Modifying Logan mat cutters ...
If you start to frame a lot of pictures you will be cutting lots of glass. In the books I've read they tell you how to do it and they even tell you it can be dangerous handling large pieces of glass. For some reason I haven't read that you need a wall mount cutter for large pieces of glass. I started cutting my glass on the "Intermediate" cutter with the Logan glass cutting head. After I made the squaring arm for the board glass cutting became easier. But handling large pieces of glass (40" by 32") was tough. The tough dangerous part of cutting large pieces of glass was laying down the glass on the board surface. Carrying the glass vertically is not to tough ... but putting it from the vertical position to the horizontal was the dangerous part. I had large pieces of glass break while I was attempting to lay it down. Then I started to put a rigid piece of fiber board against the glass as I was laying it down. Then I would have to slide this fiber board out from underneath the glass after it was down. It was a hassle but less dangerous than having the glass break.
The reason a wall mount cutter is less dangerous than a table cutter is because you don't have to switch from vertical to horizontal. You just lift the glass in its vertical position on to the wall mount cutter. The problem for me was the price of a wall mount cutter. They start at $1000.00.
When I found a Logan "Simplex" cutter on Craigslist for $120.00 I jumped on it. Then I had a spare "Intermediate." A light bulb went off in my head and I thought I might be able to mount this board to my wall. So here is rest of the story in pictures and words ...
Here I will start with the finished product. You can see that the "Intermediate" is also mounted on a large board and the surface made flush ... as with the "Compact" in the earlier page. Here are the details ...
Starting from the bottom you can see I made a deep lip under the board...to catch anything falling. I replaced the metal squaring bar on the left with a wooden one so any glass that comes in contact with it will not break. It is tapered so it fits under the guide rail when it is closed. And again you see the wooden squaring arm to the right.
There are 3 hooks screwed into the top of the board. I attached metal chains to the hooks and they are secured to the studs behind the board. Behind the chains there is a rigid piece of fiberboard or plywood also attached to the studs. If you look at the picture on the left you can see a black screw that goes through a chain link into the plywood and into the stud behind it. This is so the board is rigid. You cannot get enough tension on the board if it is laying against drywall. It has to be stiff so it doesn't move when you run a cutter across the glass.
  I wanted my wall mount cutter to have a little angle to make the large piece of glass easier to handle. You can see that there are shelf brackets behind the board. I bent the tips of the shelf brackets to get the angle I wanted and screwed the board to these brackets from the backside ot the board ... It takes a little practice with the Logan glass cutter to get the right pressure against the glass when the glass is in a vertical position. Overall it is 100 times better than having to lay the glass down on a table. And I have not broken any large piece of glass when lifting it up to get it into cutting position. Of course I want to get a real wall mount cutter but this will work until I can afford one.
My next page will discuss hand miter saws and power miter saws ... Continue
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