Bayou Salé GlassWorks

I forgot to take a picture of Julie’s 3D Nymph before she left on Wednesday.  I emailed her and asked her to please take a picture and send it to me so I could post it on the Blog the next day (Thursday).  Well, she sent the picture and I was busy out in the yard so I decided that I would write and post the blog when I finished with the yardwork.  Alas, out of sight, out of mind…  Here it is Friday night and I’m typing away having realized that I never covered our Wednesday classes!

As you already know, Julie made a flying Nymph. It’s a pewter body that you cut stained glass wings for.  Then you simply solder them to the body.   I say simply, but trying to line these things up so they are even is quite a feat.  Rather than solder the wings flat, Julie soldered them in a curve so they look somewhat like umbrella halves.  As always it turned out perfect.  Here’s her Nymph from this week.  Next week she’ll be doing a pewter bodied humming bird with stained glass wings.

Kim worked on the final border of her large Beveled Window.  Her corners slowed her down a bit since the last border isn’t simple straight cuts made on a strip cutter. She’s moving right along though and doing great!  I’ll bet she’ll be ready for solder next week.

Ellen was working on a similar border this week after she finshed cutting the center of her beveled window out.   Both she and Kim are using the same French Crackle Glass as outer borders.  Ellen got it all cut ground and wrapped and will finish soldering her window in 2 weeks after she comes back from a long overdue vacation. 

Danielle and Cheryl came in Wednesday evening and got right to work wrapping their windows that they had ground the night before.  If either of them had any doubts about being able to do stained glass they should put them aside.  Both of them finished wrapping their windows, tacked them together and then decided on what color borders they would be putting on their projects.  Daniell’s window has 67 pieces in it (not counting the border) and Cheryl’s has 84 pieces.  That’s a lot of wrapping to get done in a 3 hour class!

Here’s Danielle’s Tree Frog along with the piece of glass she picked for her border.  Next to that we have Cheryl’s Humming Bird and Morning Glories along with her border choice.

             

I’m sorry this got posted last this week but I promise to be back on track next week.  Until then, have a happy forth of July!!

Paul

Bayou Salé GlassWorks 

We had 4 students in tonight and the amount of work accomplished was nothing short of amazing.

Jessie came in and got to work grinding the last of her ballerina window. Within 45 minutes she was finished and then spent the rest of the night wrapping her pieces. The border color she chose is nothing short of perfect against the pink and yellow tutu that the Ballerina is wearing. This is a color combination that I will keep in mind when making various projects.

Jane finished the last few pieces of her Parrot and then tacked it together. From there she traced it out on top of a piece of orange glass cut the the size of her background. Doing it this way wastes a little glass but it makes the background more aesthetically pleasing because the flow of the glass runs perfectly throughout the background. Jane plans on finishing this window off by adding a thin border of red (the color may change by next week) and then a wider border of the background glass again.

Danielle was as quiet as a mouse over at the grinder. I had told her and her mother, Cheryl, that they would spend the entire class grinding their projects and I was correct. What I didn’t expect was for them both to finish grinding their projects in one night! I guess they’ve got that part mastered because halfway into the grinding process of their windows they were fitting pieces together like a pro. Danielle’s Tree Frog looks great. She’ll wrap it and possibly tack it together during her next class (Wednesday Night).

Cheryl’s Humming Bird went together equally as well. Usually when someone grinds an octagon window I have to constantly remind them that the glass must stay within the octagon outline on the pattern, but Cheryl always stayed within the lines. What shocked me most was the fact that she really seemed to enjoy doing grinding which I feel is the worst part of the stained glass process. But then again I love to wrap glass while most people find that to be tedious and boring. It will be interesting to see what she thinks of the next step.

Cheryl and Danielle will be joining us during our next class tomorrow night (which is actually tonight as I write this) so stick around and see what they get accomplished!

Paul
Bayou Salé GlassWorks

Since 2 of our students (Cheryl and Danielle) can only come every other week we are only having an afternoon class today. So what got accomplished in our afternoon class? Plenty, as you will see.

