Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Stained Glass!

I've been slowly adding some pendants to the Etsy shop, but this post is more to showcase another little project I've been working on. I'm very proud of it, since it's my first piece, I've never soldered before and I actually like it!
I've been taking a stained glass class, which consists of one sampler project (this one) for which you choose your own glass and colours and another independent project, where you take everything you learned from doing the first and apply it to something that you have chosen for yourself.
There are a bunch of steps involved with constructing a stained glass piece. Here they are, very roughly of course -

- Choose a pattern
- Choose your glass
- Transfer pattern to glass
- Cut glass
- Grind glass to fit exactly in your pattern
- Foil edge of glass (solder doesn't stick to glass)
- Assemble and flux
- Solder both sides
- Cut frame and solder together
- Clean flux off
- Patina
- Clean patina off and polish.

And - ta-da!

This is what you get -
My first stained glass piece - otherwise known as "Sauron". And yes, I know I'm a dork.
I finally think I've found a hobby in glass work where my ever so slight tendencies towards anal retentiveness are useful....