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Glass
Artists Newsletter - March 2008 |
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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. |
Last
month, we were happy to hunker down and
work on stained glass in our nice, warm
studio while the storms blew in.
Storm
after storm made driving conditions tough
and made it wonderful to have our studio
so close to us.
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We spent
several enjoyable hours by the fire,
warming ourselves and enjoying the safety
of the room, a good place to read a book
on a cold February day.
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Jeanne
joined Amy, Andrew, Nickolas and a friend
on the surface of the moon to celebrate
Nik's birthday. |
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| Last
month we got many comments about the
article on French Coining, people said
they'd never seen it and that was because
we made it up! The technique was one we
developed after the first try failed. This
month, we demonstrate how to rebuild a
window assembled with the lead came
method.
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How
To Rebuild A Leaded Glass Window
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When the perspective client arrived with his window
that "needed a little work", it was taped and wrapped to a
board to keep it from falling apart. We explained that we'd have to
completely rebuild the window, so he asked if we could make some design
changes while we were at it. We agreed, while securing the added
stipulation that we would rebuild it using the copper foil method.
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We unwrapped the window and assessed the damage.
Every joint was weakened and falling apart. The lead was brittle and
crumbled quite readily. The age of the thing and it's time riddled
damage was quite amazing.
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We began to disassemble the panel
and laid out the glass pieces on a sheet of paper so we could design the
rest of the window to fit the opening that it would go into.
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The lead was so crumbly that is was fairly easy to
pry it away from the glass. The part left of the cement that held the
lead to the glass needed a good scraping to remove it. |
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Using a window scraper, we were able to remove the
cement and grime from the glass. The glass was obviously cut with poor
tools. It had very rough edges and the fit never could have been very
good, even when the window was new. |
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We were able to trace around the old glass onto our
pattern to insure a perfect fit when it went back together. |
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The jewels that were at the center of the panel had
been put together using copper foil. The original soldering suffered
from the lack of good soldering equipment. Being blessed to have better
tools today, we were able to do a better job putting it back together,
that the original artist would have been proud of. |
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Here is a handful of the crumbled lead. |
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We swapped out the bevels for some red glass at the
clients request. |
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Here's the rebuilt panel, with all
the edges replaced with new glass. In truth, only the center jewels and
clear glass were saved and everything else needed to be replaced. It
would have been easier and more economical (and perhaps prettier) to
have built a new window instead of messing about with all the old glass.
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