Example of our glass services

Toughened Glass
There are two types of “Toughened” glass; “heat-treated” and “chemically treated”. There are two further types of “heat-treated” glass, “heat-strengthened”, and “fully-tempered”. Fully-tempered heats the glass to above its annealing point, and then rapidly cools the glass. This makes it approximately four to six times tougher than standard float glass, enabling it to qualify as a safety glass that conforms to BS 6206 Class A.

Heat-strengthened follows a similar process, but is only twice as tough, and does not qualify as a safety glass. Chemical toughening involves running the glass through a bath of molten potassium nitrate, which exchanges the smaller sodium ions in the glass, with the bigger potassium ions in the molten bath.

The advantages of this are two-fold; the glass is tougher than when heat treated, and this approach can be applied to glass of complex shapes and sizes, making it suitable not just for glass sheets, but also for glass ornaments, and glass of unusual sizes.

Saint Ives toughened glass services

Express Saint Ives glazing experts offer a variety of safety glass services including toughened glass installations and replacements. Toughened glass will usually shatter into small fragments instead of sharp shards when broken, making it less likely to cause severe injury and deep lacerations. This is particularly useful for certain frames such as cat flaps, glass doors and tables.

Our Saint Ives toughened glass normally takes three to five working days to order in for both single and double-glazed options. This glass is recommended for Saint Ives residential customers, as the glass shatters into relatively harmless fragments upon impact, as opposed to the larger, more dangerous shards caused by breakage of normal glass. However, due to the security risk of having a large hole when the glass has been shattered, we do not recommend this for our Saint Ives commercial customers, whom we offer laminate glass to instead.

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