Polishing/removing scratches from Glass?

[b5blue]

   Anyone remove scratches from their glass?     What did you use and where did you get it from? I'd like to polish out a sand blasted spot on my rear window that dummy Doug hit when I paid him to strip my roof. (He didn't, he just managed waste my 500.00 with half arsed farting around.)
  Eastwood has a "Kit" I'm thinking of but would hate to waste my time and money only to have to buy a new one! 

[twodko]

The following is my tale of woe. So I get the car back from paint and it's just stunning......to the Mrs. and I anyway. I'm reassembling it and installing new window felts. Everything is going great and I'm working on the last glass.....the drivers door glass. The door panel is off but the outside felt is giving me grief. I decide to do the outside last. I had to push the glass outward a bit to get the inside felt in and rolled up the window to verify even contact. I also finally get the outside felt in and am admiring my handy work........I'm looking at the glass and discover, to my horror, that there are several vertical scratches on the glass.  CRAP!  The glass made contact with sharp pointy thingies under where the outside felt sits.
Long story but I talked to the guy who reinstalled the front/rear glass about polishing the scratches out. Not gonna happen he says, you'll need new glass. He's an honest standup guy too. I've made similar inquiries herein and pretty much got the same thing. I can't afford to replace it right now so my workaround is to keep the window down at car shows. 
If your glass is out of the car so you can work it, buy the Eastwood kit and give it a shot. Can't hurt and cheaper than new glass. Keep us posted and good luck.

[68 Bullitt Charger]

New glass is the only way to go. I tried to polish the glass and it was very distorted and cloudy. Waist of time and money.

[hemigeno]

There is at least one guy in Michigan who can polish out scratches and distortions in glass - but the process is VERY labor intensive (read: expensive).  I was silly and stubborn enough to have the work done in order to save original glass, and for a Daytona rear glass it might be marginally justifiable.  For anyone not restoring a 100pt concours car, it simply does not make economic sense to polish out scratches when reproduction glass (and the occasional nice used OEM glass) is available.  Even then, reproduction glass with proper date codes from venues like ECS Automotive is acceptable in all but one or two venues as far as I know.  The Eastwood and similar kits are likely to make a bad situation worse IMHO. 

Sorry to hear of the aggravation you guys have had.  Been there.

[gtx6970]

  Eastwood has a "Kit" I'm thinking of but would hate to waste my time and money only to have to buy a new one! 

save your money , been there - done that

[Fred]

A friend of mine took a chance and had his scratches taken out of his back window by a pro. The glass ended up being so distorted (wavey) that his view was very unclear.
So in the end he had to have the glass replaced. He could have saved himself the money............

[doctor4766]

Call your local Novus franchise for scratch removal. They have the gear to do the job as 'correctly' as is possible.
Yes, bad scratches can be difficult to polish without distortion, but in some cases, you don't have a lot of choice.

[b5blue]

Thanks guys! It's a small area in one corner, not the whole thing. It's frosted from sandblast not scratched. Now the door's windows they are scratched so bad the old run your fingernail across it and see if it catches test works....they catch!    

[bull]

I called a guy here in town to get a quote on polishing my rear window and he told me he has a method that works differently than most. His "polisher" does not polish at all but instead it heats the glass up, basically reanimates it or liquifies it, and that process brings the material below up into the scratch where it levels out and then cools off. He says it's a very delicate procedure because doing this can warp the glass, but out of the hundreds he's done he says he's only messed up one beyond repair.

IIRC it seems he was going to charge me around $100 to come to my house and at least another $100 to do the work, which is quite a bit less than a new window. If you can find a guy in your area that uses this method it might be worth a try. But I wouldn't do it without a guarantee.

[doctor4766]

Interesting concept there Bull. I've never heard of it personally.
Most glass shops will not guarantee customer's own glass though.

[hemigeno]

Bull, that sounds like the same procedure used on my Daytona's original glass.  You probably won't get a guarantee out of any of 'em though.  They do get pretty good results (if nothing catastrophic happens), it just takes a while even in the hands of an experienced guy.

[gtx6970]

IIRC it seems he was going to charge me around $100 to come to my house and at least another $100 to do the work, which is quite a bit less than a new window. If you can find a guy in your area that uses this method it might be worth a try. But I wouldn't do it without a guarantee.

I will only be a good deal provided they don't break it . then it just adds $200 on to the price of a new glass

[Fred]

Each to his own but I'm guessing whatever you do it's never going to be the same as new glass. All the money spent and you probably won't be satisfied.
Save yourself the aggravation and just replace it. It's cheaper in the long run.   

[b5blue]

I figured I'd ask as I gotta pull it to replace the trunk filler and part of the inside of the buttress soon. 

[bull]

IIRC it seems he was going to charge me around $100 to come to my house and at least another $100 to do the work, which is quite a bit less than a new window. If you can find a guy in your area that uses this method it might be worth a try. But I wouldn't do it without a guarantee.

I will only be a good deal provided they don't break it . then it just adds $200 on to the price of a new glass

Like any risk, you're a hero if it works and a fool if it doesn't.

[AKcharger]

Add one more for the "tried it and it came out cloudy" group. I did my butter fly window before New glass was available