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Let’s talk about Stained Glass! Around this time last year, I got way into tiktok, and eventually found may way over to seeing people do stained glass. It looked fun, and I realized I needed a new (expensive) hobby, as pretty much any crafting trade knowledge I had I used at work and didn’t really want to do at home for fun anymore. Since then, I’ve made 7 pieces, with at least 3 more on the way before the end of the year. I’ll talk about those in a bit. First, let’s talk about how it’s done. There’s generally 2 methods. The oldest method uses sections of extruded lead channel called ‘came’. Your classic cathedrals and windows are made this way. I don’t do this method because it requires some special tooling and generally the type of projects it would be used for are larger scale and beyond my means. Maybe someday! The most common method I’ve seen today is the foil method, which was really popularized back in early 1900’s. Rather than using a channel, a thin copper foil with an adhesive is wrapped around the edges of each glass piece. Then, you solder them together using (usually) leaded solder. There’s lead-free methods now, but I haven’t tried them yet. After soldering, you can apply a chemical to cause the solder blacken, or patina. The patina’d solder visually disappears a bit more and can also help hide your flaws. The process of cutting the glass is surprisingly simple. You use a carbide-wheel with a little bit of cutting oil. Score a line using just the right amount of pressure. Then, you simply snap across the score line, and the glass breaks (hopefully) following your score line. It can be done by hand for big or cuts that are not too complex. Or you can use special pliers to help snap it. This is especially useful for small pieces or tight curves. Sometimes you also can tap the glass to help work the score to follow where you want. You can’t do right angles though! And tight radius curves are also very difficult. After cutting, most folks use a diamond-grit grinder with water coolant to take off the sharp edges and finely shape the glass to the desired dimensions for your pattern. I think grinding is usually a little less intensive with the lead came type of assembly… basically, the tolerances are wider so it isn’t as critical to be absolutely perfect. With foil though, you really want to minimize your air gaps as any big mistakes are easily visible. Sometimes folks also use zinc came channel to do outer surrounds on things like sun catchers. I haven’t messed with that yet but I may soon. That’s really the broad strokes of stained glass! It is all mostly a matter of time and patience to develop the skills. When you get better grinding the glass to your pattern, you get less gaps in your solder and a neater look. When you get better at cutting, you spend less time grinding and can do pieces with much more complex patterns and small pieces. Of course, this is coming from a novice. I’m fortunate in that there’s a glass artist near me that sells glass and does classes. I haven’t had the money or consistent schedule to do a class, but she’s nice enough to answer questions whenever I visit to poke around her stock. Here’s my first piece:  There was a lot of air gaps between the pieces when I soldered because I hadn’t quite figured out how to shape the pieces within good tolerances. I over-ground edges a lot trying to get the fit better. I also wasn’t quite sure how to do the exterior wrap - I thought the solder wouldn’t be strong enough on its own, so I grabbed some solid copper wire from some scrap romex to make an ersatz frame to bear the weight, then soldered it directly. Its………rustic?  This is my second, and I made the pattern for it myself. My wife asked me for a design she saw online, and I thought the pattern wasn’t as good as it could be, so I traced lines over a photo of some of her books. I didn’t patina this one and liked the look. The purple mirror-type glass here was a tremendous pain in the rear end to work with, as it wanted to flake off constantly.  This is my fourth. It was supposed to be my first, but the tight curve of the water around one of the fins was so hard I hosed up all of my first batch of blue glass. This is also a bit bigger than it was in the pattern book. This piece technically isn’t done but I am kind of stuck on what to do to finish it. (ignore the corner where it doesn't line up, for starters)  This is number 5. It got a blue ribbon in the county fair (in the novice category). I'm probably going to re-do the beading on the edges as I've gotten better at it.  This is my 6th. It’s a shark made of the blue glass that was supposed to be for the fish. I made the pattern for this after I saw a tiktok where somebody else made a glass shark as a mbmbam reference. The eye isn’t quite in the right spot, but its only sharpie, so its moving sometime soon. I might also add a bit of red glass to make the mouth a bit better. I cut some detail there thinking it wouldn’t show, but I think it feels weird.
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Oct 17, 2023 03:34
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What's the process for coloring the glass?
