Windshield Repair Forum

One of the agents I work with came to me the other day and said while he was at the county jail processing a prisoner, he noticed a ton of the glass in the jail was broken, and he thought of me. I think its the glass with the chicken wire on the inside of the glass. I've never really paid much attention to the jail glass, but does anyone know if the glass could be repaired using our kind of system? If you could, you could make a pretty penny repairing the glass. These county jails dont have the money to replace the whole glass, so I would think they would prefer to repair rather than replace. Any thoughts? Or have any of you been in the pokey, and noticed what kind of glass is there?:eusa_ange

I imagine plat glass repair might work on this if the damage was not to large, however I am sure Brent will know more.

rowdy13;31525 wrote:One of the agents I work with came to me the other day and said while he was at the county jail processing a prisoner, he noticed a ton of the glass in the jail was broken, and he thought of me. I think its the glass with the chicken wire on the inside of the glass. I've never really paid much attention to the jail glass, but does anyone know if the glass could be repaired using our kind of system? If you could, you could make a pretty penny repairing the glass. These county jails dont have the money to replace the whole glass, so I would think they would prefer to repair rather than replace. Any thoughts? Or have any of you been in the pokey, and noticed what kind of glass is there?:eusa_ange

Any jail no matter where in the USA, whether it be a tiny little poor town jail or a Rikers Island Jail. They MUST replace the glass!! Any little piece of broken glass in a jail is Dangerous. You know as well as I do what kind of shanks can be made with glass.
If I was you I wouldn't even think of entertaining and fixing a broken glass in a correctional facility,,,,I think you are crazy!
First off going into the jail there must be a CO with you to make sure no inmates steal any of your tools. Your tools will make very good shanks as well. Second the inmates arent dumb. They have 24hrs a day 7 days a week to study broken glass and know what to throw on it to contaminate it. The first thing they would probably throw on it would be urine & feces. I think that would contaminate it and make it hard to fix. Then if it were fixed after cleaning the bathroom matter off it..it might not be fixed right and be week. So when nobody is looking they would just break it again. After its broken they would escape or take a nice new piece of the broken glass and possibly stab a Correction Officer or another inmate. I wouldnt want to live with the fear of getting sued over trying to fix glass in any jail or kinowing I could have prevented a stabbing or other possible outcome......but that is just my opinion.
Tell the agent that told you about the broken glass to tell the Warden of the jail to have the glass replaced.

Delta makes a Plate Glass Resin its a super thick pit filler you clean the area apply the filler put a cure tab on it and cure

Overall I agree with Guelster, although years ago I did repair some wired glass for our local county jail facility. The reason I accepted the job was because the windows were located in an area that could not be reached by the inmates and did not pose a safety issue, but had been cracked by unidentified flying objects. The cracks were not all that severe, so the reason for repair was simply to strengthen the glass so it would not have to be replaced. All I did was drill the end of the cracks and backfilled them to the edge of the glass.

I never thought about the whole feces thing, but I will now, thank you very much Guelster.

The area that I worked in was vacant and secure so I was never in any danger of any kind, except for maybe falling off my ladder.

A lot of people think that wired glass is designed to keep people in or out, but most of it is no stronger than regular glass. I think it is used more for fire containment than anything else, but I'm not even sure about that. They do make some impact resistant wired glass, but I don't have enough experience with it to be able to tell one from the other.

I used to take just about any job I could get, as do many new windshield repair technicians, but if I had it to do over again I would not waste my time with odd jobs like this, or even with long cracks for that matter. I think the money is in the more typical windshield damage, and any free time would be better spent on marketing efforts. That's just my opinion though, there are many windshield repair technicians that love the challenge of the unusual. Maybe I'm just to motivated by the money, but when you are trying to make a living I think it makes sense to focus on what is the most profitable for you.

Thanks everyone, I laughed when I read the threads. Believe me, on a Thursday, the humor in what I read really helped my day. I agree with Brent though, better effort on the sales and marketing end versus the misc. time consuming jobs out there. Hoep everyone enjoys the rest of their day.

Regards.