Where to get mirror plexiglass?

I need to make a mirror and plexis glass seems reasonably cheap. Where do I get this stuff?

Any glass shop but glass is much cheaper.

langer1 said:

Any glass shop but glass is much cheaper.

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And better looking.

Home Depot.....but take the advice of two previous posters, if you plan to use it as a mirror. Plastic dulls, and scratches.

There are antiscratch and antihazing polishes out there, ya know.

Get piece of acrylic or poly, cut to shape.

Lightly polish edges.

Spray the BACK side with "spray chrome" and let dry fully - I'm thinking 48 hours or so here (twice what it says on the back of the can.)

Spray the BACK side again with gloss black to protect the "spray chrome" - same deal.

Install and use.

That's pretty much how mirrored glass is made...

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Even hard coated plastics will never have the same scratch resistance as tempered glass.

HIGH quality mirrors are made in a vacuum chamber by sputtering an aluminum alloy onto a clean surface. The surface must be very clean, even a single finger print sticks out like a sore thumb.

Jon has it pretty close, mirrors made with transparent material are always second surface coated. The only thing I'd add is to make sure that the coated surface is as clean as you can get it before applying the mirror.

I've made truck mirrors before. Used a broken dressing mirror, made a template, covered the mirror in masking tape. Used a tile cutting blade (diamond blade) for my angle grinder, the thin blade without the serations (smooth blade). Used a rumba sander with wet and dry sand paper (wetted) to smooth the edges a little. Sealed the edges (rim) with a bead of super glue, so water doesn't get under the mirror surface (and to seal any micro cracks that may want to spread). Buying an OEM mirror was expensive and finding just the mirror without the housing, hard. Having one made at a glass shop was about half the price of OEM, making my own took me about half an hour. I did mine outside, used a dust mask and was carefull with the glass dust. Shook out my clothes and threw them in the washing machine. Something about glass dust, just gives me the willies.
I used regular old plumbing silicon to glue the mirror in the housing.
My first mirror, I failed to seal the edges and eventually (after a year or so) water found it's way between the glass and the coating, causing dark edges. My last mirror is four years old and still looks good.
Try not to force the mirror any when cutting, or it may crack, try not to overheat it. I did mine with many little cuts, with a pause between each cut. I also wet the masking tape, don't know if it helped keep the temp. down any, but didn't seem to hurt much. Helped keep the dust down some.
If you do use plastic, hardened or not and have to clean it. Rub as little as possible (dust is mostly sand) I use window spray and toilet papaer, wash it off before cleaning and don't rub in circles. Rubbing plastic in circles really messes with image at night from light scattering. Your going to have some light scattering anyway with parralel scratches, but circles is the worst. You can rub most of the scratches out with a good quality polishing compound, I keep 3 different grits in the shop. Dupont clear coat polishing compound (not rubbing compound) works about the best for me. I've used polishing compound on rag top rear plastic windows with acceptable results, the plastic side curtain windows on my YJ and even my motorcycle helmet face plate (ballistic Lexan). The results aren't perfect, but an acceptable improvement (reduces light scattering) for scratched plastic.
Last tip, when cutting plastic keep it wet. Whether you use a jig saw or whatever, wetting it well and keeping it wet, will prevent the cut from welding itself back together and the cuttings won't stick to the plastic.

I have wondered about putting in a ballistic lexan windshield and plain lexan side and rear windows? Anyone know anyone who has done this?

Search for Speedglass.

ChiXJeff said:

Even hard coated plastics will never have the same scratch resistance as tempered glass.

HIGH quality mirrors are made in a vacuum chamber by sputtering an aluminum alloy onto a clean surface. The surface must be very clean, even a single finger print sticks out like a sore thumb.

Jon has it pretty close, mirrors made with transparent material are always second surface coated. The only thing I'd add is to make sure that the coated surface is as clean as you can get it before applying the mirror.

Click to expand...

Eh - he sounded like he wanted "The Bootyfab Way" - so I gave it to him.

Quality mirrors usually have a metallic back-coat - aluminum is common, silver for very high quality, gold when you want to maximise IR reflection.

Also, there are "first surface" mirrors - they're used in LASER labs and such. These are actually mirrored on the FRONT side, so there is no refractive error from using the mirror. These are typically PVD gold, and a small (say, 1" round) mirror can easily cost $500. Boy, do they ever scratch easily... You can't coat them - or you get "refractive error" from the coating...

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