Mirror Mirror! Make a sunglasses wall mirror.
I always get great project ideas from viewers of the show. Either here on the web site, or on social media. A while back, on the WWMM Facebook page, Chris Antonopoulos posted a project that I just knew I had to make. Here’s his Wayfarer style sunglasses wall mirror:
The woodworking for this project is simple. Cutting the glass mirrors is the only part that might seem a little daunting, but as I discovered, cutting curved shaped in glass is really not difficult at all.
I started by gluing my cutting template to a piece of scrap 3/4″ (18mm) plywood. If you haven’t used any of my printable cutting templates before, here’s a quick tutorial.
And then cut out the two holes for the mirror “lenses”.
I used a rabbet bit in my router to make a shallow ledge around the rear edges of these cutouts.
How to cut curves in glass
To cut the glass mirrors, all you need is an inexpensive glass cutter like this one:
It has a small wheel on one end that is used for scoring the glass: it doesn’t cut all the way through. For my mirrors, I traced the outline of the lens cutouts with a dry erase marker.
To use the glass cutter, press the little cutting wheel down onto the glass and roll it along your line, applying even pressure all the way around. You will hear a light crackling/scratching sound as it moves over the glass. It’s important that you just make one score: don’t try to retrace it, thinking it’s not deep enough. The score line is actually very shallow, just a scratch really. Note: you must make the score on the front of the mirror, not the coated back side.
Since I needed the inside shape, I made a couple relief cuts outward to the edge so I could break the glass out in sections.
Then to break the glass, hold your fingers of each hand right next to the score line and bend the glass downward. It will pop right along the score and produce a nice edge. And that’s all there is to cutting curves in glass!
Here I tested to see how the mirror will drop into the rabbet edge I routed out.
Assembling the sunglasses wall mirror
Using a roundover bit, I eased over all the inside edges.
Then I cut out the final shape of the sunglasses.
And spray painted it black.
After that was dry, I glued the mirrors into place using an all-purpose glue. A viewer gave me some of this Weldbond glue and I am really becoming a fan of it. It seems to stick to anything and it dries clear.
I cut out a thin piece of 1/8″ (3mm) plywood to use as a backer board and glued it on.
I cut out these little pieces using thin wood, spray painted them silver, and glued them into place.
Then attached a picture hanging wire and called it done!
