blackjack Posted June 23, 2004 Report Share Posted June 23, 2004 anyone have any ideas on how i could could attach a sheet of broken glass to the top of my guitar? when i say broken, i mean shattered rather than in peices. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skibum5545 Posted June 23, 2004 Report Share Posted June 23, 2004 seems to me, glue the intact piece down with epoxy, and then smash the sucker! I assume you have the tools to cut glass? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
truerussian558 Posted June 23, 2004 Report Share Posted June 23, 2004 actually on those cool mirror guitars i beleive they glued every single piece in meticulously, so the put it on the guitar then marked out the place, cut them, and glued them in, so that no wood is showing through Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JPL Posted June 23, 2004 Report Share Posted June 23, 2004 I've never tried this so follow my advice with extreme caution. Tape the hell out of the front of the mirror to hold it together and then smash away. Glue it on with the tape in place and remove the tape after the glue sets. Heating and then quickly cooling might give some cool breakage. I've done that with marbles but never sheet glass but it might be worth wasting a sheet or three to see if it works. WEAR EYE PROTECTION!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drak Posted June 23, 2004 Report Share Posted June 23, 2004 I remember reading a long article on the first Paul Stanley prototype that used this, and what they went thru to finally get it to work out. Unfortunately, I have no idea where I got it from. I do remember that Paul wanted it to refract the laser lights in all different directions, so they installed all the shards in slightly different angles. I think they used the center as the high point and the glass went down from there out to the sides, kinda like an archtop, but not so extreme. I think they used a glass cutter and actually cut all the pieces, I could be wrong...something tells me they tried smashing it in a towel first, but it never worked out that way, and wound up actually cutting each piece. Not 100% sure tho... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JPL Posted June 23, 2004 Report Share Posted June 23, 2004 I'm not familiar with the guitar you're talking about but I bet it could be hard to smash it into a good looking pattern. Fun but hard. I still think the tape would work but would need to be done differently to use cutters. Since you don't want to cut from the back side of a mirror (the backing will chip away) try putting low tack tape on the back, cut to your hearts delight Then tape the front, remove the back tape carefully and you're ready to glue it one in one piece. I hope that makes sense. Like I said, I've never done this but I've done a lot of glass work (stained and fused mostly) and I think it's worth considering. Also, do your back a favor and find some very thin glass, that sucker will weigh a ton! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAI6 Posted June 24, 2004 Report Share Posted June 24, 2004 Yeah, you guys are right about Paul's Iceman. They tried to simply break a mirror, but unfortunately, it doesn't break in perfect pieces. You get everything from large sheets, to small "crumbs" of mirror that you need to glue back together. Not very practical to work with, plus it may not look as "cool" as you though it would. It seems to me that the best way is to cut it, so that you can get the perfect design. But I think you really need to angle/adjust the pieces so that they just don't lay flat together. If you don't, I don't think the "break" will really look like much... It has nothing to do with refracting lasers or anything like that, but I just don't think it will stand out much if you leave it "perfectly" flat. And if you angle the pieces: They noticed when doing Paul's guitar that even when cutting, the edges (where the breaks are) are razor sharp, so they ended up grinding down the edges slightly, giving it a minor bevel. It sounds like alot of work, so I can understand why it costs quite a bit to have it done...... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
litchfield Posted June 25, 2004 Report Share Posted June 25, 2004 They noticed when doing Paul's guitar that even when cutting, the edges (where the breaks are) are razor sharp, so they ended up grinding down the edges slightly, giving it a minor bevel. It sounds like alot of work, so I can understand why it costs quite a bit to have it done...... And Paulhimself admitted to slicing his hand open at a sound check! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
