Is this the right tool for your job?
✕CHOOSE A DIFFERENT TOOL WHEN
- Not a seal, and not a substitute for bedding. Points hold; they do not weatherproof. A pane set on bare wood with points and no bedding putty is a drum head that rattles and wicks water — the points can’t fix that, and neither can the finish putty over them.
- Not for steel casement sash. Metal windows hold glass with spring clips in a different system entirely; push points into wood are a wood-sash fastener. If the sash is steel, this is the wrong hardware.
- Not for glass held by wood beads. Some sash and most cabinet doors hold glass with small nailed or screwed wooden stops instead of a putty fillet — that is trim work, and the glass is retained by the beads, not by points.
- Not a tack, brad, or panel pin. A glazing point is shaped and finished for one job — lying flat against glass and pushing into sash wood beneath putty. It is not general fastening hardware, and general brads are not glazing points.
How the pros run it
01
Push flat, never strike toward the glass
The defining rule of push-style points: the driving force runs along the glass plane, with the pane backing the blade. Never hammer a point toward the pane — that is how the glass you just cut and bedded cracks. If a point won’t slide, the wood is too hard or the point is cocked; reseat it flat and push again, don’t force it at an angle.
02
Seat to about half depth
Deep enough to grip the sash wood and to sit below the finished bevel line; not so deep it disappears before it’s holding. Half the point in wood, half against the glass edge, is the working picture.
03
Bury every point
The finished putty bevel must cover the points completely. A proud point telegraphs through the paint, rusts, and starts a leak. If a point sits too high after the fill, pull it and reset lower rather than shaving the bevel thin over it.
04
One driver, and it’s the 02950
The chisel end of the glazing tool is the designed driver — flat, stiff, the right width to bear on the tab without touching glass. A stiff narrow putty-knife edge substitutes in a pinch. A hammer does not.
