Blog Post # two
As I have moved through my career in this industry, I have spent time figuring “how does one look at glass?”
… I know, not the most key, salient point in life, but for someone who cleans glass for a living and knows he will teach those who come along, it’s quite relevant.
Glass is an interesting medium and it does have differing qualities as I have found over the years. Glass made in Australia is a pleasure to clean, especially anything labelled “Viridian”. More recently, with glass manufacturing dying with a whimper in Australia and the influx of imported glass from overseas has led to a noticeable difference in quality. It has a very fine rough texture to it and does not clean as easily no matter what is done. It’s not a major difference and it’s still clean, but long term I am noticing it weathers sooner. It also is inferior with windows, balustrades, shower screens and car sunroofs exploding per reports meaning defective yet it was sent to us to use (just like chinesium…why and how Australia lost its manufacturing industries and became reliant on overseas is the crime of century).
Looking at glass and knowing what you see saves a lot of time and back and forth checking both sides of the window. To explain how to look at glass, it is important to understand shadows, as this is the key to unlocking this skill.
Glass has two faces and for simplicities sake we’ll say inside and outside. So we’re standing looking at the outside face, there are marks and bird poos etc which are normally very easily seen and addressed. Once the major cleaning has been completed, it can then go into the finer detailing and what to look for (to be covered in a future blog). There are a myriad of substances that can be deposited onto windows and for simplicity I will use paint - small splatters or overspray depending on the method used. If the paint is on the outside, when you look at this, you will see a shadow on the opposing face (inside). that tells you which side of the pane it is on. No shadow = inside and of course apply the reverse if you looking at the inside face of the glass. A simple way to demonstrate this to yourself is to take a white board marker and make a mark on the glass where you are standing. You will see a shadow appear on the opposing face! If unsure, wave your hand over it to see if the shadow disappears and returns. Another method is to use a mirror. This makes it very easy to see the mark due to the reflective surface and after all, it started out as a piece of glass.
Give it a shot and feel free to leave some feedback on how you went. Would love to hear what you learned.