Description
Economy Pistol-Grip Cutter is a generic-brand tool for making long cuts (straight or curved) in sheets of stained glass by placing the sheet on a flat surface and hand scoring and snapping. The cutter can be used freehand for curves or with a ruler for straight-line cuts. The cutting wheel is carbide steel, and the plastic hand grip serves as the reservoir for cutting oil. The tool can be used with one hand when the glass sheet is laid on a non-slip surface.
CUTTERS LEAK OIL BY DESIGN!
Like all tools with reservoirs of cutting oil inside, these cutters leak oil at the cutting tip BECAUSE THEY ARE DESIGNED TO DO SO. Keep your cutter in a plastic tray or cup. Do not lay this tool on a finished surface that would be damaged by oil. Note that many artists report using scoring cutters for years without using oil. If you need to avoid oil, you could, but we are not sure how that affects the life of the tool in the longer term.
Do You Need This Tool For Mosaic Art?
The Pistol-Grip Cutter is used for making long cuts. If you want to divide up a sheet of stained glass into fairly uniform square tiles, you could use this tool and a straight-edge ruler to cut the sheet into long strips and then cut the strips into tiles with a Mosaic Glass Cutter. However, mosaic art usually looks better when tiles aren’t uniform but instead are more irregular, and irregularly-shaped rectangles and triangles could be made using a Mosaic Glass Cutter without a Pistol-Grip Cutter. In other words, the Pistol-Grip Cutter is not needed for mosaic mosaic work. On the other hand, if you want to make curved-shaped cuts in stained glass, this is the tool to use.
Snapping Apart Scored Glass
Some method of snapping apart the glass after it has been scored is needed, and it can be as simple as placing a long thin object under the scored line and pressing down on both sides of the glass with gloved hands or a pressing tool. At the studio, we have used a variety of objects for this purpose: an uncooked stick of spaghetti, a dowel, a yardstick, etc. However, there are several tools made for snapping apart scored glass, including the Running Pliers, which have padded jaws.
Economy Pistol-Grip Cutter
- scoring tool for cutting sheet glass
- carbide steel cutting wheel
- plastic hand grip serves as cutting oil reservoir.
- color may vary
- brass fittings
How To Make Mosaics
For more advice on designing your mosaic project or mounting, cutting, and grouting tile, please see our page of Mosaic Frequently Asked Questions or our Mosaic Information Guide, which lists instructional pages described by topic. We also post new articles about making mosaics at our How to Mosaic Blog.
