Glass surface roughened by abrasive blasting — silica or aluminum-oxide media at high pressure pits the surface into a uniform matte that scatters light. The mechanical sibling of acid-etched glass: same translucent visual register, sharper texture under the finger, faster to apply. Privacy-glass partitions, lampshades, art-glass relief work.
Compressed-air abrasive blasting at 60–100 psi with aluminum-oxide or silica-sand media (#36–#80 grit) onto annealed or tempered glass. Surface micro-pits 1–10 µm deep scatter incident light; transmission drops from ~92% (clear float) to 60–80%, haze rises from <1% to 50–90% depending on blast depth. Resist (vinyl mask, photoresist) defines etched zones for graphic / signage work. Tempered glass requires care — heavy blast can compromise the temper layer. Surface holds fingerprint oils more than acid-etched (mechanical pits trap; chemical etch is smoother). Often sealed with anti-fingerprint coating (silane / fluoropolymer) when used on touchable architectural surfaces.
character — translucent matte, slightly toothier than acid-etched, fingerprint-prone.
SSPC SP10 surface-prep standards; manufacturer abrasive-blast and etch-chemistry guides.
House vocabulary — terms ForMatter uses with intent.
Materials and processes for people who design and make things.
A local-first library of materials, processes, applications, and finishes — equal weight, citable everywhere, with cost-over-volume curves, trade-off profiles, equipment-tier filters, and second-life paths layered onto the data so a student can move from "what is this" toward "what's actually buildable here, now, by me." Part of the renato.design ecosystem — sibling of Plenum, Specimen, Ingenue, gesture, graf, and the Renato Rhino plug-ins. Form and matter, inseparable.
Half of teaching materials is teaching how the material is made into the thing. The standard subscription library was always light on that half. The wedge here isn't better samples or a prettier interface — it's treating Process as a peer entity, not a footnote.
Conway's Material World on raw materials, Lefteri's Making It on processes, Forty's Concrete and Culture, Sparke's Design in Context, Bürdek's Design: History, Theory and Practice of Product Design, Schröpfer's Material Design on materials in architecture, Winchester's The Perfectionists on tolerance, Minshall's Your Life Is Manufactured on the global supply chain, von Busch's Making Trouble on material activism, Were's How Materials Matter, Hegger / Drexler / Zeumer's Basics Materials, Untracht and McCreight on metalsmithing, USDA Forest Products Lab on woods, GIA on gemstones, Schott / CoorsTek / Toray / Owens Corning datasheets, MakeItFrom for verifiable property numbers, ASM Handbook, ISO standards. Museum holdings draw from the Met, MAD, V&A, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Newark Museum of Art, British Museum, Heard Museum, Smithsonian NMAI, Eiteljorg Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cranbrook Art Museum, and Grand Rapids Art Museum — collection-record permalinks only, designer overview pages and exhibition listings excluded. Voice blocks now ride on every entry kind — material, process, application, and finish — and include Ruskin on iron, Anni Albers on twining, Greg Lynn on the shred-and-teeth NURBS lineage, Pugin on the metal that won't be hammered, Barthes / Yanagi / Benjamin channeled within their philosophy; Sparke, Bürdek, Forty, Conway, Schröpfer, Minshall, von Busch, Lefteri, Pat Pruitt, Mary Lee Hu, Tom Joyce, Albert Paley, and the rest of the contemporary makers quoted verbatim with citation. All cited.
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