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Oct 17, 2023 17:33
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I did a quick lookup, because I wasn't entirely sure myself. Turns out it has to do with adding metal compounds to the silica while the glass is being made. Copper is often used for greens, cobalt for blues, and gold for reds (though apparently they've figured out a way to do this with copper, too?). I'm sure the compounds vary depending on the style of glass too. For example, the thick, streaky colored blue I used for the shark probably has variations in process and chemistry from the relatively clear and simple blue used around the corn suncatcher. Actually, that's a whole road to go down too - glass selection. There's a number of US-based glass manufacturers, and they all have different product lines that have some similarities and some differences. For example, the dark swirly, streaked glass used in the background of the bird and the shark suncatcher are very likely Youghiogheny glass. (Pronounced yock-a-gainy I believe) I bought those before I really knew my glass, so it's mostly a guess. Youghiogheny's 'thing' seems to mostly be heavily colored, opalescent, nearly opaque glass. In comparison, you can look at something like Wissmach, and one of their big product lines is 'English Muffle' which is more translucent, but is steel-rolled to give it texture and blur. I'm actually working on a project right now that is 7 different colors of the same texture of Wissmach. The red kinda reminds me of the old cups from Pizza Hut, but a bit bigger. They also make 'cathedral' and 'hammered' variations that are different textures. They also make swirly stuff too. There's also Kokomo, Oceanside, and Bullseye, just in the US. I'm sure there's more too. They also supply some of the art glass used in fusing/slumping/molds- look at DC to Daylight's thread where they're mucking about with melting glass in a kiln.
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Oct 18, 2023 02:58
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Ah ok. It wasn't clear if you were staining the glass yourself or purchasing it. I'm gonna have to look at classes around Dallas. Do you have any in process photos? Are you doing the work at home or going out to a shop? I live in an apartment so my hobbies are limited to what supplies I can cram on a shelf and properly do on a desk.
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Oct 18, 2023 17:16
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I have some in progress; I’m working on one now too. I’ll post photos after work. The main problem for cleanliness for me is glass shards - even a clean break will leave little flakes here and there. I do mine out in a yard barn. I have a counter there, but I’ve also used a small portable work table. You might be able to do the cutting on a desk on a hard floor if you’re willing to keep up with the debris. Basic tools don’t take up much space, but the grinder has a bit of a footprint - maybe 20”x20” depending on the model? You’ll want a backsplash, as it does throw some water with glass powder in it around. I have some nasty deposits on some electronics i didnt move lol.
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Oct 18, 2023 18:22
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Fanged Lawn Wormy posted:I have some in progress; I’m working on one now too. I’ll post photos after work. Yeah, this looks like something that def needs dedicated space. I did manage to find 3 different classes for stained glass in the area going on all times of the year so I'll def give this a go at some point.
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Oct 18, 2023 18:24
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As promised, a couple in-progress pics:   Here's the build process for the bird, which I took more photos of than any of the others. Look how loose those pieces are! some of the first guides I was reading recommended leaving almost a 1/16" gap between pattern pieces (they make special scissors for this even) to allow gap tolerance. I....still don't understand why you would do that. It makes sense if you're using came, as you NEED to have air gaps to fit the channel in. With foil, its so thin it really doesn't matter unless you're trying to hit a very exact size... I guess it's good to have a littttle solder down inbetween the glass pieces? I think that'll happen anyways given human hand-precision limits. If you're trying to hit an exact size, I can think of several ways to make that easier than doing air gaps like that. Tacking it together was fun though. Here's the corn. Look how much better my gaps are! 
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Oct 19, 2023 03:14
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New Work-in-progress. This one of a couple I'm doing as christmas gifts this year.  The square I got for cutting helped quite a bit. Nice fuckin' seams. hell yeah. Edges still need work, and I'm still solving exactly how I'm going to make that leaf float. Originally I was thinking some thin wire, but it runs the chance of being too fragile. Maybe a filler piece of clear glass to help spread some of the weight so it isn't concentrated on two points of foil.
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Oct 23, 2023 03:14
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Ugh! meant to post this awhile ago but haven't had time. First off, the Apple has come out great.  I had to patina it twice though. I let the solder sit for about a week before I did the patina, and didn't polish it first to make sure that the patina had a good surface to get to. I've read a lot of advice on polishing and washing prior to patina application, and I'm interested to do some tests sometime to see what I like best. The key things you're looking to do are get flux residue off and get the solder clean and unoxidized so that the patina has lots of fresh tin to react with to turn as black as possible. I've been experimenting with first doing a baking soda rub for neutralizing. Then a tiny bit of dish soap and water, then a rinse with distilled water. I've only started polishing after the apple, and yeah, it really makes the glass pop, but then you have to be careful not to muck up your glass with the patina acid... which means applying with a q-tip or something with a bit more control than a cheap brush. I've tried it and it was time consuming and annoying. As for polish, all I've tried so far is a magic eraser and Mother's Wax, both of which seemed fine - it shined the solder and brightened the glass without scratching. you technically could polish AFTER patina, but that's a pain in the neck since you don't want to rub the patina off, and it'll be hard to get good and tight on the edges. anyways, More experiments for another time. Anyways, I completed my other Christmas gift: a book that holds a candle. I'm pretty happy with this for being only my 2nd 3D thing.   This is a great time to talk about TOLERANCES. See how everything is super great and lining up?  Yeah, when you add foil, it starts to move.. maybe 1/64" to 1/32" each. I've been lazy about this for most of my work - I do suncatchers, and they aren't trying to hit specific sizes. But, when you're trying to get a specific size, you have to account for it with how you cut your pattern. There's a number of ways to do it from how you cut your pattern (leaving a tiny gap) to how you lay it out - big patterns for windows are usually laid out on a board with tiny nails between pieces to allow for the gap before doing the foil wrapping. I'll probably need to start getting better about that soon. In this case, I knew it would happen, so I purposefully didn't foil the middle of the book spine until I laid it out, then I ground it down to match what was needed. Use your scrap to make sure you don't get droop while laying between your support blocks!  Support them corners so it doesn't go all woogly.  And it DONE.    I would've liked to have sized it for a bigger candle, but my most of the glass for this was scrap I had leftover, and I built it to the max proportions I could without having to buy more.
