Glass polishing - How to remove scratches in glass

mdrees said:
Unless the car is an all original classic car with original glass I find it's always less expensive and easier to just replace the scratched glass.

You can spend hours polishing glass to achieve a small improvement vs. just having it replaced with brand new glass.
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Probably true for most people. Check your car insurance and see what's covered.




mdrees said:
Just spent 8+ hours trying to restore glass in my 1970 Chevelle SS using the products shown with disappointing results.
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Sorry to hear that.

I've had nothing but success with every glass window project I've undertaken.


:)
 
I'm wanting to tackle some scratches the tint shop somehow managed to put into my drivers side window that are driving me nuts (can't feel them, but can DEFINITELY see them!) I bought the CarPro CeriGlass kit and a couple different pads to try (LC glass cutting and CarPro rayon glass pads.) I want to try this when my G9 shows up, or maybe on my little Meguiars DA Power polisher on a drill? The glass on my 300 is triple layered acoustic glass.

Any tips would be great! I'm afraid to tackle this and make it worse!
 
I have about 4-5 articles on this and show it in all my classes. At my last class just last weekend we tackled the WORST windshield I've ever seen. Got to about 90% scratch free. We could have got it to 100% but I cover so many topics and the class detailed a total of 13 cars in 3 days. Because glass polishing takes a LOT of time, at some point we had to stop and move on to the next car.

I will get with the owner, show him how HE can do it and even give him the stuff to do it. Then it's all him and his time.

If the paint is great on your car then place some bath towels around adjacent panels like the roof, hood, etc. Glass polishing tends to be messing.

Tape off around the window frame too and avoid getting splatter in the channels.

Take your time and be prepared to spend a lot of time working on the glass. Glass is hard, it will not polish out fast like paint.

I'd do some Google searching, use terms like

Glass Polishing Mike Phillips scratches pits


That should pull up some of my articles and then read them.


:)
 
Thanks for tips Mike! I've been reading a bunch of posts here and elsewhere about it, but still scared to try as I don't want to make it worse and it really shows up in the sun :/
From what I've read CarPro pads are the only ones to use (which is to bad as I bought some LC ones too.) I may replace the window its so bad (I will if the polishing doesn't work.)
 
I took my GG G9 DA with a CarPro Rayon pad and the CarPro CeriGlass and went to town on the window, speed 5 and a sprayer of water to mist it with, lol. I got 90-95+% of it out in only 15 minutes or so! I could leave it like this as its more then adequate now, was surprised how well it turned out! I'll go over it again this weekend and see if I can get rid of the last of it. Some messy crap doing this!

Thanks Mike, saved me a bunch on not having to replace the window!
 
Mike Phillips said:
Glass polishing - How to remove scratches in glass


In the picture below you will see the pads, products and tools you need to remove scratches from glass.

Glass is very hard and in order to abrade it in a way to remove scratches without at the same time instilling scratches you need a polish specifically made for glass that contain

Cerium Oxide


Cerium_Oxide_Glass_Polishing_Tools.jpg




Step-by-Step How to remove scratches in glass


IMPORTANT
Never start by working on the glass in front of the driver field of view. Just in case something goes wrong you don't want to impair the view of the driver.


Step 1: Wash and dry or wipe glass clean.

Step 2: Tape-off and cover any perimeter window gaskets, wiper arm assemblies, surrounding plastic or trim. Anything you do not want to stain with polish splatter.

Step 3: Apply some CarPro Ceriglass glass polish directly onto the face of a CarPro Rayon glass polishing pad.

Step 4: Place the face of the glass polishing pad against the glass and then using a slow speed setting, turn the polisher on and spread the polish out to small area. When buffing out a car windshield, divide the windshield into quarters and work one quarter at a time.

Step 5: After you have spread the product out at a low speed setting, turn the speed up to a fast speed setting on a dual action polisher like the Porter Cable 7424XP or a low to medium speed setting on a rotary buffer.

Step 6: Make SLOW overlapping passes with firm pressure. Have a spray bottle of water on hand to re-wet the abrasives as the polish will tend to dry out as you work it. You can get more buffing time from the abrasives by re-wetting them with water.


