Beveled glass

These can vary from simple three or four piece designs, often used in top lights (commonly known as transoms) of windows and conservatories, to more complex combinations of many pieces, suitable for larger panels such as doors and side screens (known in the door industry as sidelites).

The automation of this traditionally hand made craft was facilitated by the development of plastic based metal deburring wheels which provided adequate smoothing of the ground glass face without the difficulties involved with traditional aluminum oxide and natural sandstone smoothing stones.

The best natural smoothing stones came from a quarry in Newcastle, England and would be round wheels with a central hole several feet in diameter and 8 inches (200 mm) thick.

The type of grinding and smoothing equipment depended upon whether one was creating straight line, outside or inside curved bevels.

Outside curves and straight lines are ground on a flat rotating platter covered in a thin slurry of silicon carbide and water.

Smoothing the ground face was done using the Newcastle stone for outside curves and straight line bevels and a cone shaped polishing wheel of relatively fine grit aluminum oxide.