Windshield Repair Forum

Hello all,

I have read through many threads in this forum but couldn't find an answer to my problem. But I think the people in this forum can help me.

I am not in the windshield repair business. I work at a car factory. Currently we must deal with about 20 cars per day with little scratches on front, back, or side windows. We have an area where we can do glass polishing or replace windows. Questions:

If you have a 3" long undetectable-by-fingernail scratch, about how long should I expect repair to spend polishing it out? (not including setup or cleanup, using a felt pad on a buffer and cerium oxide/water mix).

How long is everyone else taking with their own scratch removal system?

How about 3" scratches that can slightly be felt with the fingernail?

Replacement might end up being cheaper than scratch removal if removing a scratch is expected to be a 3-hour process.

The light scratches that you cannot feel should not take long at all using cerium oxide and a good wheel. While every scratch is a little different, and tempered glass is going to take a bit longer than laminated glass, I would think you could remove a 3" light scratch within 10 minutes or less.

If you can feel the scratch with your fingernail you may have to double the time, and on the side and back glass (tempered) you may have difficulty removing the scratch with cerium oxide only.

I'm not a very patient person, so if I couldn't remove a 3" scratch in 15 minutes or so I probably wouldn't waste my time, but then again, the cost to replace the glass is always a consideration.

I've seen a lot of scratch removal systems demonstrated, but very few have impressed me as being any better than the simple wheel and cerium oxide that most glass shops still use. However, Novus does have a very nice scratch removal machine for deeper scratches. Yes, they are a competitor, but I have to give credit where credit is due. It is not a cheap piece of equipment, but with a little practice you can remove fairly significant damage. The other thing I like about the Novus machine is that it recovers the slurry so there is a lot less mess than with most systems.

There are a lot of scratch removal systems out there, so it will be interesting to here what tools and techniques other forum members prefer.

Having once been the proud owner of as couple of these systems I can say they do work, however like evry glass polishing equipment I have ever used they do leave distortion. To remove a scratch you must remove glass and this create's a lens effect. They are a noisy piece of equipment and if you break the suction seal whilst grinding quite messy, however they were the best of many I used. They can be found under the name of Autostock as well as Novus. If it makes any difference to your choice we do not do glass polishing anymore, also we could not get insurance for doing scratch removal on car windshields as the lens effect could be said to have an effect on any accidents. For example the tree was not where I thought it was.

Light scratches in new glass parts are removed prior to being delivered to glass shops for installation all the time, and in most cases neither the glass shop or the customer can ever tell.

In fact, mirrors are polished with cerium oxide prior to final inspection to remove any light blemishes or scratches.

I agree with you though screenman, if the scratch is very deep it is quite likely there will be distortion.