litchfield Posted June 25, 2004 Report Share Posted June 25, 2004 A testament of how big a KISS fan I am: "The KISS boys were always good for a challenge or two. Rather than get wrapped up in the minutiae of fret crown shapes and potentiometer tapers, Paul Stanley knew what the important issues were - like should the pickguard be chrome plated or polished stainless. "Paul's legendary Mirror Ball Iceman is a perfect example of how to push the envelope of guitar technology. It started with a phone call from Paul about his idea to have a guitar that resembled a shattered mirror. His exact words, if I recall, were, "I want it to look like somebody hit a mirrored guitar with a hammer right on the pickups." "It sounded easy enough. I got some 1/8" mirror, cut it into the shape of an Iceman and smacked it in the pickup area with a ham- mer. What I ended up with was about 10,000 bits of mirror dust where the hammer hit and three other pieces. This was obviously not going to work. "I was going to have to cut each piece to look like it was shattered. I went out and got a lot more 1/8 mirror and a handful of glass cutters. Starting with one piece of mirror cut into the shape of Paul's guitar, I thought of drawing a plan and transferring it to the mirror. In the end, I decided to wing it and started to cut out pieces that I thought looked cool. It took a couple of days to do this and as I went around the guitar, I started to get the hang of it. When it was finished, I was glad to still have five fingers on each hand." "As it turned out, cutting the mirror was the easy part. While I was doing the mirror, my trusty partner in crime at Ibanez, Jim Heffner. was routing a quarter-inch out of the top of one of Paul's guitars. That's right, the mirrors were a retrofit. Jim left the abalonoid binding around the top and the plan was to slap some epoxy in there and set the mirrors into it. "We routed out twice the thickness of the mirror so we could set each piece at a slightly different angle, Paul's stage concept was to hit the guitar with a Super Trooper spot light and have rays of light shooting out from the guitar at all angles like a mirror ball. We figured a 5 to 15 degree difference between adjoining pieces would do it." "I wrapped dowels with masking tape to keep all the holes from clogging with epoxy and went to town. Since the Iceman has a slightly arched top, I had to re-cut some of the mirror to better fit the curve of the top. This part was tedious and trying to keep ahead of the epoxy cure was not always successful, but all the pieces seemed to fit pretty well". ''Late that night, with all the mirrors in place, Jim and I took the axe outside and gave it a test run in the headlights of my pickup truck. Yup, it worked. Shards of light were shooting off every which way. The only problem was that because the mirrors were set at angles to each other, the joints were razor sharp. You could make mountains of tasty cole slaw with this Veg-O-Caster." "I was prepared to deal with this by flowing a clear polyurethane finish over the mirrors so the surface would be nice and smooth and safe. Next morning, I mixed up the polyurethane and poured it on. I went about my business for a few hours and when I went back to the shop to check it, my stomach knotted. It was drying cloudy and ruining the whole mirror effect. ****! Now what?" "Before it got rock hard, I took a chisel and began to scrape the finish off. Fortunately, glass doesn't hold finish very well, and by dinner time I had removed nearly all the finish. The finish wouldn't come out from between the pieces, but that proved to be the solution to the problem." " I filled all the joints with polyurethane, but that still left sharp edges. I ended up using a small sanding wheel on a Dremel tool to grind each mirror joint smooth, back filling with polyurethane as needed. This took forever, but it did the trick." "All that remained was to get some glass drill bits and to mount all the pickups and hardware. Paul was anxious to give it a go and damage some corneas as well as some eardrums. When I finally saw it on stage with about a million candlepower blasting into it, the vision was pretty impressive." "Of all the custom guitars we did this one sticks in my mind mainly because I found some old photos to jog my failing memory. The fact that it required a tremendous amount of effort to make and contributed virtually nothing to the universe of guitar technology will endear it to me forever." Reprinted from Vintage Guitar Magazine, September, 1994. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
litchfield Posted June 25, 2004 Report Share Posted June 25, 2004 When I did mine, I just glued the pieces on top. Dubbed the Death Machine by my X fiance Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted June 25, 2004 Report Share Posted June 25, 2004 I still like the idea of using chrome vinal to do it, just cut peal n stick so much easier and also a breeze to clear over plus you don't have to worry about weigth and thickness. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jehle Posted June 25, 2004 Report Share Posted June 25, 2004 I still like the idea of using chrome vinal to do it, just cut peal n stick so much easier and also a breeze to clear over plus you don't have to worry about weigth and thickness. You read my mind on that one. It would be much easier to do that today with some plasticy mylar stuff. Very reflective and it's not going to slice you hand to bits. Hmmm... Now I finally have a use for all those AOL CD's that I get in the mail. Brain, are you thinking what I'm thinking? