I have some glass things to fix ("decorative kitchen stuff to play with"). The broken part is a rod, about 8mm diameter, made of some colored glass.
I thought of using nichrome wire, but seems that it can't hot enough to melt the glass. Should I try to connect the broken things with the butane torch lighter?
Some ideas:
- make it look ugly, and ugly-repaired. Do not let parts disconnect again at their own will. No dynamic forces would be applied.
- …forget about it.
- build RepRap and reproduce the thing.
- profit.
Best Answer
I doubt this will work. For starters, from what I can see online, depending on what is in it, glass melts somewhere between 2700 and 4200 degrees F (1500-2300 °C). Butane burns at a temperature of 788°F (420°C). You also mentioned nichrome wire - but this too simply will not generate sufficient heat. Nichrome itself melts at 2552°F (1400°C), so it would not be able to transfer sufficient heat to glass without itself melting.
Even if you could heat glass up enough to melt it, thermal stresses can be significant. So you may find that the glass shatters if you did heat it sufficiently. Those craftspeople who do work with glass also have torches and furnaces that are capable of significantly more heat than you can get from any simply source that a handyman can provide.
Just use glue, perhaps a decent two part epoxy to join these pieces together.