Please HELP!!! Can my glass be saved....

Frank20

Frank20

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Hey everyone,

Sorry this is my first post and I never formally introduced myself here. I have been lurking these forums for the past couple months. I originally came on this forum looking for help on how to polish out some glass scratches on my 06 trailblazer ss. I had some wiper traces on the rear windoshield as well as some scratches down both rear windows most likely caused by debris becoming trapped in the sill then marring the glass when the window was rolled down. Anyhow I read pretty much all the threads which involved any sort of glass polishing tips. I read a particular thread by member CEEDOG in which he used CarPro's CeriGlass to polish out some scratches. After reading this article I decided to order some of the product along with some Lake Country 4" Glass cutting pads and try this myself.

Fast forward to tonight....I used the 4" lake country glass cutting pads on my dewalt cordless drill. I made sure to keep the glass wet with water, i worked slowly with not a lot of rpms, and I applied firm pressure. I made sure to spray water on the glass anytime I saw the product starting to flash. After wiping away the product I noticed that the glass was way worse than when I started. I Believe the pads are what swirled and pig tailed my glass. I don't know what to do and I fear that my glass is ruined and now needs to be replaced. The swirling and pig tailing are not deep and can be seen when light is directly bouncing off of the area. They can not be caught with a finger nail. I took some pics to show the damage. Please someone tell me there is a way to correct this. If it helps anyone, I do own a Flex VRG 3401 DA which maybe a more aggressive foam pad on that would help remove these marks.

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thanks everyone
 
Could it be the windshield wasn't entirely clean before you started? Did you clay before polishing? I think you can also try an LC Orange pad as long as you don't let the windshield get too hot.
 
feds27 said:
Could it be the windshield wasn't entirely clean before you started? Did you clay before polishing? I think you can also try an LC Orange pad as long as you don't let the windshield get too hot.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply. This was my driver side front door window btw. I cleaned the glass with glass cleaner several times but I did not clay it. I was thinking about trying the LC Cyan hydrotech pad.
 
Yeah, Corey/CEEDOG used a Cyan Hydrotech and it seemed to work ok for him. Could it be the pad wasn't exactly flat as you worked it and the scratches were made by the edge of the pad? I would think a drill is harder to control than your Flex.

From Mike P's thread: The Glass Cutting discs are hard and thin, that's their characteristic, just an observation, not a negative or positive comment. The point is they are thin and hard and glass is hard so one thing that helps a lot when buffing glass is to use the glass cutting discs with a flexible backing plate which helps make the buffing process smoother.
 
feds27 said:
Could it be the windshield wasn't entirely clean before you started? Did you clay before polishing? I think you can also try an LC Orange pad as long as you don't let the windshield get too hot.
Click to expand...

feds27 said:
Yeah, Corey/CEEDOG used a Cyan Hydrotech and it seemed to work ok for him. Could it be the pad wasn't exactly flat as you worked it and the scratches were made by the edge of the pad? I would think a drill is harder to control than your Flex.

From Mike P's thread: The Glass Cutting discs are hard and thin, that's their characteristic, just an observation, not a negative or positive comment. The point is they are thin and hard and glass is hard so one thing that helps a lot when buffing glass is to use the glass cutting discs with a flexible backing plate which helps make the buffing process smoother.
Click to expand...

I kept the pads as flat as possible. The glass is curved a bit where I was working. The reason I used a drill was because I only have the GCP in 4" and I have a soft foam backing plate to use them with for more cushion. I'm so distraught over this I hope there's some way to get them out.
 
thanks for the links. I really wish I could get my hands on a LC foam glass polishing pad. I'm almost certain that would fix my problem. Which yellow pad or other foam pad do you think I should try otherwise?
 
Frank20 said:
thanks for the links. I really wish I could get my hands on a LC foam glass polishing pad. I'm almost certain that would fix my problem. Which yellow pad or other foam pad do you think I should try otherwise?
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I bought a LC foam glass pad a few years ago and it's not exactly a soft pad if that's what you're thinking. It's stiff and hard, unlike their polishing pads. It's more like their tangerine hydro pad foam than polishing pad foam, but stiffer, so I don't know how well it does curved surfaces. I still haven't tried it partly for that reason.







.
 
I don't know what this intermittent problem seems to be with with Ceri-Glass, but there used to be a Diamondite Glass Resurfacing Creme which according to Mike Phillips contained cerium oxide, but it hasn't been available for more than a year...I've never heard an explanation as to why it's no longer available. I used mine once on what I consider to be soft glass, using the LC hard glass pads, and didn't have any problems like the OP.

EDIT: Here is the page, but you can't find it through the menu: Diamondite® Glass Resurfacing Crème
 
Setec Astronomy said:
I don't know what this intermittent problem seems to be with with Ceri-Glass, but there used to be a Diamondite Glass Resurfacing Creme which according to Mike Phillips contained cerium oxide, but it hasn't been available for more than a year...I've never heard an explanation as to why it's no longer available. I used mine once on what I consider to be soft glass, using the LC hard glass pads, and didn't have any problems like the OP.

EDIT: Here is the page, but you can't find it through the menu: Diamondite® Glass Resurfacing Crème
Click to expand...

Go figure that everything I need now to fix this has been discontinued. Not sure why but both the yellow pads and the resurfacing creme are both discontinued. I am going to attempt it one more time this morning using my own homemade cerium slurry. I'm going to try and clean the pads first with a stiff brush. Maybe there was some tiny debris caught in it which caused the marring.
 
