A glazier's trade is just about shatterproof. Wherever there are people,
there's glass -- and wherever there's glass, there'll be broken glass.
"The beauty of the glass industry is that it breaks," laughs Trevor King,
a glazier in Houston. "You'll always have a job!"
Glaziers generally work on four types of projects:
- Residential glazing: involves windows, shower doors and display
tables
- Commercial interior: decorative room dividers and security glazing
- Retail work: involves replacing storefront windows
- Construction: large commercial buildings where glaziers build
metal framework extrusions and install glass panels
Glaziers use a variety of tools, including glass cutters, putty knives,
power drills and grinders. Those working on commercial buildings must be prepared
to work at great heights, often in poor weather, and must be strong enough
to maneuver heavy sheets of glass into place. And working with stained and
decorative glass requires artistic aptitude.
One of the newer developments has been insulated glass. In many houses,
glass fogs up during cold winter months. With insulated glass, that problem
is eliminated. It also helps prevent excessive heat during the summer months
-- a big plus for new construction going into the southern United States.
Computers and the use of lasers have also had a big impact on the industry.
Some glaziers work with laser-guided cutters. Another method of cutting glass
involves using a stream of water at high pressure.
"That means you can now cut glass into the shape of a cross, or even a
doily pattern," says King. "These things couldn't be done 50 years ago because
the technology wasn't available."
An example of some of the fancier work can be seen outside the Louvre Museum
in Paris where a glass pyramid stands, designed by architect I. M. Pei. Its
design incorporates 33 million triangles -- many of them glass!
"You wouldn't have been able to do that 30 years ago. You wouldn't even
be able to think of it," King says. His company was recently involved in the
construction of a butterfly house. This was no typical butterfly house, but
an inverted glass cone with the top shunted off at an angle. Innovative work
is also on display in Los Angeles.
"The residential side will always be the same, but the commercial side,
even industry, is changing," he says.