Almost halfway there
Category: Glass
Things I’ve made with stained glass, including copper foil, lead, mortar (concrete), mosaics and resin on glass.
Today’s update
Just a quick update – not much excitement here, but I have been thinking about the edges when I eventually pour the resin. I’ve planned to pour the resin with a duct tape edge to hold it in place, but I believe the family who will be taking this home will add a wooden frame around the edge. I might see if they want to add it before I pour the resin to adhere it to the piece. I’m not sure why I didn’t think of this earlier as I often use recycled windows with the frame intact for similar projects. When I get closer to resin pouring time we can revisit that.
Inching along
My friends for whom I’m making this window agreed to the minor change to the bottom center border edge, so today I implemented that, plus made a bit more progress overall. I had to spend some time cleaning out my grinder (it had been waaaay too long) and changing out the grinder bit, as well.
I’m actually starting to run low on the medium gray glass. I went by Blue Heron this week and talked with the owner a bit and he thinks it is Steel Blue / White from Spectrum glass. He promised to order some for me when he places his next glass order.
Thinking of possible adjustments
I’ve been looking at the bottom two pieces of the pattern and thinking of a way that I might handle them a bit differently than I did the long pieces on each far side. The situation is the pattern calls for a piece of glass that is longer than my glass sheets. For the sides, I am just abutting the cut pieces to make them appear longer, but for the bottom two edge pieces, I might do something else.
I think it might be nice to make two square pieces, either orange or the darkest gray, to fill the gap between the two light / medium gray strips. The squares would be inserted into the middle for symmetry.
So far I’ve been able to cut everything by hand and then make adjustments using my glass grinder.
However, some pieces really require a glass saw. There is a tool I could use to try to cut this by hand, but I’m not that great with it. I’ll have to fill the saw with water over the weekend to cut this piece.
Today’s progress
Things move a little faster when you’re working with larger pieces of glass. Still, after the second band-aid, I decided to take a break. I also need to buy a new grinder bit. Nothing is glued down yet – need to do a lot more adjusting and be able to see both sides of the project at the same time when I start gluing. So far all of this has been done with my hand cutter and glass grinder, though I’ve been tempted to get my saw ready for action a few times.
A bit of progress
I finished cutting the glass for the first two stripes at the far edge of the piece. What I am learning is that my plan to work from the far edge back to the closer edge isn’t going to work. At some point I’m going to have to pivot the entire piece so I can see well enough to position each individual piece of glass when I am applying the mosaic adhesive. A few quick snapshots:
Puzzle pieces
Today I unwrapped the backer glass, put it in place over the pattern on my work table, and started cutting pieces of glass from the far right side of the pattern.
I don’t have a piece of medium gray glass that is long enough to make some of the pieces of the pattern. I will likely deal with that by abutting two pieces of the glass as closely as possible.
I will be cutting the glass from only the white parts of the pattern (the orange cutting lines will be removed) so there will be a slight space between the pieces.
Something I didn’t anticipate and have yet to encounter before today is that some of my art glass really is not flat. That will likely cause bubbles in the resin underneath the pieces even if I glue them in place. A thicker layer of glue really isn’t good (to fill in the gap) because it can be visible from the back side of the piece, so I will have to think about this issue.
The Glass Detective
Today I picked up the clear backer glass for the project from Charleston Glass and Mirror. It’s heavy, but not unmanageable. The interesting development is that I sent photos of the darkest gray glass piece to the owner of Blue Heron Glass here in Charleston and he thinks he recognizes it and ordered me a sheet! That is great news as I don’t have a large enough sheet of it for all the dark gray pieces. He is the Glass Detective.
Ready to start cutting glass
This week I finished marking all the pieces of the pattern with their intended color codes and ordered the 31″ x 48.25″ backer glass from Charleston Glass and Mirror. They recommended laminate which is apparently stronger than tempered. Hopefully I will have it early this week. In the meantime, I can start cutting out the pieces of the paper pattern I will use to guide myself on each piece of glass as I cut it. I think I will also visit Mike at Blue Heron Glass because I don’t think I have enough of the darkest glass. Hopefully he will have something on hand that is similar enough to fit the bill.
Dark glass (reflected light) 
Dark glass on the light tray
On the left is the darkest glass I’m using in the project. It looks like it is black with white swirls when viewed in ambient light. However, when the light is shining through it (as on the light tray on the photo on the right, above), it is a beautiful shade of gray.
I think I will work from the right side of the pattern over to the left, since it is the furthest from where I can reach on my work table. That means I will cut the pattern pieces on the right side first, then work my way to the other edge.
Pattern Prep
Before I start working with the glass, I lay out the pattern and mark each piece with the planned color to be used. In this case, white is unmarked, dark gray is colored in with a dark pencil, orange is colored orange, medium gray is marked with an “M” and light gray is marked with an “L”. I had to take my time doing this because the pattern is not symmetrical and the colors have quirky variations that are important to the overall look.
Now I’m working on coloring in a second copy of the pattern. One copy will be used to lay out the glass on top of as I progress through cutting the pieces while the other one will be cut up to use as guides for the individual pieces as I cut them.