break process. A glass cutter is used to score the glass, then the glass is broken apart with manual force applied to the glass. With this process, you can create simple geometric shapes, circles, squares, and rectangles.
The second cutting technique is with a CNC tool (high powered waterjet). The tool cuts glass by using a high-pressure stream of water and garnet sand as an abrasive at 90,000 PSI (pressure per square inch) allowing many more shapes that were previously unavailable. Annie and her R&D team create all their award-winning shapes in-house.
Take a Tour
See for yourself on one of our informative, free tours at our Watsonville Factory & Retail Store: Thursday – Sunday at 1:30 pm
