Ellen, Gerald, Jessie and Christine
Thursday, August 3rd, 2006Ellen was our lone student Tuesday morning. The three of us hung out in the shop working on our seperate projects. Ellen’s grape window is moving right along. The trellis, vines and background have all been cut and she managed to grind most of the left hand side. She’s leaving the grapes until she’s got the rest ground and tacked together. We’re doing it this way so that all those similar grape peices don’t get mixed up with eachother and with the background pieces. Plus, you get to see some immeadiate results doing it like this. 
Russ began working on his latest beveled window by designing it and picking out his glass. He’ll be using a baroque background which should look really good.
Our evening class consisted of Gerald, Jessie and Christine. Christine did all her homework during the week so she was able to tack everything she wrapped as soon as she came in. Next came the hard part of figuring out a border color. After looking at numerous colors of glass she decided to put a little extra work into it and make two borders. The inner border would be one of the same whites she used for her magnolia and then she’d go back to the background color for a larger final border. As you can see the extra effort was well worth it. All she needs to do next week is solder it and then she’ll take it home to hang up!
Jessie came in to have us check a few pieces that she had ground at home. It only took a few minutes to grind a few tricky areas that allowed everything to slode into place. I’d love to show you what she did but she managed to slip out the door again before I remembered to snap a picture. I promise a before and after picture next week when she begins soldering her horse.
Gerald is back to do two projects, the first being a window with a cross entwined with a vine with leaves. The leaves will be 3 dimensional and the cross design he picked was especially hard to cut since his pieces all came down to sharp long points which are VERY easy to break while cutting. The trick is to cut large and then carefully grind the piece to fit the pattern. But while your grinding you have to make sure that you don’t snap the points off. Gerald know for a fact that this is very easy to do. After some serious ly tedious grinding Gerald got all eight pieces to fit perfectly. So perfectly that they look like just 4 pieces. That’s why we have the second photo– that one shows you how fragile these pieces really are. And then, like a trooper, Gerald helped clean up and get our shop ready for out next class tomorrow. Thanks!
And to anyone wondering what Ellen is doing here on a Tuesday rather than a Wednesday, the answer is easy. Ellen graciously switched days so we could group more people into one class. Currently there’s just Ellen but we’ll be having people returning to Tueday morning soon…
Paul