Cleaned glass

I've read a "large" number of post concerning etching of glass on stokers. The concept of polishing the glass sounded like the only practical solution short of buying new glass. The glass is in rough shape. My Alaska Channer is starting it's 5th winter.
Being a cheapskate, I remembered that I have medium and fine drywall sanding sponges. They worked. We'll see how well the glass stays clean.

so you sanded them to clean them? i was just gona post about how i should clean them. did you just dry sand them? what about steel wool? ive used that to clean car windows before

Try orange hand cleaner with pumis from your auto parts store.

A damp rag dipped in flyash works great.

Yea, but plumber, where the heck can one find this fly ash stuff??

My glass is 4" x 4", just got inspired and took it out. It looks like the brown color is baked right into the glass. It's fine with coal, it's the paper, cardboard and wood that I start up with that soots up the glass. I was using a long handle gasket scraper with a single edge razor blade to keep it clean. I just tried Ajax on it, no effect. shouldn't be much to replace it. Going to try some wet sanding on it why not.

Drywall sanding sponge cleaned the glass completely for a little while but it did fog back up. A polishing wheel would make it stay clean a little longer but I agree with most that the flyash, heat and acid etches the glass.

geakin wrote:Drywall sanding sponge cleaned the glass completely for a little while but it did fog back up. A polishing wheel would make it stay clean a little longer but I agree with most that the flyash, heat and acid etches the glass.

After a couple of seasons you will not get it clean. I've used a flapwheel and couldn't touch it.

I'm starting my 4th season.

geakin wrote:I'm starting my 4th season.

????

If someone can come up with a solution for us "Stokers" it would be HUGE. The hand fed folks have no clue what we are talking about. I was one for 28 years, and never contended with what a stoker can do to a window be it glass or ceramic

Have been burning a DVC-500 for 4 years. Have tried everying to clean glass without any success. Just starting using a very wet micro fiber cloth for the last month. Is the best thing for glass cleaning I have used in the last 4 years..Give it a shot, let me know, I think you will like it.

I agree with all the frustration here. I can't seem to keep the glass clean either. I have resorted to using a razor blade scrapper to scrape off the stuff. But this will just make things harder if the glass gets scratched. Not sure why the coal is doing this to our glass. With wood, I get it. Lots of smoke and soot given off. But with coal, you can't see anything given of by the burn.

I have to agree with TCoal as the micro cloth works great for cleaning up the glass window in my wl110 boiler . I've taken it out a couple times to clean with the fly ash and a little water and that does a pretty good job but I noticed today it was getting foggy so I took a very fine micro disc I had for a wood cabinet project and tried that with a little water and just a dab of dawn dish detergent and the glass came out looking like new . I have no idea if it will keep working over the long haul as I have only been burning coal for about 5 weeks now . The window in the 110 gets very dirty after a week or so . I noticed in the advertisement when I bought the micro fiber material a few years ago they mentioned they use this for cleaning up aircraft pasenger windows also .

As many times as I told myself I am not reading the "how to clean glass" posts anymore.... here I am again. Must stop myself.... But anyway, gave up on cleaning the glass last year, it was fun for the first couple of months. I am thinking of buying a new piece of glass and putting about 10 coats of turtle wax ICE wax on it (stuff is super slick) and see how long I could stay interested in having clean glass again. Anybody try something like this with a brand new piece of glass??

I'm down to wondering how funny all these "glass" posts would be if you took the "gl" out of them. NO I have not been drinking, YET.