I was watching a home improvement show the other day and I saw a very interesting looking cabinet door.

At first glance, it looked like a shaker door style with a glass insert instead of the standard panel.  But a closeup revealed that the glass covered the entire door and was clad to the outside of the frame. 

The frame was in black and the glass appeared to be slightly tinted grey.

It would, at first appear to be an easy build.  Use dowels to build the frame and cut a piece of glass to laminate onto the frame.

However, the glue will show through.  I guess you could paint the area that gets glued to the frame with black paint. 

Any thoughts?  Also, does this have to be tempered glass.  I would assume that it was double-strenght glass which is 3.2mm or one eight of an inch.  Single strength glass is 25mm or one-tenth of an inch.

Does this glass have to be tempered?  Safetly glass (much thicker).

It did look very sleek.

I have framed pictures with a "glass mat", which I painted on the inside surface.  It is fairly easy to do.  I masked off the area that was not to be painted.  And sprayed several light coats with black paint.  I probably could have improved adhesion with sealcoat, but since there was no chance of abrasion of the surface I simply painted it. 

Any thoughts.

I had to look up “Packard, sapphire” to see it relates to a jeweler.

I had a German Shepherd that I named “Packard” because the Packard Motor Car Company had an advertising slogan that said, “Just ask a man who owns one”.

It was my second German Shepherd and I was making a statement. I imported him at 4 months of age from Germany.

When I was a picture framer I used to back paint the glass to make “glass mats”, but that surface was permanently protected from scratches, so regular Krylon paint was fine. But it would quickly get marred as a door backing because adhesion was so poor. It sounds like they are using som sophisticated tech for that.

I also used an ATG gun to apply adhesive, but that adhesive would not suit this application.

It looked expensive in the photos and now I know that it is expensive.

I find it funny you use the screen name Packard and I’m mentioning sapphire glass....

Tom, I kept reading your comment and couldn't think of a relevancy to the question and a connection to the Packard name and then you weighed in again...OMG the Graves-Packard feud. All I thought of at the time was gorilla glass and I tried to correlate that to the name Packard. 

So, some of the most expensive time pieces and most complicated time pieces ever privately commissioned since the time of kings & queens. Glad there are others on this forum that appreciate mechanical watches...if you think about the amount of cycles a mechanical watch goes through in a year it's truly mind boggling, try 28,800 beats per hour...so over a year, do the math.

So with that history behind us, what's the thickness of the sapphire glass? How much stronger is it than traditional tempered glass?

There was a place in Arizona that was going to manufacture the stuff, are they up & running?

1/8" thick...well that's pretty impressive, the last time I checked in, the sapphire glass for iPhones was only about .030" thick and there were quality issues with that.

Can conventional tempered glass approach the strength of sapphire glass? 

Ya...sapphire as in sapphire watch crystals, grown from a seed crystal...semiconductor stuff.

Love the children statement...my wife accuses me of that for the last 30 years and I still flinch.