Carolyn's 3rd Glass Experiment

For my third experiment I tried to etch into the glass. Originally I was going to try to see if any of the cutters could etch into the glass without breaking it. Now that I have used the glass cutters and know that to cut the glass all the cutter does it scratch it and it snaps, I know this will not work to etch the glass without having to try it. My second idea, the first method I tried, was to chemically etch the glass. This is done by taking etching cream and painting it onto the glass. You can buy vinyl sticky stencils to cut into to achieve a cleaner, desires design. Once you paint on the etching cream you let it stand for 5 minutes and then rinse off with water. Although the cream worked, and etched into the glass, the difference was not as noticeable as I had hoped for. For this reason I tested putting the etching on two coats for one piece (10 minutes) and then for 20 minutes on a third piece. The results were all the same and no difference can be seen between the different chemical exposure times. Lately I tested the etching cream on colored glass and found the etching cannot be seen. The next method of etching a tried was on the laser cutter. I tried two etching, one with solid block letters and one with unlined blocked letters. When the laser cutter etched into the glass, the letters were a lot more noticeable then the letters done by the etching cream. The problem with the laser etching was that the glass chipped in places and I fear that if you tried to cut the glass after laser etching it would break though the etching because all the glass needs in a slight scoring to break.