Making Door Windows From Plexiglass On My 1936 Chevy Coupe

Today I'm

making

door

and window glass out of

plexiglass

and I'll be using an angle grinder to shape it and an electric jigsaw to cut out what could go wrong, so this is the hole I need to fill. I already made a template. The

windows

will not slide up and down. These are temporary clip-on glass just to protect us a little bit from the wind and rain and also a little bit of security while we're not in the car, so I'm using quarter inch

plexiglass

virtually. It doesn't have flex which is what I want and I have it on a big table as you can see and I have a blanket underneath because I don't want it to vibrate so the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to draw around the template but I need to remember which I'm going to cut an eighth of an inch inside that line because I need a little bit of room to add a rubber U channel around the entire panel, so I'll get started. just cutting this section because I want to hold the cut.

I want to hold the main bit when I cut around it again. I don't want vibration, but I'll just cut a straight section right now. and then we'll cut back around the line uh I'll give you a close up of that for now and we'll take it from there now this is not going to be a perfect line that I'm drawing because You know it's cardboard, but I can adjust it with the blade because a the blade likes to go in a straighter line right now, so like I say, I'm going to cut from there and maybe just this side of the line for now and this one. will give us a sample of what the jigsaw will do.

I'm going to use a soft cut. Now I could use an even smaller blade, but I have a feeling that a smaller blade might break, so I'm going to start with this one, if it's really hard, I'll go to the soft one first, safety one, with nice big gloves. Okay, obviously, I need to take this a little further like this. I hope it doesn't vibrate too much right now due to the weight of the rest of the rest of the plexiglass but you never know, let's see how this works it could be a disaster. Well, so far, so good.

It's cutting well, but it's a little rough and because of the heat, it gets a little tough. getting soldered back on, so I have to keep that in mind when I'm doing the finer things, okay, let's keep removing or separating this panel so you can see that it's reattached, but it's probably going to pop open when I push it. Whether it's down or not, there we go, so I really don't want to have to do that for the curved sections, so like I say, I need to figure out how to keep the heat down, if that's possible.

Okay, let me clamp down on this because this is going to take a little more finesse, okay, now we're strapped in, I didn't realize, but I was actually scratching the surface on the other side, but I turned it over because there's a protective layer on this side if I can't live with this I will make another one but this is kind of trial and error. I have enough for four panels and I only need two so let's not get hung up on a little scratch so I'm going this time. cut an eighth of an inch inside the black line and a perfectly straight curved line because as you can see this is not perfectly straight, straight, ah, we'll try it now, hopefully, I can use a pair of pliers just to free it up, it We'll find out, okay, while we're at it, we might as well try the angle grinder and see if it's going to smooth this out or completely destroy it, I'm not really sure what's going to happen here because we have a lot of heat with the angle grinder try it with a flat disk now I need to do it it's going to spin that way so I'm going to have it and I need to do it that way or it's going to lift everything so I'm going to do it with my left hand this could be dangerous not bad I couldn't do it all the way, but correctly because you guys were in the way, you know what I mean, so I can be more careful now, the reason I need to curve, this is the new channel I have, it's actually curved on the inside , let me find a section and I'll show you what I'm talking about, this is what as you can see is internally rounded so if it were square it wouldn't sit flush so I need to round it as much as I can and then slide it on.

I could glue it on, who knows, but this will go around the entire panel and then this surface will be pushed against the inside. of the

door

, yes I need it, there will be a little more rounding, but that should work fine, so I'll continue cutting and shaping this section and see in a few minutes when I'm ready to do a little test. Well, let's try to do a little test fit without the rubber. There should now be enough room if it is tight at this point. I need to trim more in which direction. I don't know, we'll find out in a minute, although we've earned it.

I think it's too short, it's too narrow that way, I'll put some rubber in your channel and see how it looks, but I think I'll have to do it again, but hey, I'm not afraid anymore. I know how to do it and I have enough to do another three, so it's no big deal, okay, let's try it again. Let's recap the form. I know what the problem is. The window frame is actually slightly warped in this corner, so if I bend it. Again it should be fine, so let me put on some of this new channel and I'll show you how I'm going to connect it to the car.

I had to bring you outside. It's too dark in the garage. Let me tell you. Take a closer look at how I'm going to place the

windows

in the door. The original design of this door had wood around it. Well, there was a lot of wood in this car and they would be attached to these little tabs. Oh my god, I'm sorry. about the contrast so they're around the window frame so what I'm aiming to do is bend the top tabs down a little bit so the glass is behind it and then all I have to do is trim it. somehow at the bottom, I'll probably make a little L-shaped device that goes up here and then I'll get clips to hold it in place, so let's see how it fits.

I have the rubber U channel all the way. around, but like I say, the clip I'm going to attach will need to be drilled through the plexiglass here somewhere anyway, let's see how it fits, I still need to fix that corner of the window frame, it's a little boring in a way, no That's wrong. Although well, I ran out of inspiration in general, I don't give a damn, I have Windows, although let me show you, so I abandoned the clip idea. I just couldn't understand that I don't have enough brain power today to figure out how to do it.

Make clips so that the windows are actually held in place by those tabs all the way around so they are permanent until you want to straighten those tabs and take them out, but it will do for now and I even did the other side. You know me, I usually do one side and pretend I'll do the other side and I never do this side, it actually fits better, it even sounds like glass, so it won't give us exactly, you know, 100 waterproof, but it should certainly keep wind. outside and keeping it a little warmer inside might even reduce the noise a little, who knows, but the main goal of today's exercise was to see if I could use power tools to cut and shape a plexiglass, which is possible, but It also leaves a horrible mess.

To clarify, it's just that the plastic becomes like hard sand, it's unpleasant underfoot, so they clean everything, okay, look at this, remember this box. This is the box Randy Ward made to send me the 308 pumpkin and I decided this was it. It's too nice a box, so I added New Jersey. It's just a box, but it's cool and it means a lot to me and I didn't want to destroy it, so I'm looking for ideas on what I can put in the box. I could put snacks in it I could put tools in it dusters drinks uh secret secret toys that I have so you know my wife doesn't know ah she knows now I could even put a little lock on it just for security clearance a comment, what would you keep in this beautiful box?

But that's enough for today. Of course, I'll have to wait for a test drive and see if it's quieter and a little warmer, but I'll wait until it gets dark. to test the temperature, you know, also, I need to tidy up my embarrassing garage again, friends, thanks for watching, please subscribe and remember the Facebook group in the description below, take care, bye.