I’d just like to mention the only exception to this that I have seen. Some friends had a mirror where the reflective medium was a thin film of aluminium on a thin plastic sheet. Probably mylar. This was stretched over a rigid aluminium frame that must have been about 2x3meters. The whole contraption cannot have weighed more than 5 kilo!
The surface was no longer pristine, but the overall effect was impressive.
The reflective part is a peice of metal. It needs to be ‘held’? I didn’t know it was that sensitive
Again, it’s a peice of metal. Glass protecting metal seems drawkcab-ssa.
I thought it might be that covering the metal with glass means you don’t have to polish the metal but you have to clean the glass (or so I’m told) so does it really save you any effort?
No, it’s not simply because metal is any more expensive than glass on a unit cost basis it’s mainly that the process of manfacturing a very accurate reflective surface that won’t corrode is more easily and inexpensively done with a thin metal foil surface deposited or otherwise bonded to a flat glass surface thereby combining the benefits of both materials and retarding corrosion once the metal-glass bond is sealed. This is more easily done than trying to make an equally accurate metal mirror which would be more expensive, corrode fairly quickly and be more subject to scratching (if portable) than a glass surfaced mirror.