On Jun 15, 8:07*pm, David Nebenzahl wrote:
On 6/15/2010 9:35 PM DanG spake thus:

As others have said - consider real glass. *For breakage you can
go to tempered or laminated glass. *When tempered glass breaks it
disintegrates into fingernail sized pieces with relatively
non-sharp edges: it can take quite a beating.

I just replaced a friend's back door window with safety (laminated)
glass, for security (he had a double-cylinder lock in the door and I've
been after him for more than a year now to let me replace the inside
cylinder with a turnbolt so you can get out quick in case of a fire).
Great stuff. The glass shop has a sample piece they tried to break: the
outer layers have cracks in them, but the piece is totally intact. The
glass guy said you could hammer on it for half an hour and only succeed
in making a small hole in it. (Well, that might be a wee bit of an
exaggeration, but it's pretty damn strong stuff.)

Only problem is, it's damn expensive. My piece, about 20" x 32", as
about $80. So maybe not economical to replace large windows with it.

Another problem is, the laminate is so strong that you can knock the
glass right through the frame.