Look what i made

[Carpento]

As promised, the English translation of my earlier made tutorial in Dutch:
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In this how-to I will explain how you can make a mirror with a similar design as posted above.

What do we need? [Picture 1]

* The mirror
* The design you want to engrave into the mirror
* A Dremel or similar multitool
* Engraving bits for the multitool
* Thinner
* Kitchen towel
* Detergent
* Towel
* Water (I prefer to put it in a bottle)

Of course do we need the mirror. Further a Dremel multitool or similar is necessary. For the Dremel we need Diamond Wheel Points as found on this page. Don’t try to use other engraving bits shown on that page. Only the Diamond Wheel Points are suitable for use on glass.

Of course we need a design to engrave into the mirror. You can make it at several ways. It could be done in a photo editing program, if you want to engrave text only you could possibly use Microsoft Word. And you could also design something by hand.

It is important that you will get your design printed by laser printer on plain paper. If you don’t have a laser printer a visit to the local copy shop might be useful. There you can copy your design with a laser copier. Or just use the laser printer at your work, but I am not responsible for any angry bosses You must look after your design being printed in clear black lines. Otherwise it could be possible that your design will become unusable after being transferred to the mirror. If you designed something using pencil, just re-draw the final lines by a thin cd-marker or anything else making clear black lines.

The design has to be printed the same way as it has to visible in the mirror when finished. So do not print it mirrored…

The engraving will be done at the backside of the mirror. A mirror is made from a layer of glass, a thin film of silver and a protective coating. We are going to remove the protective layer and the film of silver to achieve the result shown above. Therefore the mirror must be placed with the protective coating upwards. I recommend covering the glass with a layer of adhesive tape to prevent it from being scratched. It would be quite a disappointment to discover a scratch on your newly made mirror… [2]

When all earlier listed required items are present we are ready to continue. The transfer of the design onto the mirror is possibly the most difficult part of this job. Place the mirror on the towel, with the backside up and take your design. [3 and 4]

[Carpento]

Place the design on the backside of the mirror carefully and ensure yourself that it is placed correctly. [1] Continue by folding a piece of kitchen towel into a small handy packet. [2] Soak it with thinner [3] and rub with this thinner soaked paper over the backside of your design. [4] If you put to much thinner on your kitchen towel the transfer won’t be successful. If you do not use enough thinner it won’t be successful too. It will take some experience to use just enough…

[Carpento]

Be sure to rub the whole design [1] but do not rub more than two times over the same place. When completely done, remove your design and see if the transfer has been successful. When transfer fails, just clean the backside of the mirror using some thinner and take a new printout of your design for a next attempt. Don’t be dissatisfied when you won’t pass the transfer in one attempt, as said: it is quite difficult and some experience is useful. Although I have made several mirrors I will have always some printouts extra, just in case that…

If the transfer is successful we can find a nice copy of our design on the backside of the mirror. If some parts are a bit light or hardly visible use a cd-marker to resolve that problem. [2]

Now we are ready to start engraving with our Dremel tool. We need the water and detergent too. [3] That is because we need to get the mirror wet when we start engraving. This is not only for cooling purposes; it’s also needed to prevent big amounts of dust coming up. The dust now will be caught in the water. Refresh your water when the dust in it makes it hard to see your design…

[Carpento]

It’s pretty if the water flows well covering the mirror but because we just used thinner, it will not… A little drop of detergent will be helpful. As you can see in the picture, the water flows lots better after adding a little bit of detergent. [Picture 1: without detergent, Picture 2: with detergent used]

Now it’s time to use our Dremel. Put a diamond Wheel in it and choose a moderate speed. Choosing a too low speed will make the engraving become a hard job, using a too high speed will make your Dremel difficult to control. I prefer speed 5 or 6 out of 10.

The engraving itself is not difficult. Just follow the lines, as you learned at primary school. The design used for this tutorial is just made out of lines but if you want to engrave bigger areas, that’s also possible. [3 & 4]

[Carpento]

You’ll notice that the pieces you engraved will become transparent. [1] After some time (depending of the difficulty of your design) we have engraved our whole design. We are nearly ready. [2] Turn over the mirror and remove the protective tape.

Directly after the engraving the mirror looks like this. [3] Pretty nice but a mirror like this is at its best when lighting is placed behind it. I used so called CCFL’s (cold cathode fluorescent lamps) which are used in computer casemods. In this picture the mirror is placed on the bottom of a computer case [4]

This tutorial is originally written in Dutch and translated in English by Carpento. This tutorial was originally placed at Casejunkies.com.

[Carpento]

If something is not translated well or if you don't understand certain parts, feel free to ask me

Making such a mirror is not that difficult, if you want to make one yourself:

Good luck !

[Egg Nog]

Thanks a lot! It's an amazing tutorial!

[QuattroMan]

Look what I made this week

It's a mirror in which I graved a picture of a Ferrari F40 and the logo's of Ferrari. If anyone wants I can explain how this is done, I have already written a Dutch tutorial and I can give it a try to translate it to English. For your information: the Dutch Tutorial can be found here.

This mirror will be placed behind the die-cast models my brother has collected, and the most models he has are Ferrari's, so that explains my choice of what to make.

I have used a picture (I enclosed it too) which was posted in Matt's hi-res hide-out, and I want to thank de one who posted it for doing so. I mean it was Nopassn but I'm not sure.

Well, how do you like this piece of self made art ?

ok this is picture i like to do it with,but if you have better picture please let me see it, thanks for PM,please let me know.

[Zondaboy1]

as soon as my wrist heals i will try and fail misrably

[QuattroMan]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


hey Z!! sounds like you got a personal problem there.lol

[junaman]

wow...... That's amazing....!!!! Great JOB
now if only i had the patience.. and ability to do that...

[Carpento]

ok this is picture i like to do it with,but if you have better picture please let me see it, thanks for PM,please let me know.

I made it suitable to engrave, result added to this post. If you have any comment, critics or whatelse, feel free to tell me.

[Rockefella]

Carpento, you are the man. Thanks for taking the time to translate it, now I could go off and attempt this awesome sh1t3.

[QuattroMan]

I made it suitable to engrave, result added to this post. If you have any comment, critics or whatelse, feel free to tell me.

looks sweet, ill email you the yellow bull like the one on my avatar tonight so you can add it to that mirror,thanks I cant wait....

[Carpento]

Because I was very busy with school and my parttime job I was not able to start working on the mirror, but today I have a free day so I will start with it.

This is the final design I made, do you like it ? I will start engraving the car, so you could comment the logo's if you don't like it and I can change it if so.