Cover Error In Glass

[Anna Linn]

I have 2 glass champagne flutes a customer brought in. She had ordered them from an online vendor and had the wrong date put on (her birthdate instead of the wedding date-oops). Is it possible to go over the date with a design using a laser? Or will the first date always show through? It looks very nice, most likely sandblasted. Would sandblasting cover it up? Any input would be appreciated. Thank you.

[Darren Null]

I tried overwriting with a laser and it just didn't work. First I tried a black square; then I NUKED it with another black square and finally I attempted to squiggle it out with a few postscript hairline fills. The original lasering was still on there, looking like it was buried in frosted glass...an effect I have used since, as it's quite pretty.

Sandblasting may work.

[Rodne Gold]

Darren , blasting probably wont work either , will always give a ghost type image. We often laser and then blast for a very subtle effect , same with blasting and then reblasting.
What might work is to use a dremel with a diamond encrusted tip and grind it out , far more trouble than its worth IMHO.
Anna , why not just put the wedding date on the other side , kinda like a "feature" , tho maybe the bride doesnt want her age given away along with her marriage date.

[Anna Linn]

Rodne! You made me laugh. While an interesting idea...leaving the birthdate on there...I'm pretty sure that is not what she wants. One glass has her name and the other has her future husband's name. Also, there's a little Precious Moments image on the opposite side.

As an experiment, I'm going to try to laser over a scrap piece of glass (a mistake piece-one of many) so that I can at least see what happens but I already felt that it would be difficult to cover an error in glass. However, I don't do the sandblasting here so your input was needed.

Thank you, thank you!

[Belinda Barfield]

As an experiment, I'm going to try to laser over a scrap piece of glass (a mistake piece-one of many) . . .

Anna, I can't help you out with this one, but I do appreciate the fact that I am not the only one with at least one "mistake" piece of lots of things I've produced. My favorite is a Husky anodized utility knife/multitool. It was the property of a yacht crew member and she asked that I engrave "Irish Eyes" on it for her. With the style of tool there was a very odd shaped and limited space for engraving. Silly me, I just laid it on the laser bed and didn't secure it in any way. Sure enough on the first pass the motion of the machine was enough to cause the tool to rock and caused the marking to be too high so that the top of the "I" was not visible. So, I had to go out and get her another one. On an up note. I love that tool and everytime I pick it up it reminds me to make sure things are secure before starting the engraving. Not trying to hijack your thread, just wanted to let you know I appreciate your honesty.

[Anna Linn]

I'm finishing up the second flute. The first flute is ok, nothing wonderful. I used a banner type of ribbon with an extra flourish (in shades of gray) plopped on top to cover up the bad date and then etched the correct date below that. The bad date is still visible but if a person were walking by, he probably wouldn't notice.

I checked with the person who took this order and she said the customer was going to use marker to put the correct date on so I'm feeling pretty good about the job I did.

Lesson: It's very difficult to fix etched/sandblasted glass but it's possible to camouflage an error so that it's not as obvious to the casual observer.

Ah, the stress, I dislike the rotary but I'm trying to make it work for me.

[Todd Schwartz]

Just getting caught up on the latest threads - a few months ago had a complete brain fart and engraved First Refromed Church instead of First Reformed Church on some custom sawhorses that were being made to be auctioned off. Of course did not catch the mistake until about half of the sawhorses were done.

My solution - it was about the time there was a big discussion on this board about doing checkering on gun stocks. So my first attempt (on a scrap piece) was to just blast it with 100% black - it only made everything deeper and still was obvious that there was text and it was spelled wrong - then this checkering discussion came to mind so found a nice postscript fill in Corel, tweaked it a bit and it do a good job of hiding the mistake. Had to hit it twice, but you could not tell there was text under the checking and everyone thought is was a nice design element.

Worked great on wood, no idea (and I hope I never need to find out) how this would work on glass.

Here is to hoping nobody needs this advice :)

Todd

[Bill Cunningham]

I have a BUNCH (100 or so) of shotglasses that are etched on all sides, I use them for setups when doing a order, and they just collect in a box.. I took a bunch and frosted them in the sandblaster. The previous etching is still barely there, and not all that noticeable unless your looking for it.. I figure if I can find something to stain the frosted glass, red, blue, green. whatever.. I could etch through the stain, and get a coloured novelty glass or advertising sample of some kind as a give away.. Anyone know what will perm. stain glass? Could be a way of recycling into something of use!

[Darren Null]

As an example, I burned a bit of glass twice, once with the words 'once' and twice' so you can see that the second burn had very little effect, and once to demonstrate the 'frosted glass' effect. As far as my attempts to 'scribble out' a mistake with postscript fills doesn't work particularly well either...although if your original inscription was in a spidery handwriting font your odds are a lot better. Arial Bold & you're stuffed.

Apologies for the daggy bit of glass and the photography. If you're doing this, it's best to make the second burn a bit lighter, but i forgot for this example.