Stained Glass

As part of my Christmas present, Nate asked a friend at work (Steve) to teach me how to do stained glass. I've always wanted to learn, since it's so beautiful. Steve brought over his tool kit, a grinder, a big box of glass, and several copies of a simple beginner's pattern. First, you number a master pattern, and number each piece in the same way on a cut-out pattern. Next, you cut out each piece of the pattern. I used pattern shears, which have a double blade so that the black lines are cut out all at once.

In this picture, you can see some of the cut (and foiled) pieces laid out on the master pattern. In order to cut the glass, you glue your paper pattern pieces to the glass, use a glass cutter to cut out the general shape, and then use a grinder to smooth all the edges down so they match up with the pattern.

This isn't particularly difficult, just time-consuming. The trickiest part is keeping the water from the grinder from melting the glue, because then the pattern slides off. I only had to cut and re-apply one new pattern piece for this project. You can't really tell from this picture, but the grinder is actually sitting in my kitchen sink. Good motivation for washing all the dishes!

These are some of the pieces after I finished grinding them. You can see the pattern is peeling up off of a couple; once they're ground, though, you take off the pattern anyway. Next, you take copper foil and wrap the edges. The foil comes in rolls of narrow strips, and has adhesive on one side. I didn't get any pictures of the wrapping process, unfortunately. It's finicky work, but not terribly difficult.

Here, you can see all the pieces are foiled and laid out over the master pattern. Part of the foil roll is visible at the bottom of the picture. Right now the pieces are all loose, but I'll solder them all together next time Steve comes over. I promise, I'll take more (and better) pictures of that process.