Russ’s Windows
Russ has been busy during the weekend workshops himself. He decided to make one of the most complex patterns to see just what we should expect to get accomplished during the first class if someone chooses this pattern.
He picked the bear pattern for his first trial project. He started it along with Jack who was taking the class at the time (see the Sept 14th blog listing) and began tracing out his pattern onto paper to cut up into the individual pieces. He decided to use pattern shears to see wha kind of a difference they would make on the amount of grinding that needed to be done. Pattern shears differ from regular scissors because they trim a small amount of the paper off of each piece you cut. This means that when you actually cut the glass you aren’t forced to strickly follow the rule of cutting off the line that you trace onto the glass.
Once the pattern was cut up he began tracing it onto his glass one color at a time. He started with the clouds, then the sky and moved to the green trees and the tree trunks.
A green grass bottom was added after the rest of the brown was cut. As you can see, the pieces are fitting together almost perfectly before they are even ground.
With the water and ground complete he moved on to the last part– the actual bear. You can see in the picture that there are only 11 pieces left to go.
With everything cut Russ beganto grinding everything to fit. The pattern shears made the window fit almost perfectly so a quick skim was all most of the pieces needed. In the future, if someone uses pattern shears to cut their pattern out we won’t be so picky about cutting the line off while cutting the glass. The reasoning here is the fact that these pieces were almost small compared to what was drawn on the actual pattern– But it did make grinding quick and easy.
Once all the grinding was complete he wrapped his glass. Before the end of the first day he was ready to tack it all together. Here’s his window all ground and wrapped.
The next morning had Russ with a soldering iron in his hand and after it was tacked together he used the strip cutter. He cut tan strips into 21 inch lengths and then cut them into equally sized pieces to surround his window (4 on the sides, 3 on the top and bottom and then 4 corners).
Russ took his time and soldered his window slowly but surely. You can’t rush soldering as the solder will only melt at a certain speed. Somecan can solder a window quickly only because they get the bead correct on the first pass and don’t have to go over it a second time. You can’t move faster than the lead melts, if you do you end up with a clumpy mess rather than a smooth bead. It sounds easy enough but there’s a trick to it. Once you get the feel for it you’ll be set, much like riding a bike. Here’s the window almost completely soldered.
Now for the dramatic final picture. It’s amazing how simply cleaning the window and coloring the lead will make it look so finished. It’s very much like night and day!
With this window under his belt Russ decided to do another one about 2 weeks later. I regret that I was unable to take pictures of its progress as he made it, but that’s only because he knocked it out so quickly! This one will be a new student pattern that Russ drew from scratch and finished within about 8 hours (split over two days only because he started late on the first day). The window is a geometric design and is quite colorful, don’t you agree??
These windows are great examples of what you can make during our Weekend Workshop or our standard 5 week classes.
Paul