Introduction: Etching Glass With a Rotary Tool

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Decided to make this tutorial about etching glass with a rotary tool. Had no idea how it would work out but I'm quite pleased with the result. Usually I work with wood so figured this would be a nice project for Beyond the Comfort Zone contest since I haven't had any experience in working with glass.

Step 1:

You will need a printer to print out your designs which you will later trace on the glass. My friend made these in Photoshop with a 10 degree curve so they would end up straight when transferred to glass. You can just print out anything and trace it but then your lines will look a bit crooked on the glass because of the curvature.

Other stuff you need is a pair of scissors, masking tape, rotary tool and diamond tip bits. I bought my bit set for 5$ on ebay.

Step 2:

Cut out your picture and place it in a glass. Secure it with masking tape so it doesn't move.

Step 3:

Securely grip the glass in your hand. Grab the rotary tool like a pen and start tracing the image. Sadly I couldn't take a picture of how I'm actually holding both the glass and the tool but it should be fairly simple to understand by looking at the pics.

Step 4:

Outlines traced and paper inside removed. You can opt to finish at this point.

Step 5:

Filling the insides of the trace. I found that having a dark background makes it much more easy to see what you're doing.

Hope you like the tutorial and have fun etching!

Beyond the Comfort Zone Contest

Third Prize in the
Beyond the Comfort Zone Contest