Custom Glass & Aluminium Works

In practice

Most buildings are not square, and most catalogues assume they are.

A large share of what comes to our workshop arrives because something standard would not fit. An opening that is 40mm wider at the top than at the bottom. A staircase whose rise changes on the third flight. A shopfront in an older building where the two side walls are not parallel and the head is not level. Standard systems are built around the assumption that the opening is rectangular, and when it is not, the usual response is either a large packer and a bead of silicone, or a flat refusal. Making the piece to the opening instead of to a catalogue size is not complicated — it just requires measuring properly and cutting to those measurements.

The process that makes bespoke work reliable is unglamorous: measure, draw, agree, then cut. We take a full survey with diagonals and multiple height and width readings rather than one of each, because that is what reveals the out-of-square. Then we produce a fabrication drawing showing the actual dimensions, the profile sections, the glass build-up, the hardware positions and the tolerance we are working to. That drawing goes back to whoever is approving it before any glass is toughened, because toughened glass cannot be cut, drilled or notched afterwards. Every hole, cut-out and edge treatment has to be right before the glass goes in the furnace — this is the single most common source of expensive delay in bespoke glasswork, and it is entirely avoidable.

Bespoke also means the hardware often has to be reconsidered. A door that is wider or heavier than a standard leaf needs hinges rated for the actual weight and a closer sized to the leaf, not the closer that comes in the kit. A partition that runs to a soffit at a varying height needs a head detail that can absorb 30mm of variation without looking like a mistake. These are the decisions that separate a bespoke piece that reads as deliberate from one that reads as an improvisation, and they are worth spending time on before fabrication rather than solving on site with an angle grinder.

The other half of this service is repair and adaptation of things nobody makes any more. Older aluminium systems, discontinued profiles, obsolete hardware, one broken panel in a set of eight where the original supplier no longer exists. We can often match a profile from a photograph and a section measurement, fabricate a replacement, and match the finish closely enough that the repair does not announce itself. Where a genuine match is not achievable, we say so up front and propose the alternative rather than fitting something that will look wrong forever.

Toughened glass cannot be cut afterwards. Everything has to be right before it goes in the furnace.