Julie was unsure if her lamp would end up home with her or not today, but with a little extra effort we got the job done. The lamp turned out to be stunning and I’m absolutely certain that she’s extremely happy with it. We used a bucket (a trick of the trade) to make sure the lamp was perfectly round (there’s nothing worse than a lamp with a flat spot) and once we had the cap attached to the top and the brass channel applied to the bottom it was rock solid. Just 8 lines were left to be soldered and they went quickly.

Julie made this lamp for a floor base that she had picked up a while back and although it took the better part of a day to determine the correct size for it, everything worked out fine in the end. I thought it fit the base perfectly and that her choice of glass couldn’t have been better. And to think that I was the one who was pushing her to use the tan color for the center sections to give it a more authentic Frank Lloyd Wright look. Boy, was I wrong. I wasn’t able to get a full shot of the lamp on the base, but I did get 2 good pictures of the lamp lit up in the dark and with the lights on in the shop. Here’s the finished project. Remember, this lamp stands almost 6 foot tall.

      

Kim got her corners attached to her window and then got her bevels cut and tacked on. If you’ll note, you’ll see that her fancy corner pieces actually cut into her 4 rows of bevels. The window could have been designed so the corners end up on the end of a bevel, but this effect looks wonderful when used with fancy flowing corners. The hardest work on this window is behind Kim now–All that’s left is the final border. Because of her fancy corners she’ll need to work a little harder at the last border because it’s not a straight cut all around. Still, the extra effort will really show in the end. Kim isn’t afraid of working a lot harder to make her window look extra special. Here is Kim’s window as it stands today.

Ellen also began working on a beveled window. She went with a complete inner beveled border surrounding a beveled Fleur De Les. Her background glass is called Seedy and it resembles clear glass with raindrops in it. Over the years I’ve had many students refer to it as ‘rain glass’.

Ellen had picked up her bevels (55 of them) on Monday and had them all wrapped before she got her Wednesday afternoon. I can only assume she spend most, if not all, of Tuesday night wrapping glass while watching TV (that’s the way I do it). When she came in she laid it all out, cut and ground her 8 corner accents, tacked together the center Fleur De Les and then cut and ground the harder top half of the background glass. If you think all that was hard to read, just imagine doing it all in one class! It wasn’t until after she left that I realized she had accomplished most of her window in just one class. She’s only got 8 pieces left to cut and then a final border cut from french crackle.  Don’t be surprised to see this window finished, save for the soldering, next week.

And that about wraps it up for this week. We have 2 new students starting next week during our Wednesday evening class. Watch here for more butterflies!

Paul

Bayou Salé GlassWorks

We lost Michele as a student last week after she finished her window and two of our other prospective students have opted out before even starting.  That leaves only Jesse arriving in the Tuesday morning class.  To simplify things, Jessie came in on Tuesday night with the rest of the gang so she could have a little social interaction while she’s working on her window.  She finished cutting the rest of the glass for her Ballerina window and then began to grind her pieces.  She used the more yellow sections of the pink glass she used for the ballerina’s tutu to give a color variance to the torso section of the ballerina’s costume.  Picking different shades in the sheet of glass you are using is a large part of the stained glass process.  Many people just through the pattern pieces on the glass haphazardly not realizing how important shading is to the final piece.  You can see Jessie’s excellant use of shading in the picture of her window.

Craig began work on the bayou scene he’d picked out the week before. His window is easily as large as his first window was, but this one is made in four sections to fit the frame he is installing it in.  He’s working on the right side of the window first, concentrating on the bottom right panel.  When he came in he had to trace out and then and cut up almost all his pattern (a time consuming task).  He then manged to trace out the egret pieces onto his white glass and get them all cut.  Great job, Craig! Here’s what he’s finished so far.

