A Full Night
It was busy but I think everyone in class managed to have a fun time. Gerald got things rolling right away with his monkey joke (don’t ask) and it was Laissez les bons temps rouler from there (hard to believe I’m a Yankee, huh?).
First and foremost, I was very impressed with Cheryls work at home. I knew that she was going to be coming in with a Sun that she had made, but I didn’t know that it was going to be completely finished and done to almost complete perfection! A few of her lead joints needed touching up but this is me nitpicking so she doesn’t get a swollen head about how wonderfully she did. And to think that she just recovered from surgery on her hand! She cut all the glass, ground it, and then soldered everything to come up with the finished piece you see here. An excellant job, Cheryl! Then we looked through different LSU logos and settled on one that we drew up into a pattern that measures about 26 inches wide by 13 inches high. You’ll see the LSU window next week.
When we last left Joey he had to wrap just over 100 small pieces of glass. When he came in tonight he had it all wrapped! We put him back to work on a table with a soldering iron and some solder and he tacked it all together. Things were a little hectic through the night but it didn’t slow Joey down– with a little help from Cheryl (who’s a pro at this now) he soldered the front of his window. Next week he will add the border, solder the back and hopefully take it home.
Lane wrapped most of his final border at home and finished the few remaining pieces in class. Then we squared the window up, added some more re-striping between the 2 borders and tacked it all together. The window was almost perfectly square even before we added the zinc channel which sqaured it off perfectly. With everything tacked together and surrounded by zinc channel Lane was able to actually lift his window off the table and get a real good look at it. Rather than crop him out of the picture I’m leaving him in it so you get see just how large a project this window was. It’s hard to believe this was his first window!
Last, but not least we have Gerald’s Fleur de Lis window. All his diamonds were wrapped and then he filled in the sections that had to be cut to for the oval that the Fleur de Lis rests in. He’ll add a black border to this next week and more than likely finished it then. There are almost 50 pieces in his background alone but the extra work makes this window stand out nicely.
And that was our night. There will be more to follow next week when everyone returns. We also have a weekend workshop that’s filling up so look for a lot of windows to be finished in the next 3 weeks.
Paul