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 

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 15th, 2006 at 1:41 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.