What could I use to polish a piece of glass with some shallow nicks in it to make it look shiny?

That’s usually done by flame polishing, but that would be hard to do with your current setup (it requires better temperature control than you have with your little kiln, or an oxy-fuel torch).

Abrasive polishing would be a huge amount of work, requiring you to work through many successive grades of abrasive. You really don’t want to go there.

Another possibility is to spray it with a special flux made for this purpose (see “Black Magic” on this site . This causes the surface of the glass to melt at a lower temperature, so you don’t have to refire to such a high temperature. Not real cheap, though :(

Okay! I’ll probably just have to be brave and put it back in the kiln, haha. Thanks for your help. :)

Fingers crossed!

@Mariah You might try using a very fine grit sand paper. I’ve had luck with that, but not on something as fine or as delicate as a glass bead. I have chipped the edge of the glass tray from my microwave, a coffee maker carafe and my favorite big Pyrex measuring cup. They were still functional and either expensive or difficult to replace but the sharp edges where they chipped made them a little dangerous so I sanded down the chips with a fine grit sand paper. For something like a glass bead you might want to start with a 400 grit and then final polishing with an 800 grit. You should also sand with the paper wet. You need to secure the bead in a vise or something and then wrap the paper around something stiff and a little larger than the chip. I have some chopsticks I got at Bed, Bath and Beyond that might work, I wish I could pm one to you. :-)

I also found this information on manually polishing glass that you might find useful. As the article mentions, all you really need is a fine abrasive. You could use some kind of pumice too, as they mention also. The article talks about using an abrasive paste and polishing with a Dremel but they are not very specific about how to do it. They say to apply the paste directly to the glass and then polish with the too. I have a Dremel too and I am trying to think of what bit you would use since they don’t specify but I can’t really think which one would be appropriate off the top of my head.

Okay…...so I didn’t refire my piece. Because I chickened out. Because I have put soooo much time into this hunk of glass, and I worried that having used my Dremel tool on it would have caused particles of the diamond tip to become embedded in my piece, which could cause breakage if they expand at a different rate than my glass when heated. Sigh.

Instead, after reading @lillycoyote‘s article, I rooted around in the basement and found some really fine sand paper (400). And that has smoothed out the scratches, but now there’s a kind of foggy white surface to it. According to the link, I have to finish polishing by using pumice or cerium oxide. The latter is really expensive, but I found a pound of the finest grit pumice for cheap on this website. I figure it could be a useful thing to have on hand. My question now is if anyone familiar with this company to vouch for their legitimacy. And also, the description of the pumice on this site says “Pumice, 4F (very fine) Used on cork belts, wheels, or discs for semi-polishing the edges or bevels on glass plate. Less abrasive than 2F. Excellent pre-polish on glass.” Pre-polish? This seems to contradict @lillycoyote‘s link which says this is the final step of polishing. Any clue, anyone?

I really wish I hadn’t scratched this damn piece, hahaha.

Thanks.

@Mariah Yes, you might get a smoky finish on glass from a 400 grit. You might go to a finer grit paper, like an 800 or even a 1600 grit, if you can find it, before you order the pumice. And no, I don’t know about pre-polish. God, I hope my advice didn’t lead to a solution worse than the problem, now you have a smoky surface instead of scratches! Oh boy! The key, as the article states, and as I think I mentioned, is to start with a courser abrasive and move to finer and finer ones. And I don’t know about the suppliers site either. I’ve never thought about where to get it. My dad was a chemist and a do it yourselfer I have all sorts of stuff like that just lying around here. I kind of take it for granted that I have a jar of pumice around if I need the stuff. :-) I’m not sure where else you might be able to find the stuff.

You might also try Brasso. Some people use that for polishing glass, though I’ve never tried it. If none of this works, make me a pendant from your bead that was ruined by my bad advice and I will buy it. :-)

Oh Lilly, don’t feel bad! I really appreciate you sending me that article. This is going to work out.

I started with 220 grit sandpaper and moved to 400; the link says 400 should be sufficient if you follow up with pumice or cerium oxide.

I decided against the pumice because it turned out the shipping was $10 and because websites seem to disagree whether it is sufficient for final polishing or if it is a prepolish. They only seem to agree that cerium oxide gives a good final polish. Cerium oxide is really expensive, BUT, I got lucky and found a 10g bag on ebay for only 3 bucks with free shipping. So yay! It just might take a while to get here because it’s coming from across the pond, but I can be patient. Maybe.

It’s a very small amount, but will be at least enough to fix this pendant and maybe have some left over for if this happens again.

If I remember, I’ll come back here and post a pic of my piece when I’m done. Thank you for all the help!

Lilly, my little package of cerium oxide arrived today, and it worked like a charm! Here’s a pic of my now-shiny glass pendant. I should have gotten a ‘before’ photo. And I still have maybe ¾ of the bag left. Thanks for your advice!