Stained Glass Saturdays

Two weeks ago our good friends Starr and Gwedo invited us out to Lowell to walk the downtown area so Betina could see all the little art galleries and shops. During our walk-about we entered one gallery named Glass House Designs. Once inside we found all sorts of glass artwork, and a large workshop area. As I browsed around checking out all the neat glass objects I heard Gwedo sparking up a conversation with the Owner/Artist Susan Molnar. When I made my way around to the workshop area I saw this twinkle in G's eyes and he was gathering information. We said good bye and followed our wives into the next shop. This shop was not so exciting for G and I so we sat in the front windows discussing the stained glass shop. Gwedo produced the paperwork he acquired regarding the stained glass classes and we looked it over while considered attending classes on Saturday afternoons. Gwedo called during the week and made all the arrangements for us to attend the class.

Upon our arrival Susan, our instructor had all the work areas ready to go with all the tools we would need to make our first glass project. She started by explaining all the tools involved and how we were to use them. The tools used consist of a Cutter, Breaker/Grozer Pliers, and Running Pliers to get started. First she had us cutting straight strips of glass to get use to the technique needed for the cutter and running pliers. After we mastered that we moved to cutting curved pieces. That proved to be a little trickier and took some patients. After approximately and hour of practicing we then moved on to make a five part piece of work from start to finish. This project would be made from inexpensive regular window glass to get the hang of all the tools and to take a project from start to finish. After cutting the paper pattern out and tracing the pieces on to the glass we cut all our pieces out. Then Susan taught us how to apply the copper foil to the glass pieces using the fid. Once all the pieces where foiled we then could lay them into position and solder them together. The next step was to wash our projects and apply the Patina to turn the solder black. The last step of the day was to wash our art and polish it. It was a very enjoyable day and we immediately signed up for another class.

This is my first project, nothing special but a great learning experience.

It's Saturday again, time for more stained glass projects. G and I arrive a little early to pick out the glass we will be using for our first "real project". I have chosen to make an Orchid for Betina since she loves those flowers. I select my glass with a little help from Susan and settle in to our worktable. Once G has selected his glass (I can't divulge what he is working on, it's a secret) the two of us were gleaming with excitement, just itchin' to get started. That's when Susan brought us back to earth by giving us some scrap glass and suggested we trace some of the parts of our pattern to practice a few times before trying it on our expensive glass. Ha, this proved to be disastrous, we thought we were professional already and realized these beginner projects where much harder than we thought. Finally after screwing up all the practice glass we move on to our good glass. We both got off to a very poor start but managed to finally get some of the tricky pieces cut out. At the end of class we just looked at each other and chuckled, we thought we would be bringing finished goods home again this week but learned that it is quite the process. Of course we signed up for next Saturday and will hopefully finish them up and then try another one. Below you will find some photos of the start of my Orchid project.