# Lessons in cutting aquarium glass



## Bayinaung (Feb 24, 2012)

I have a 35 gallon tank. 36x12x18. I wanted a 23 long. or 30 long i.e. 36x12x12 or x15. a glass cutter will do right? wrong. after scoring the lips on all sides, I used a hammer to break the top... and took the whole side with it. LMAO. ah I had to try it. wanted to see if glass cutters would do their job. NOPE! lol so I will be using a smaller tank as sump.


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## J_T (Mar 25, 2011)

Glass cutters only score the edge. to break it, you need to apply pressure to the score. Not hit it with a hammer! 

I hope you didn't get hurt.

You would have needed to take the tank apart to cut it with the scoring tool. A grinder, with proper disc's would have been the only way to cut it whole.


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## wtac (Mar 17, 2006)

I'm glad you have a sense of humour to the experiment .

At first I face palmed but then reflecting on my "out of the box" experiments in the early years...I would have done the same thing myself.

Cheers to you


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## rburns24 (Jan 31, 2011)

" LMAO" 

Me too. Thanks for posting that. Most of us have pulled a few "goodies".


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## Riceburner (Mar 14, 2008)

hopefully you prevent someone else from trying the same thing. Thanks for sharing.


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## Bayinaung (Feb 24, 2012)

J_T said:


> Glass cutters only score the edge. to break it, you need to apply pressure to the score. Not hit it with a hammer!
> 
> I hope you didn't get hurt.
> 
> You would have needed to take the tank apart to cut it with the scoring tool. A grinder, with proper disc's would have been the only way to cut it whole.


haha no I didn't get hurt. I thought I was being real smart and took precautions. After etching the tank, I taped both sides of the glass tank with electrical tape so all glass and shards would not fly away. then put on jeans goggles construction steel toe shoes and OVEN MITTS before the tapping began LOL. I thought, hey etch it, tape it, tap it, that should work right? LOLOL. oh man. some things aren't as simple as I thought.

glad to know what I need for next time lol

it was a crap tank anyways.


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## J_T (Mar 25, 2011)

Bayinaung said:


> haha no I didn't get hurt. I thought I was being real smart and took precautions. After etching the tank, I taped both sides of the glass tank with electrical tape so all glass and shards would not fly away. then put on jeans goggles construction steel toe shoes and OVEN MITTS before the tapping began LOL. I thought, hey etch it, tape it, tap it, that should work right? LOLOL. oh man. some things aren't as simple as I thought.
> 
> glad to know what I need for next time lol
> 
> it was a crap tank anyways.


Thats good that you didn't get cut up.

I think we have all done something like this.... Where you have that nagging feeling that this just isn't going to work.... but hey, it was only X$ and meh.


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