Looks awesome! We need a stained glass Lemmy community, it’s one of the only things I miss about Reddit :(
Hey thanks! And we totally do need a community here… I was hoping I’d find a fellow glasser by sharing this :) More of us will migrate over this way, hopefully someone more capable than myself can create a community for us, haha!!
Then create it, it’s not difficult.
Making a community is easy. Keeping it red with content takes a certain level of critical mass :(
That’s really really amazing! I have an unfulfilled dream of working with glass and stained glass, but it seems to require a lot of equipment
Thanks so much!
Glass is fun! If there is a studio near you, I recommend a class to see if you like it.
My husband surprised me with a starter setup, we are fortunate enough to have a garage to work in. Cutting glass means flying fragments and soldering creates toxic fumes, requiring a well-ventilated area. I think he spent around $300 total. There are examples of kits on here. I have not had to upgrade any of my supplies.
Good luck if you get into it, it’s tedious work but super rewarding.
Edit to add: I don’t shop from the linked site, I am in Canada and unsure of where to source my supplies now, as most stained glass is cast in the US, and I am shopping Canadian. I know Oceanside is from Mexico… If anyone has suggestions, I’m open.
wow, that’s very cool. so you have to cut each piece of glass for each finger bone like that?
Thank you!
Yes, cut and grind it smooth. Then copper foil tape around the edges and solder… voila!
Very cool, it came out great.
I coincidentally looked up glass cutting recently and found videos of people cutting window panes by scoring a line and then smacking the scored section off. Is that what you do for cutting glass curves also? Your work looks too technically precise for the smacking method I saw.
Essentially, yes. I can say that for curves I’ll do more tapping and hoping than smacking lol but there are different pliers (grozer and running pliers) that help the job along. For deep curves, I’ll score a bunch of lines in the space that I’ll be removing, tap, and use the grozer pliers to work away the bits… I actually made a video of the process with this piece, if I ever post it, I’ll tag you!
Ha, that’s awesome, thanks for explaining. Yea, I’ll definitely check out the video when it goes up, sounds like a nail-biting, rewarding process.
It’s fast and tiny and you can’t see too much of the cutting… but it’s my first time attempting to share the process. Enjoy!
oh wow and it’s a time-lapse, you legend!
that definitely gives me a better idea of how the process goes, thanks a lot for sharing, that was very cool to see.
so that’s the copper foil at the end and then do you use a blow torch or something to melt all the pieces together?
that must be so much fun for you also, do you have a lot of projects going on at the same time or do you tend to focus on one at a time?
This is another piece, but you can see pretty clearly here. The brush is applying flux, that helps the solder adhere only to the copper foil. Without flux, nothing happens!
Yeah I did not get to add the soldering part to the video… with a soldering iron, I use 60/40 (lead/tin) solder and go over the front, back, sides, then the back again and finish the front as smooth as possible.
On this piece you can see the solder work is black, that’s a patina that’s applied after roughing it up with some steel wool. There’s black and copper patina, or you can leave it silver.
After cleaning it all up, I finish with a microfibre cloth and some car wax to protect the piece and keep the dust off. I’ll see if I have any soldering clips I can upload.
It’s fun! With all art, sometimes projects get bumped for a commission or because I working on something new is more exciting haha… I am down to one glass project on the go right now… I can’t wait to share it!!
You’re welcome! It’s definitely stressful and the reason it took me so long to quit smoking… but totally worth it when the sun shines through that glass.
