Real glass for sightglass? Borosilicate?

I want to stick with something rigid so I'm leaning towards either polycarbonate or real glass tubing. I don't really have any easy way to put a slit lengthwise in a piece of copper pipe as a protector so I'm a little weary of real glass, but here's a deal:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230170214631

Anyone use these unprotected? I'd probably have a sleeve of copper pipe that I'd put on when I'm NOT brewing.

Just as a thought, if you didn't need the slit copper to be terribly fancy, just protective, I bet you could clamp a length of tubing in a vice and hit one side of it with an angle grinder, just hit the tubing with the grinder held flat. Prolly look pretty ghetto, but if your setup's like mine, EVERYTHING looks ghetto!

Why not just use a plastic one, I got an old racking cane that was broken around the bend, and cut it off and used it, don't know how many times I have ran into it with something, and was happy it was plastic, just a thought.

Cheer

I copied this design: http://www.zymico.com/tsight/
with all of the hardware, including nearly unbreakable polycarbonate tubing, easily available from McMaster-Carr.
http://www.mcmaster.com/

I just bought a lot of borosilicate pippetes on ebay. They don't travel well at all. I had a few broken ones. The piece of polycarbonate tube I got from MMC is long enough, that I could replace it a few times a year if necessary and still have enough to last for years.

I don't know about everyone else, but when it comes down to making equipment I usually do one of two things. The first being make something practical but probably ugly. The second is to over complicate but make some that is cool and gives me mental satisfaction. The plastic way is probably easier and might just be better. If I was in your situation though I'd probably end up using the glass just because I love lab equipment.