Lastly we have Jane who managed to slip away on me (again) before I was able to take a picture of her progress.  She has all of her bird, flowers, branch, and leaves cut out and ground.  I have to give her credit for handling her flower petals as well as she did.  They are tiny complex pieces that have to interlock perfectly and she managed to do that quickly and effeciently.  She took it home to wrap so she could tack it together next week.  I expect that this window will be ready to solder during her next class. Since I don’t have a picture of her progress the best I can do is post this picture of her pattern again.

And that’s what happened Tuesday, June 20th!

Paul
Bayou Salé GlassWorks 

Well, we saw a lot of productivity here today that’s for sure.  Since our 2 classes practically merged together today I’ll cover the full day in one post.  I wanted to come up with a really catchy title for this post to make Julie happy but I’m at a loss for words again tonight.  I promise to do better next week.  And I feel worse about the boring title since Julie went out of her way to bring something to class today– keep reading to find out what it was.

Kim came in and went to work on her beveled window.  I had told her last week that she’d really see a lot of progress once all her corners were cut and ground and sure enough, she’s almost ready for her final border after the work she did today!  Kim really impressed me with her cutting skills as she cut out some extremely intricate curves without breaking a single piece of glass.  Her window is fitting together perfectly and I can’t wait to see this one held up in the light.

Julie finished all her cutting, grinding and wrapping today.  She has 8 panels all ready to be soldered and then tacked together next week.   There are 312 pieces in this lamp, most of them being thin strips and tiny triangles that have to fit together just right.  My prediction is that this is going to be one stunning lamp.  You can already see how wonderfully it all flows together in the picture below of all the panels in a row on the table.  Another job well done by Julie who also made me a wonderful Birthday cake today.  We all took time out to have at least one piece (some of us went for seconds, but I won’t name those people…) and it seemed to give us all the energy we needed to keep working.  Thanks Julie, I really appreciated the cake but next time let’s skip all the candles on it. 

Ellen discovered the joys of balancing a lamp in your lap today.  It’s not the easiest thing, but she made it look easy.  Soldering a round lamp is much harder than a window because you must hold the lamp in your lap while you reposition it for each lead line that you go over.   There are a total of 180 pieces in the lamp and the quick count I did came up with about 275 lead lines.  That’s a lot of shifting around trying to get the balance right so the lead doesn’t just roll off the line while it’s still hot and in it’s liquid state.  Ellen’s lamp is beautiful and next week she’ll be doing a beveled window similar to Kim’s.

       

Our mother and daughter team, Cheryl and Danielle, came in tonight and made exceptional progress. They traced their patterns, cut them all up and even got all their glass cut!  All the glass with the exception of their borders, that is.  But anyone who reads this on a regular basis knows that the border is the last thing we cut on a window and that it goes on after the window is tacked together.

Maybe it was the new brass handled glass cutters that Cheryl and Danielle used that got them this far so quickly.   Next week they’ll be working at the grinders, making sure everything fits together perfectly.  As for what they accomplished this week, well, it was quite amazing.

Here’s Cheryl’s Humming Bird and Morning Glories.  The humming bird itself has a green and red body that doesn’t really show up well in the picture.  We’ll see it much better when we get it held up with some light behind it when it’s finished.

And this is Danielle’s Tree Frog.   The colors in this look great and I think that Danielle, much like her mother, amazed herself with how well she did.  They both think that they need some work on their cutting abilities, but for a first project these look great.

And that’s what happened today in our classes.  Make sure to check back next week to see what else is happening.
Paul

Bayou Salé GlassWorks 

Gerald finished his window tonight, much as we expected. He spent about an hour and a half on each side and then it was time to clean the beast. His window measures 16″ x 41″ and took up most of a workspace (not that we’re complaining).

