Cutting glass rods?

[bubblebabeuk]

Sorry for all the questions this morning (hubby's off fixing the shower so the computor is mine! LOL)

For some reason I am struggling to cut glass rods, I got sent a load of lausha and needed to cut it down, you would not believe the amount of extra frit generated by my poor cutting skills, not to mention the rubbish ends of the bits of rod, all pointy and pokey. I now cutting stuff inside a bucket with a towel over the top to stop the shrapnal escaping! #-o
I use the nippers that are square faced and cut by meeting at middle, this is a rubbish explanation of them, here's a link to a set......
http://www.tuffnellglass.com/contents/media/l_DSC00422.JPG
Admittedly the rods were fairly thick-ish, but still??? The same thing happened when I tried to chop up some premade murrine, lots of expensive frit! I must be doing something really really wrong.#-o
I hoped to make some cane (sig cane or flower cane from the tonbodmama book etc) and be able to cut that down as well, but the messing I am making of cutting rods up its just never worth it.
Please please help me!
Maybe some pics would help to show me how it should be done.

[Kevan]

Do you have a pipe cutter for cutting tubing? It looks kind of like a clamp with a big nob on You can use it to score the rods then just lay them on a table with the score mark at the edge of the table and snap the rod.

They look like this. You can get them at any hardware store.

http://www.toolbarn.com/images//ridgid/32910.jpg

[Ro]

the wheel nippers make a cleaner cut, the ones you show are pretty crude cutting, i have them for larger rods and they do make a mess. the wheel cutters you can spin to get a fresh spot, but they dont cut bigger than 6 or so mm rods. you can also use carbide score and snap, for large rods or tubing, score with carbide, dab a bit of water/saliva on scratch, then press and hold rod super heated in flame on scratch and it will snap (mostly for boro, likely will cause a shattered mess for soda lime)
wheel nippers: http://www.waleapparatus.com/walestore/searchresult.aspx?CategoryID=966
scoring:
http://www.waleapparatus.com/walestore/searchresult.aspx?CategoryID=72
ro

[MikeAurelius]

Tubing cutters usually have a steel wheel for the cutting work, and to cut glass properly, it should be replaced with a carbide wheel.

We cut a lot of rod and tubing at Aura, and we use three tools depending on the side of the rod or tube.

We use a disc cutter, which is similar to the pliers shown above, except it has two carbide wheels on either side of the opening.

We use a carbide cutter, which is a large piece of carbide with an exposed sharp angle (115 degrees I think).

And we use a modified tubing cutter with a carbide wheel replacing the mild steel cutter.

The pliers you have will work for awhile, but the cutting point will soon get dull from the glass. Carbide is much harder than mild steel, and can be ground to a finer point.

And when all else fails and we have a huge piece to cut, we've also got a diamond saw.

[PaulaD]

Mike,
Can you recommend a diamond saw? I get sick of cutting glass myself!
Thanks. Paula

[cadia]

TessKay posted her technique of using a disk cutter with her dremel to score the glass and then just snap at the cut - I'll try to find her description and link.
Edit to say: Couldnt find what I was looking for but I found this :2. Score and snap - you can use a scoring tool (which is basically a knife sharpener) or a spare hacksaw blade, or a metal file, or anything that will score the surface of the glass or the disk cutter with a dremel tool. Score it a little (doesn't even have to be all the way around) and then hold the rod in both hands with your thumbs right behind the score, then break it apart.
hope that helps