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dcamp67 Posted June 25, 2004 Report Share Posted June 25, 2004 Hmmm... Now I finally have a use for all those AOL CD's that I get in the mail. Brain, are you thinking what I'm thinking? What a good idea!!!!!! Looks like there will be a lot of reflective guitars being built soon.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super-Jag Posted June 27, 2004 Report Share Posted June 27, 2004 You don't necessarily have to use glass, I tried this once on a headstock of a friend's custom Warlock copy (which I am soon to be re-building as he wrecked the aforementioned neck on it). I found a sheet of reflective backed plexiglass (basically plexiglass mirror material), we cut it into the shape of the headstock but about half a cm smaller, covered the back in duc-tape, and hit it with a hammer, and it did not crush like the Ibanez guy above said the glass did. I cut out a rout in the headstock, used Liquid nails in small dobs to hold them in, then used a little stick or so to "spatula" small amounts into the cracks between the plexiglass, then painted them black with Testors model paint after using a hobby knife to carefully clear the excess off the edges. There were NO sharp edges leftover when we were done. As for me...hmmm...I might give it a shot for a body AND headstock after the Super Jag is finished, I got a pile of guitar bodies that I made over the last few years that I could do this to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HetMasteen Posted July 7, 2004 Report Share Posted July 7, 2004 actually a good idea is to use a big amount of duct tape (clear if possible) to tape up the entire mirror and THEN brake it, keep it as gentle as possible- the you can see the brake lines while it still holds together- if you need additional braking you know exactly where to do it. and then remove the duct tape and glue all the pieces- that way, they all fit together like a puzzle. i never tried this with a guitar, but i did this once for something else (long story) and it worked great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hotrock Posted July 7, 2004 Report Share Posted July 7, 2004 I don't know if anyone else has suggested this because I haven't got time to read through it all (I have a urgent date with the pub). Have a look for security for cars (try ToadTen). They have a plastic film that it's close on impossible to break. You put it over car windows and it makes them brick proof. See if you could get hold of that. Hold the glass in with some binding or glue it with see through glue. STick the plastic on and throw that sucker out of the window Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hotrock Posted July 7, 2004 Report Share Posted July 7, 2004 And as the film can't be split you won't cut your hands to buggry either. But if you do get the film from ToadTen, can I have the sticker to put on my car Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darren wilson Posted July 7, 2004 Report Share Posted July 7, 2004 Rather than epoxy, clear silicone adhesive might be a good option. It'll have a longer curing time to allow you to position all the pieces, and it will be flexible enough when dry so it doesn't crack or flake off under playing conditions if the wood expands or contracts. The acrylic mirror idea is good, too, though it won't have the same kind of depth or reflectivity of glass. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
speedy Posted July 18, 2004 Report Share Posted July 18, 2004 i got a cool idea i don't now were, but i know you can buy these mirrors for disco-balls they are ca. 1x1cm big and i think they are good for that. keep on rockin' Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ki swordsman Posted July 18, 2004 Report Share Posted July 18, 2004 i heard it was possible to take a mirror pickguard (clear perspex stuff with chrome mylar on the back) put it between two books and beat it up a little apparently it doesn't breakup but gets lots of little cracks giving it a shattered look Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
litchfield Posted July 20, 2004 Report Share Posted July 20, 2004 I used fire palce mirrors fore mine, and just glued them on. Havent played the thing in forever. Got it out of storage yesterday. I wasn in a band that covered Cold Gin and She. I used this and you can see the rocket launchers on the back, and the smoke stains on the glass and in the cavities. Before anyone goes nust about this, it was a $75 Encore I set the neck on and modded to hell. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
litchfield Posted July 20, 2004 Report Share Posted July 20, 2004 A nice before shot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biohazard Posted July 20, 2004 Report Share Posted July 20, 2004 You definately need to do the back and sides in mirror too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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