6G72 Coffee table

[Greg E]

Got the glass in on Friday! Top notch piece from a place in Menasus VA called Dulles Glass & Mirror. Check them out at Glass Shower Doors, Custom Mirrors, Glass Tabletops, Glass Shelves. They have all kinds of options available. I opt for the 1/2" thick, tempered piece with a 1" beveled and polished edge. They made it custom to my measurements which is 28"x31". This will leave about 4" of glass sticking out from the pistons as it's resting on top.

Here's a couple pics of the quality work!




Spent the last couple weeks working on a design to etch into the glass. I ended up stealing this design from ActiveSeven, then used Microsoft paint to edit out everything but the car, then Microsoft Word to blow it up to 17" wide.



For the letters, I used an old 3000GT rear piece as a stencil as I wanted the true Font found on the car. This didn't work out as well as I was hoping though...

Originally I was going to have a friend of mine who works in a metal shop, etch me out the design into a piece of spare scrap metal, but as I got to thinking about it, the metal would need some kind of adhesive to stick to the glass, otherwise the beads from the blaster will get underneath and mess up the design.

So what I did was mask the whole table with a 3M sticky back blanket, print out my design, then free hand cut it out with an exacto knife. This worked great for the image of the car, but the lettering turned out like SHIT! Looks good from 2 feet away, but up close, it looks like a 3rd grader cut it out...

Here it is masked off.



Yes, you are seeing it backwards. This is because I etched the design into the back side of the glass. I did it this way for 2 reasons:

*The smooth side of the glass on top looks nicer
*If I fucked it up, I could just blast the whole back side and it'd have a "fogged" look to it which would still be neat.

Here it is all finished.





What I think I'm going to do is mask the table off again and cut a 20" wide by 6" tall rectangle out of the masking, adhear my 3000GT badging onto the table, then re-blast it. This will "erase" the shitty lettering on there and leave a true 3000GT emblem in it's place. The lettering will be clear instead of fogged and will look 10x nicer than it does now.

I'm going to have to come up with a better way of masking my design for Ulrich's table.

Total cost for the glass after shipping came to about $175 so scrapping it and doing another just isn't worth it...

I'm STILL waiting for the powdercoaters too. It's been 3 weeks now. Should have done that myself I guess...

[Greg E]

BTW: 1/2" tempered glass is waaaay overkill. It weighs in at 47lbs by itself. I think 3/8" tempered will suffice just fine. It's not like it's going to be holding anything heavy on it...

[green-lantern]

If you weren't happy with the lettering why did you go ahead and blast it?

Looks pretty good Greg, Just need to straighten up the 3000GT part.

[Greg E]

If you weren't happy with the lettering why did you go ahead and blast it?

Looks pretty good Greg, Just need to straighten up the 3000GT part.

Didn't realize it looked THAT bad.

[green-lantern]

Didn't realize it looked THAT bad.

lol I see, I think you can fix that pretty easy, you just need a slightly larger stencil.

[Greg E]

lol I see, I think you can fix that pretty easy, you just need a slightly larger stencil.

Hmm... Didn't think of that... Not a bad idea.

I'd rather not have a huge etched box blocking view of the table under the glass.

[green-lantern]

Hmm... Didn't think of that... Not a bad idea.

I'd rather not have a huge etched box blocking view of the table under the glass.

Yeah, that's what I would do. I don't think it would be a good idea to do a block or do the whole glass because that would block the view of the engine.

[Bob]

lol I see, I think you can fix that pretty easy, you just need a slightly larger stencil.

Hmm... Didn't think of that... Not a bad idea.

I'd rather not have a huge etched box blocking view of the table under the glass.

It really looks fine the way it is.

I think if you try to use a larger stencil, the letters will overlap. You don't really have many other options than doing the rectangle you mentioned.

The glass beading doesn't look that deep. You may be able to polish it out with the same compounds they use to repair/polish windshields. You could also call the place you purchased the glass from. They would know how to polish it.

In any case, just don't get discouraged. It will look just fine when everything is together. Whenever I try to make something perfect, I screw it up! I'd probably leave the lettering as is.

[green-lantern]

It really doesn't look that bad the way it is.

I think if you try to use a larger stencil, the letters will overlap. You don't really have many other options than doing the rectangle you mentioned.

The glass beading doesn't look that deep. You may be able to polish it out with the same compounds they use to repair/polish windshields. You could also call the place you purchased the glass from. They would know how to polish it.

In any case, just don't get discouraged. It will look just fine when everything is together. You probably would never notice the lettering.

You could only make certain areas slightly larger. It can be done but it would be a tad tedious.

That's a good idea, he could possibly take it to one of those places that repairs wind shields.

[green-lantern]

or maybe you could just clean up the old stencil.