What Is Tempered Glass
Because of the way tempered glass is heat-treated, it breaks into small, safe pieces rather than large shards. This is called "dicing" and makes tempered glass safer than standard annealed glass. For this reason, tempered glass is most often used where standard glass could pose a danger.
At Dulles Glass & Mirror, we have perfected the process for hand-crafting your tempered glass pieces. The first thing you should know is that your tempered glass is cut to size. In fact, we cut, polish, and finish your glass to your specifications before we temper it. Cutting tempered glass after tempering is not recommended. After your glass is cut, we put it in our own tempering ovens, so we know how your glass is treated from start to finish. After your glass comes out of our tempering ovens, we finish it with a high-pressure cooling treatment to complete the process. Federal regulations state that tempered glass must have a surface compression of 10,000 psi or more. It usually breaks at around 24,000 psi.
Here are a few fast facts about tempered glass:
- You can customize the size, shape, thickness, and edge types of your glass.
- You can also choose bronze or gray tempered glass when you are customizing your glass.
- You can choose to get your glass with or without a tempering stamp (a stamp that authenticates that your glass was tempered.