Let me tell you a story. Just recently one of the founding members of NEGSA and myself were cleaning the windows at a prefab log cabin. Real pretty little place. Here is a picture of Johnny working on the outside. The house was going relatively well. The insides were great. So were the outs until he got around to this side.
The glass became what he calls "grabby". I call it frictive. It has a tendency to grab the fabric of your wand. This particular surface was also stained from either a cleaner that was wiped by hand with a rag and hard water spots that were left probably from a garden hose. Very unfortunate because the only way to remove the stains was to polish it with a machine. The glass cleaned up rather well with some 0000 steel wool. No scratch but it was absolutely impossible to scrape with a blade. That would have caused scratches! The razor dragged real bad.
What was very interesting was we tested a commercial polish which I have proven works very well on windows without scratching. It removes hard water spots even with 0000 steel wool from low e factory coatings. No scratches at all. Leaves a bright finish in the direct sun. But. When used on our log cabin it became plain very fast that it would leave scratches and turn the window white with a haze. This shows that window surfaces are all different. The products are the same. But the surfaces are different. Another member of NEGSA said to me once, yes it is true, glass is absolutely NOT all the same. We were talking about scratch sensitive glass.
This glass could be restored and sealed with a very high quality polish. Likely a white cerium oxide and a polishing machine. I would try a low rpm with a soft wool pad or a foam pad. You would want to get a waiver signed to make sure you are free from any liability to experiment. Which you would need to do to figure out exactly what procedure you would need to use to clear the stains. Then I would suggest sealing with Nanovations NG1010. The price should start at four bux per square foot. But it could easily end up at a hundred USD per plate. When you explain all of this to the home owner they usually refuse.
The bottom line here is that nobody seams to know how easily glass surfaces can be damaged. So we need to keep on working at educating the masses. I am thinking about looking around at different gatherings of various professionals like real estate brokers and agents. Or home builders. And asking for an opportunity to give a twenty minute talk. I will be setting up talks like this within New England for the members of NEGSA. And will be writing about these right here.
Written by Henry Grover.
Glass Smart Consulting
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