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Dec 2, 2023 01:05
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This is a GORGEOUS lantern/votive! Please forgive me for not knowing anything about the stained-glass process - do you have a studio at home, do you go somewhere to do the work, or do you just need a couple of tools to do something like this? Someone mentioned soldering - are you actually soldering the pieces of glass together? Does the glass melt enough to fuse to the metal, does the solder work for glass the same as it does for metal, or what is going on? (YouTube fails me on these things so thank you for your patience.) Do you cut the glass yourself, or do you buy it pre-cut? Which is more expensive for a targeted project like this? Where do you buy the kind you need?
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Jan 10, 2024 02:31
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Thanks! I work in a yard shed, maybe 20x10?. It works pretty well for the small stuff I've been doing. It's real cold out there now though - I haven't been out there in a few weeks so I'm not sure if it'll be as doable. The temperature surely is going to affect how the glass breaks a little bit. Tools aren't too bad really for the type I do, which is foiled glass. The most expensive things are the grinder and a soldering iron. A decent grinder is somewhere around $100 to start, mine was maybe $160. A soldering iron is maybe $100 or so for one that is hot enough and is of decent enough quality that it will last. (I was lucky in that I do electronics work so I already had an iron that would work well). Hand tools are another 50-100 depending on how nice and how much you want to start. A carbide cutter, some grozing/breaking pliers, some cutting oil, a plastic bar for getting your foil good and stuck to your glass. That said, I'm about to drop more cash on some jigs and kit just to make my workspace more pleasant and convenient. Leaded came construction requires more tools for stretching and shaping the lead extrusions. It seems like a pain and I'm not interested in pursuing that path just yet. To answer about construction, the basic process is this: 1) Cut and break the glass to match the pattern. You cut the glass by first scoring it with a tiny metal wheel. Then, putting pressure on the glass, you can basically snap it in across the line you previously put - it's not very thick and it should follow your line... but curves and stuff can be tricky. Glass tends to "want" to break along straight lines. 2) Wrap a copper foil sticker around the outside edges of the glass 3) Solder the foil to hold the pieces together. The solder fills in the any unfortunate gaps between your glass pieces and also wraps around the front and back, kind of acting like an I-Beam to hold the glass in place 4) Final detailing. Polishing the glass, and applying patina if desired. The patina is basically an acid that reacts with the solder to turn it black (there are also "copper" patinas that make it look more like copper. You can also leave the patina off and have it silver, like the shark I did earlier in this thread. I cut my own glass, and have for every project I've done, because that's part of what interested me in this - cutting glass is one of things that either goes right or it doesn't, and you just have to *do* it. It's very against my usual fiddly anxious nature, so I thought it would be a good exercise to try. You can of course fix some mistakes by changing the design on the fly or grinding to accomodate, of course. That said, there are pre-cut glass kits out there. I don't like giving money to Hobby Lobby, but they do sell them, and if that works for a beginner I wouldn't look down on them. I'd go to an online seller, like Delphi Glass- they have a lot more variety and options, and you're not funding people who steal cultural artifacts from the middle east. But hey, beggars cant always be choosers and the system makes bastards of us all. Glass buying is interesting. Where I am, I don't really have a good local supplier. There's an artist who runs a small shop out of her basement 3 days a week here who I bought most of my first stuff from. However, her selection is a bit limited by whatever she's been buying for projects she has and the limited number of buyers in the area. I visited a shop in Decatur IL near my folks that had a great selection though. I've also bought from some online vendors - pricing and shipping works out OK if you get more glass at once because it gets easier to pack. Typically shops sell them in pre-cut rectangular pieces around 12" square give or take depending on their preference. Raw factory sheets tend to be around 24"x36" but this varies depending on the manufacturer and the how the glass is made. I'm getting ready to do my biggest project to date - I want to build a mondrian-inspired lamp thats going to be nearly 4 feet long of stained glass. I bought some glass already to get me started but I'll need to buy more to actually do it. I'm considering what I have to be a good start and a way to have samples of the exact type of glass I want. For buying stuff, in case anybody is interested: https://www.delphiglass.com/ is a pretty good spot for glass hobbyists and starters. Pricing is decent as far as I can tell, and they have a lot of the miscellaneous bits you might need. https://www.anythinginstainedglass.com/ is a family business out of Ohio. Great glass pricing, but you have to buy a minimum amount. Very nice folks on the phone! I needed a scrap bit of a color they were out of stock on and they were able to send me a smaller scrap piece when I asked nicely. https://www.edhoy.com/ Ed Hoy international is a vendor more for glass professionals. Cool stuff to drool over though. Also, if you're interested in videos on it, I have recommendations: ARTyRV Is an old couple of glass artists and they've got great beginner tutorials and they're just cute to watch. https://www.youtube.com/c/artyrv Everything (not anything) Stained Glass is also good for tutorials: https://everythingstainedglass.com/ Ok that's dump enough for today. I'll probably do a post tomorrow as I'm thinking through the next project.
