Swapping Around
Busy schedules had a few students flipping from days to nights and vice versa. The only person who was unable to make it in this week was Ellen, who we all missed. But Russ and I got to see her today when she came over for some glass so she could get some more work done while she’s at home.
We’ll start with Mark who will be regularly jumping from day classes to evening classes every other week. He came in for a day class on Tuesday morning and immediately got to work tracing out the pattern he’d picked. Soon afterwards he picked out most of the glass he’d use to do his window and he began cutting out his water. I love the glass he picked and he cut it perfectly and quickly. After the water was all cut out he moved onto the 3 white birds that are in his window. Before we called it a day he was able to get all 3 of them cut out. The man is a quick study for sure! Here’s a look at what he did Tuesday.
Fran continued cutting the remaining pieces of her Camaro Window until she only had the grill of the car left. We’ve decided to leave that go until it’s all ground because I want to see what a piece of clear granite would look like for the cars grill. I think the texture will look great but I’m unsure of the clearness of the glass. When the window is finished being ground we’ll be able to get a better feel for how the Granite Glass will look. After Fran finished cutting her glass we mover her to the grinder and set her to work making sure everything fits together perfectly. She got fairly far and took home the pieces that she ground so she could wrap them before she comes in next week. The picture below shows the bottom left corner all ground and fit together. If you look closely you can see where we skipped the pieces for the front grill.
Jane was unable to make it in Tuesday morning but she did manage to make it in on Wednesday Evening. She had finished tacking her Macaw together and even added the background to it. When she arrived we cut the strips for her border and after she ground, wrapped and tacked them to her window she went to work soldering it. She got about 90% of it finished bef9ore she called it a night and headed on home where she’ll finished the remainder of the soldering and then color it. Another job well done by Jane.
Gerald was in on Tuesday evening and he traced and cut his pattern all out. Then he laid out his logs and cut them out of glass. With time left to spare he worked on some of the larger pieces of his birds. I have to say that the glass he used for his logs is perfect. There’s a real 3D look about them that you can’t really achieve when you use Spectrum glass. I can’t wait to see more of this one done next Wednesday…
And speaking of Wednesday night, let’s jump back to this Wednesday and see what Joey and Cheryl were doing while Jane was working on her window. It was nice to have Jane finally meet Cheryl and Joey since they only really know each other from reading the Blog and seeing the projects that each of them are making on here.
Joey tacked together his birds and background that he wrapped while he was at home. After it was tacked we cut the remaining 3 borders for this window out of a tan/brown glass that was horrible to cut on the strip cutter. For some reason the glass had a hard spot right in the center of the glass that made cutting strips almost impossible. But we persevered and got it out in pieces. In the end we needed one more strip that was only 7 inches long and that was the one that ran the full length of the glass without breaking. 
We should have tried cutting the short ones first! Joey started soldering his window after the brass channel went on it and he took it home with him to finish up for next week. The end is near!
Last, but not least, we have Cheryl’s window. She had to skim the center bevels to get it to line up with her corners (all that foil in between the glass adds up and will make your pieces bigger). We had cut the center clear glass sections a little bigger hoping to make up for the space that the foil would be taking up, but the best we could do without having the bevels wrapped was guess-timate what the size would be. Cheryl said it was only off by a little bit and that she took the difference of the center bevels of each row. Good job Cheryl! She finished soldering her window in class and had it washed and colored before she left. It looked GREAT as you can see below. The bevels around the clear glass really sparkle. Up next for Cheryl will be magic wands and her street address numbers for a window in front of her house.
And that was it this week!