|
|
|
You
can read our current newsletter here
on-line each month, free of charge. We
hope you will take the opportunity to let
your stained glass artist friends know
about the newsletter and if you have
students, encourage them to read it.
If
you'd like a reminder when a new issue is
published simply send us your e-mail
address.
In
the meantime, we welcome your input and
support. Let us know if you have tips and
techniques or product information you'd
like to share. |
We are sponsoring
a stained glass competition this month. Click
here to learn about how to enter.
The show
should be fun, if you can't enter, at
least come and see it. The open house is
on May 21st at our studio in Provo and the
work will be on display thru June 18th.
The prize
money is building as more folks enter!!!
|
|
|
|
|
Steve
and Laurel live across the street from us.
We hope that when folks visit the open
house and competition they'll visit them
to see the art piece they built.
|
We sandblasted
a work of art that is going to a minister
in Pennsylvania, who is moving on to
another parish. The blasted figure of him
is a pretty good likeness.
|
|
|
Last
month we tacked the pieces of the
panels together. Now, we're ready to solder the
shade together.
(Click
here to read part 1)
(Click
here to read part 2)
(Click
here to read part 3)
|
|
|
|
Building
A Stained Glass Lamp With A Worden Mold
(Part 4)
|
|
|
The assembly process begins once the 6 panels are
tacked together. When lining up the first two panels, I line up the top
and then a little farther down.
|
|
|
Once I get the lower piece lined up, I tack
solder it in place. |
|
|
Then I move up to the top and line those pieces up.
|
|
|
Then as I move down the shade, I carefully and
gently bend each side to meet each other.
|
|
|
When they are lined up, I tack them together
and then move on.
|
|
|
When I can't get both pieces lined up, I line
them up so that they are as close as I can get them.
In any shade, there are many places where pieces
don't line up perfectly. As the lamp shade is built, it's normal to have
imperfections since the flat pieces are laid out on a round surface.
|
|
|
When I begin to line up the third panel, I squeeze
and prod the panels to get them into place.
|
|
|
Just as before, I tack solder the pieces when I get
them lined up.
|
|
|
Sometimes the entire panel needs to be bent,
sometimes the pieces just need to adjusted.
|
|
|
When the entire piece begins to feel a little
wobbly, I add an extra piece to give the entire shade more support.
|
|
|
As the sixth panel is put in place, the
tacked in piece gets attached along one side first.
If you look carefully at the other edge you can
see that it hasn't been aligned yet.
|
|
|
When all 6 panels are tacked, I begin to tack
in the pieces that were left out because they overlapped.
The tacked lampshade in very wobbly still and it
remains so until the heat cap gets soldered in place.
I have to use care when moving the shade. By
this time it is so heavy that pulling the shade carelessly will tear the
copper foil.
|
|
|
Once the heat cap is ready, I inspect the lamp
shade and insure that the opening is round.
|
|
|
The heat cap has to be soldered to the top of the
lamp shade. I can't put the shade up to check for balance yet, so I have
to center cap visually.
|
|
|
When the cap is tacked in place, I was able to pick
up the shade and turn it over. Since it's just tacked I have to be very
careful.
|
|
|
When I place it into a box with paper for support,
I can arrange to place more pieces into the shade.
|
|
|
As I began to work on the shade, it began to deform
out of round. The box edges push too much on the sides. So I picked it
up right away and set it on the table.
It was easier to keep it round with the full
support of the table.
|
|
|
Once I got the missing pieces soldered in, I needed
to strengthen the shade since the outside edge was very weak and placing
it in a box would deform it.
I solved the problem by gathering a drop cloth
and using it to support the shade as I soldered it.
|
|
|
I stood to solder at this stage. I soldered the
very outside edge first, the bottom 4 inches of the shade. As I finished
the space where the lines were on top, I would rotate the shade so the
next couple of lines would be horizontal to the world.
I had to be careful when moving the base, it was
easy to tear off an unsoldered piece of glass, so I picked up the shade
from the outside bottom to rotate it.
|
|
|
Once the outside ring at the bottom of the shade
was soldered, it was strong enough to hold it's shape. I found that if I
put the drop cloth in a trash can for additional support, it was the
right size to support the shade as I finished soldering it.
|
|
|
It took many hours, way too many (see note below),
to complete the soldering of the shade and I got it complete on the
outside but not the inside in time for our show.
|
|
 |
|
The nearly finished shade was an
important piece in our 2011 show at the Covey center entitled
"Illumination". The piece with the shade represents "The
Goddess Of The Vineyard."
Note: I have learned
from past mistakes in the stained glass business that if you stop work
on a panel and then pick it up again, you create a lot of work for
yourself. There have been times when we have gotten a rush order,
dropped the current project, completed the rush and then started back on
the order we pushed aside. We have learned that it always takes so much
more time to get back into the rhythm of the work (remembering what we'd
done, what the colors were, etc.) that we would have been better off if
we would have finished the work when the rush came and spent more time
after-hours on the rush rather than dropping the original work.
This was particularly true
with this shade which we worked on in our spare time over the course of
a year. I tacked the panels together and assembled them, ran out of
solder and didn't get back to the lamp shade for several months. The
shade was left, un-cleaned for those months and when I went back to the
finish soldering, I was dismayed to find that the time to finish the
soldering was easily seven or eight times what it would have been if I
had finished it all at once. I had to really work the old solder to get
the new stuff to stick and the resulting lines were okay but not as
perfect as they would have been had I done it all at once. In fact, I
haven't done the second grape shade that all the pieces are cut and
foiled for because it's just so labor intense that no one can afford the
shade. So this is a method I may abandon.
|
|