A window this size is easily washed outdoor with the hose, but that’s not very practical when it’s 9:30 at night and the bugs are out in full force so we washed it indoors. Luckily, it fit into the sink when we stood it on edge making this process easier that I had thought it might be. After cleaning off all the flux we dried the window off and applied the patina. To apply patina you simply wash it down with a chemical that you apply with some felt. It took a good 20 minutes to make sure everything was covered and then it was off to the sink again for it’s final bath. We cleaned it up, dried it off for the last time and then applied a little wax to the lead lines. Gerald made a beautiful window (worth about $350) during the span of a simple 5 week lesson.

Jane started her new project tonight. She had brought in a reversed glass painting of a parot that she had done a while back to see if we could make a pattern out of it. That was easy. She then traced out her pattern, cut it all up and began working on the actual bird part of the window. She has all but the green sections of the bird cut (we’re waiting on a specific piece of green to be delivered) and she will most likely be finished with her cutting next week.

Although I forgot to take pictures of what she finished, I did get a shot of her pattern and the original painting that she did. Look for pictures showing her stained glass work on this piece next week. Below we have her painting on the left and her pattern on the right. We changed the flowers so she wouldn’t have to work with such tiny pieces, but the overall design is still the same.

That’s it for Tuesday, we have more classes coming up tomorrow so check back to see what else is happening.

Paul

Bayou Salé GlassWorks

I guess it’s all about balance after all. This week Michele finished her Iris window and will be leaving our classes just as I learned how to spell her name correctly. (No one told me there was only one L in her name!) But Michele will be coming back after the kids get back in school and she has some more free time. To balance this out we have our newest student, Jessie, who began working on her first project today.
Michele started soldering immediately and after 2 hours or so she was finished. For a first effort at soldering she did quite well and should be proud of herself. She had the added pressure of having to be somewhere at 1:00 so she was really doing all she could to get this window finished so she could take it home with her.

And as you can see below, all her efforts paid off beautifully. Her Iris window is the latest in a series of Iris windows (it’s a popular pattern here which I’ve done numerous times myself) that have been done by different students over the years. Michele can rest assured that her work was wonderful and that her window is just as good as the other windows before it. In fact, it’s better than most of the first time projects I’ve seen in the past.

Jessie has been doing some glass work with her mother, Kim (who’s a regular on Wednesday afternoons), at home. So when she came in our class today we skipped the butterfly since she already knows most of how a window is made. She considered making a window with a whale in it but she couldn’t find anything that really sparked her interest with that idea. She had seen a pattern on the internet at a free pattern site and asked if she could do that one. We looked it up online and it was perfect. The next thing I knew Jessie was cutting up her pattern and getting ready to cut glass for it. She has all her glass picked and she’s already made a great start today.

Come back soon because we have another class tonight and will have more pictures of our student’s progress after the class…

Paul

Bayou Salé GlassWorks

One of the hardest things to do with with Blog is figuring out what to title each entry. Since no one really cares about a title, let’s move on to what was accomplished today during classes.

(OK, I re-titled this just for Julie)

Kim started her beveled window and went to work on the four corner sections. The bevel cluster in the center is wrapped and ready to go. The majority of the work in a window like this is in the corners and the final border. Usually borders are quick and easy, but in a pattern like this the final border isn’t made of simple rectangles with 4 straight cuts: it’s made with irregular shapes filled with complex curves on the inside edges. But the end result will be well worth the effort. Pictures below is a full shot of her pattern and a closup of one of the corners. The missing circle will be filled in next week with a 2 inch beveled circle. We also have a picture of another butterfly that Kim cut out at home during the week. She would have ground it at home with her new grinder but she didn’t have a face shield for it yet (which she does now).

Julie worked very hard and diligently on 2 other panels today. Working with such a complex design means that she has to wrap each panel as she grinds them so the pieces (which are all very similar) don’t get put into the lamp out of place. This is slowing her down because she has to do the tedious and time consuming wrapping here in class rather than in her spare time at home. And since each panel must be ground inside a jig, we can’t help her as she moves along. But she left the jig and her pieces here at the shop this week so maybe some of those elves will help her along while she’s gone. She certainly deserves it!