Frank20 said:
Go figure that everything I need now to fix this has been discontinued. Not sure why but both the yellow pads and the resurfacing creme are both discontinued. I am going to attempt it one more time this morning using my own homemade cerium slurry. I'm going to try and clean the pads first with a stiff brush. Maybe there was some tiny debris caught in it which caused the marring.
Click to expand...

I'm wondering if the problem is non-uniform particle size in the Ceri-Glass. I've been making my head hurt researching this, I found a place that sells some 3M abrasive discs that you use on a rotary, they are basically the stick-on sandpaper but they are special...I don't think 3M markets them for glass, because they don't come up at the 3M website searching that way. They have 5 grits, but they also sell powders and pre-mixed compounds, not sure if you have to finish up with that...they have a forum but it doesn't seem to be working.
 
Setec Astronomy said:
I don't know what this intermittent problem seems to be with with Ceri-Glass,

but there used to be a Diamondite Glass Resurfacing Creme which according to Mike Phillips contained cerium oxide, but it hasn't been available for more than a year...I've never heard an explanation as to why it's no longer available.

I used mine once on what I consider to be soft glass, using the LC hard glass pads, and didn't have any problems like the OP.

EDIT: Here is the page, but you can't find it through the menu: Diamondite® Glass Resurfacing Crème
Click to expand...


I think Cerium Oxide is considered a rare mineral and prices have increased. I was told China has been buying up lots of rare minerals and this is why the the prices for many raw materials have increased.


:)
 
It seems the glass wasn't entirely clean. Claying would help. Also check the glass for it heating up too much.
 
Frank20 said:
7c1ee21d.jpg
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In the picture above, what you see are scratches "in" the glass. Claying isn't going to do anything and no spray-on glass cleaner is going to remove defects like these.

As stated by others, we are currently out of stock of the Diamondite Class Resurfacing Creme. I've used it numerous times and it works without putting scratches into the glass at the same time. Glass polishing is never easy nor fast as glass itself is very hard and thus hard to abrade in a way that you don't cause damage at the same time.

To remove scratches out of glass you need a rotary buffer and a glass polishing disc/pad. I've had good luck with the Diamondite Glass Resurfacing Creme but as stated, at this time it's not available.

:)
 
I used the same set up you did but with a DA. I think your problem lies in the drill, it's not really a polishing tool. But I also got somewhat mixed results. Ceriglass removed my deep scratches, but left very light micro marring on the glass. It's a similar pattern to what you got, but very very faint, so I'm pretty happy with it. I keep saying I'm going to order more Ceriglass and go re-polish it to try to get it perfect, but haven't done so yet. This product was difficult to work with at best, and results were mixed. It seemed in order to work it long enough to remove scratches, the pad makes more scratches, but they should be so faint you can only see them up close under certain lighting. I believe you glass can be "fixed", or
improved 85%. I would clean and clay the window and repolish using a DA. Keep a bottle of DI water in hand to spritz when drying. For some reason I deleted my after pics, but these were the scratches it removed
a6937b1d-9588-5d7e.jpg
 
I haven't had any luck with the CeriGlass product. I pretty much gave up on it. I do have my own cerium oxide powder though which i mixed myself into a slurry. I went outside just a while ago and cleaned the glass, then clayed it. I then took my pad cleaner brush and thoroughly cleaned one of my LC 4" glass cutting pads under some running water. This time i opted for my corded drill which can go 2000 rpm max and went outside. I taped off the area and went to work. Made sure to keep the window wet, worked slowly with firm pressure and pretty fast/medium speed. I think I corrected it and got the marring out. It was drizzling a bit outside so it made it hard to inspect the glass afterwards but I tried to get it as dry as possible and look at it from all angles inside and out and I didn't see anything. I'll check again later and report back.
 
swanicyouth said:
I used the same set up you did but with a DA. I think your problem lies in the drill, it's not really a polishing tool. But I also got somewhat mixed results. Ceriglass removed my deep scratches, but left very light micro marring on the glass. It's a similar pattern to what you got, but very very faint, so I'm pretty happy with it. I keep saying I'm going to order more Ceriglass and go re-polish it to try to get it perfect, but haven't done so yet. This product was difficult to work with at best, and results were mixed. It seemed in order to work it long enough to remove scratches, the pad makes more scratches, but they should be so faint you can only see them up close under certain lighting. I believe you glass can be "fixed", or
improved 85%. I would clean and clay the window and repolish using a DA. Keep a bottle of DI water in hand to spritz when drying. For some reason I deleted my after pics, but these were the scratches it removed
a6937b1d-9588-5d7e.jpg
Click to expand...


I actually have similar marks on my 2 rear sliding windows. Most likely from dirt and debris getting trapped in the sill and marring the glass as it is being lowered. After last night I'm afraid to attack these. But I guess if I mess them up i'll just buy new glass because it isn't very pricey anyhow.
 
Hi Frank, sorry i missed all this and for the trouble you've had. It looks like you got some good advice here.

Those swirls looked pretty bad!

I would agree that it appears something was on the glass or pad that scratched it up. Using the drill had to add some difficulty as well.

I've had great results finishing with the cyan pad but I believe an orange pad would work as well. Maybe not quite as well but definitely should work. The foam doesn't cut glass obviously but it's firm enough under pressure and speed to allow the cerium abrasives to do there job... Just takes more time than the glass pads that are currently available.

Swanicyouth has a good post above. I will add I really worked the ceriglass down completely when finishing. During finishing I kept using a spritz of water to achieve that so I was not introducing fresh abrasives to the pad but really spent my time working it down.
 
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