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Jan 12, 2024 04:24
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Yes, yes, yes! Ty so much for all the info on the process and the sources! You mentioned how temperature fluctuations can affect working with glass - do you insulate your studio, or heat it at all? When you buy glass, do you buy pre-colored, specialty glass or is it possible to buy, like, plain glass from thrift store items and color it yourself?
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Jan 23, 2024 03:45
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I have a bit about that in my 2nd post in the thread; but to summarize: I buy pre-colored. The color of the glass is made during manufacture by adding various metals to it. That's part of why stained glass has such interesting color patterns - the mixture within the glass varies and gives you darker and lighter areas. Sometimes you can see a lot of variation in color just depending on which side you're looking at. That said, I have a lot of clear glass I use for practice*. One of my early pieces, I cut completely from clear, assembled, and then simply used acrylic paints to put some color on. It's not as rich in color or quite the same, but it is pretty and has the same kind of fun as just doing a regular painting. A lot of church murals and such have painted details, but there's a whole system to doing that professionally that I'm not really familiar with. *The only problem is that clear glass is MUCH easier to cut. My guess is that the less consistent makeup of the wispy/streaky glass gives it a little less predictability. It's not a HUGE difference, but when I'm trying to do a tight corner or a fine detail, I can tell. The big fish I did - in the first post - has a tricky cut in it that I lost a whole first attempt to, and nearly the second. I can make that cut on clear glass without any issue.
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Jan 31, 2024 02:42
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doublepost: There's an estate auction in my area and they are selling one of the owner's entire stained glass shop as a lot. I'm probably going to be outbid, but if I could get it for less that $700 it'd be a steal, and I could recoup some of that selling the stuff I don't want.
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Jan 31, 2024 02:44
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Ugh, I've been so busy I haven't had time to really do much or post anything. Missed out on that auction. It ended up getting to $1000, and I couldn't afford that. In other news, I've made progress on a new project. I think I posted it early in the thread, but I made this big goldfish piece that I've always liked, but it didn't quite fill the window the way I wanted. I left the edges unfinished and kept it in the shed. Then, the design fix hit me. I'm adding a buildout 'frame' to fit the rest of the window, and making it have a forced 3D Perspective. It'll look a bit like an aquarium when done.  I also got an old edgelit acrylic panel from work and starting doing some experimenting with how I do the work. So far, I usually cut a paper pattern, trace it, then cut to the trace lines. For some of this, I tried the "English Method", which is basically laying your pattern on a lightbox, then laying your glass on top of that, then cutting while looking through. It's certainly faster and less labor intensive, so it makes sense if you're doing this a lot to be an easier method. Probably not great for highly geometric patterns that require accuracy though.  Also, you'll notice that the original piece isn't quite square. I need to de-solder and square it up a bit before completion. Here's some overlapped pieces showing the problems.  I don't actually plan on cutting the tail though. I'm going to cut off the left side instead, but I'll also have to recut a bit of the blue above the righthand plant to fit that mistake from the making of the first one. Anyways, all this was weeks ago, and I haven't had time to do more. I was hoping to this weekend, but I'm feeling sick after a long work trip. Work is going to be crazy for a bit, and I'm honestly applying for a new jobs in other states. If all goes well, I probably won't have time to touch this again till August. It's a bummer. I really wanted to enter something in the state fair this year.
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Apr 7, 2024 19:10
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