Ellen finished cutting and grinding the flowers to her lamp as well as the 9 pieces of background that we had to skip last week when we mistakenly thought we ran out of glass. Then I organized the pieces on the table so they followed the pattern which makes placing them on the mold a LOT easier. We chose to use double sided tape rather than wax to attach the pieces. Wax is great for larger projects, but it makes a mess out of the inside of the lamp and then you have to wash it with kerosene to remove the wax that sticks to the glass. And then you have to wash out the kerosene, so you can see why we went with tape for a nice medium sized lamp like this. Ellen quickly got the hang of soldering it all together and within an hour or so she had the three sides complete. We joined each of the sides together and only had to refit one pice (which is great!) Then she watched (and learned) as I tacked on the cap to the lamp. We ended up with a lamp that only needs to be soldered now and she’ll be doing that next week.

That was pretty much what happened this week during classes. Except I forgot to mention the cookies that Julie brought in with her…. Home made and delicious!  The only other exciting event was when Kim’s daughter, Jessie, learned that she will begin taking classes next Tuesday. That means that we’ll be having a second mother/daughter team here in the Bayou!

Paul

Bayou Salé GlassWorks
* Shakespeare is the first writer known to use the term ‘bated breath’ in The Merchant of Venice: “Shall I bend low and, in a bondman’s key, / With bated breath and whisp’ring humbleness, / Say this …”. Nearly three centuries later, Mark Twain employed it in Tom Sawyer: “Every eye fixed itself upon him; with parted lips and bated breath the audience hung upon his words, taking no note of time, rapt in the ghastly fascinations of the tale”.

The correct spelling is actually bated breath but it’s so common these days to see it written as baited breath that there’s every chance it will soon become the usual form, to the disgust of conservative speakers and the confusion of dictionary writers. Examples in newspapers and magazines are legion; this one appeared in the Daily Mirror on 12 April 2003: “She hasn’t responded yet but Michael is waiting with baited breath”.

Gerald got busy cutting and wrapping 2 borders today. The first border had some elements from the center design of the window cutting into it so he had to work around that a bit. Luckily it was easy enough.

The second border had no obsticles to work around and once we changed the cutting wheel on the strip cutter things went a lot smoother. The corners were decided on the spur of the moment. Gerald knew he wanted something that stood out but he wasn’t sure what. One of the original ideas was to put the off-green that was used as accent pieces in the corners of the white boder and then put the white in the corners of the final glue chip border, but in the end we all agreed that it was a little too much. Now that it’s basically finished I can honestly say that this is one classy looking window. Gerald should be proud. Here are 2 views, one with the camera’s flash on and another without.

Jane was back a bit early from her ‘vacation’ and was able to attend class tonight. I’m not sure if she planned on finishing her Rose Window when she arrived, but that’s what happened. She tacked her final border, put on her brass channel and started soldering. Before we knew it she was finished and washing it off in the sink. I think she was happy with it. I know I was. Jane does wonderful work and she’ll be working on a parrot window next week.

Craig was in tonight and he dropped off a window frame that he wants to put some glass in. It’s about the size of his last window but broken up into 4 sections. He picked a heron scene that I will draw up for him over the weekend. Then he picked out he glass he’ll be using so we can have everything on hand when he starts this window in 2 weeks. I know he’ll do just fine.

We all had a good time tonight and there was a lot of chatting going on amongst everyone throughout the night. With everyone sharing stories and laughing the night just seemed to fly by…

Paul

Bayou Salé GlassWorks

It was another easy and very productive day today as Michelle cut all of her background and both borders. She got everything ground, wrapped and tacked together so she attached the brass channel around the edges before she left.

The background was cut very easily and needed very little grinding to get it to fit together. The borders went just as quickly. Next week she’ll solder it and take it home. And it looks like she’ll be finishing this window a week early! Not bad for a first project…
Below are two shots of Michelle’s Iris Window. The first is a full length shot and the second a closeup of the actual Iris itself.

Great job Michelle!

Paul

Bayou Salé GlassWorks