Buff till you have removed the scratches to your expectations then repeat to a new section till the entire window is free from scratches.

Glass polishing can be very messy because the polish will tend to splatter. You can reduce the amount of splatter by using a water sprayer that does a good job of atomizing the water into a fine mist versus an generic spray bottle that squirts water.



Order List


Griots Garage 6 Inch Random Orbital Polisher

5" Dual-Action Hook & Loop Flexible Backing Plate

Griots Garage 3 inch HD Backing Plate

3 Inch Dual Action Flexible Backing Plate



FLEX PE14-2-150 Rotary Polisher

5" Flex-Foam HD Rotary Backing Plate

3" Flex-Foam HD Rotary Backing Plate



5" CarPro Rayon Glass Polishing Pad - 2 Pack

3" CarPro Rayon Glass Polishing Pad - 2 Pack



CarPro Ceriglass Glass Polish - 150 ml

CarPro Ceriglass Glass Polish - 500 ml


My comment....
You can remove scratches out of glass using either a rotary buffer or a dual action polisher like the Porter Cable type. With the dual action polisher it will take a little longer but in my opinion the glass polishing process is easier on you when using a dual action polisher versus using a rotary buffer.


Slow process
Figure on taking 2-3 hours to machine polish and remove the scratches out of the average size windshield. Longer if you're new to this type of polishing.


:)
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Absolutely AMAZING! Thanks Mike!

Sent from my SM-G975U using Autogeekonline mobile app
 
Icarus said:
Thanks for tips Mike!

I've been reading a bunch of posts here and elsewhere about it, but still scared to try as I don't want to make it worse and it really shows up in the sun :/
From what I've read CarPro pads are the only ones to use (which is to bad as I bought some LC ones too.) I may replace the window its so bad (I will if the polishing doesn't work.)
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Icarus said:
I took my GG G9 DA with a CarPro Rayon pad and the CarPro CeriGlass and went to town on the window, speed 5 and a sprayer of water to mist it with, lol.

I got 90-95+% of it out in only 15 minutes or so!

I could leave it like this as its more then adequate now, was surprised how well it turned out! I'll go over it again this weekend and see if I can get rid of the last of it.

Some messy crap doing this!

Thanks Mike, saved me a bunch on not having to replace the window!
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Thank you for the update and I agree - it is messy.



Red&BlackJacob said:
Absolutely AMAZING! Thanks Mike!
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Stay tuned, I have a brand new glass polishing article I'll be sharing.


:)
 
Mike, I have a glass polishing job coming up and I'm trying to scramble to get the stuff together on time for the job. Can I get the link for the 5 inch interface pads?

I legit tried looking on the AG website but they didn't pull up. Darn my luck.
 
Jacob Harrod AUTOCLEAN said:
Mike, I have a glass polishing job coming up and I'm trying to scramble to get the stuff together on time for the job.

Can I get the link for the 5 inch interface pads?
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They can be a tick difficult to find if you don't know the manufacturer or how they spell the name.

Innerflex



Here's link

Griots Garage BOSS 5.5 inch Innerflex Pad


I believe other companies do spell it like you did above, that is,

Interface



:)
 
Mike Phillips said:
They can be a tick difficult to find if you don't know the manufacturer or how they spell the name.

Innerflex



Here's link

Griots Garage BOSS 5.5 inch Innerflex Pad


I believe other companies do spell it like you did above, that is,

Interface



:)
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Thanks Mike! I'll purchace that one in the future. I believe I got a 3M interface / innerflex pad to get me through my job.

My rotary batteries couldn't keep up. I ended up going through all 4 of them and I had to stop and wait for them to charge.

I have two battery chargers.

Talk about a job. I was really tired afterwards.

The scratches on that glass were caused by scraping the glass with a spatula after a snow storm.

I was able to get it looking a little better. I believe I buffed for at least 30 minutes on each quadrant.

Here's a link to a video I made.
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The glass still had some deeper scratches, but it did look much better, and I believe the customer was happy.

Sent from my SM-G975U using Autogeekonline mobile app
 
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