Bayou Salé GlassWorks

While listening to the Wilson Phillip’s song “Hold On” during class the other day we started discussing the lyrics. I was sure I heard them sing, “Don’t you think it’s (bad word starting with the letter F and ending in ING) time you changed your mind.” We re-listened to it and although we all knew that there was no way that could be the lyrics, it sure sounded as though it was. Well, when it came on again today I looked it up on the internet and discovered that the words in question are “worth your”, which sound nothing like what we thought it sounded like. Now that I know what they are I can’t understand how I thought it was anything else.

Christine managed to walk out the door with another 2 hand mirrors finished. Not only is she getting quicker and quicker at making them, she’s also getting better and better at grinding and soldering them. Her lead lines were so perfect that I barely had to touch anything up for her this week! You can see where Christine has altered the pattern a bit between the two mirrors. I really like the addition of the extra leaf and I like the fact that both Christine and Denise weren’t afraid to alter the pattern to make it more agreeable to them.

And speaking of Denise, she decided to make a hand mirror for her mother this week. She came in with 2 of them already cut and then proceeded to grind her pieces. She required no supervision at all and did an exceptional job at the grinder. Then after she wrapped them all she did another exceptional job in soldering it together. She’ll be working on a grape window next week and I can’t wait to see how that comes out.

Fran worked on her owl window this week. She managed to get all of the dark feathers ground and then went to work tracing out the lighter ones onto a sheet of glass. Before she left she had them all cut and ready to grind which she’ll most likely do at home now that she has a grinder there. Fran is another example of a student who is moving along much quicker than she used to and who is working more precisely at the same time.

Janice came in with all her pieces wrapped and after she tacked them all together we cut the red border for it on the strip cutter. She decided on blue corners and before the night was over she had everything cut, skimmed, and wrapped. She got a lot of the front side soldered and her soldering skills have improved by leaps and bounds. I have no doubt that this will be finished next week.

Mary Lynn worked long and hard on her 4 doors this week. When she left last week she had all the Fleur de Les cut and wrapped. This week she tacked them together, got the 4 backgrounds cut out and even managed to get one soldered together. She’s got only one left to grind and she’ll be doing that at home throughout the week. Look for her to get some borders attached to these four windows next week! Below is center part of one of the 4 doors she’s making.

Lastly we have Gerald’s project. He painstakingly traced out the background to the Iris portion of his window and then managed to get it all wrapped and soldered in place. That means that the hardest section of his window is finished. The rest of the pieces are much larger than this section and should go much easier (and quicker!) I can’t wait to see how this one looks next week.

Classes ended tonight just in time.  The sky opened up around 9:30 and drenched us with rain while the lighting and thunder flashed and rumbled ominously for about a half hour.  I was certain we were going to lose power during it but luckily I was wrong.  I’m just going to hate seeing all the leaves in the pool tomorrow!

Paul
Bayou Salé Glassworks

Joey and Cheryl were working at home again this week grinding and wrapping glass long before class even started. When they came in they had another door ready to be tacked together. Once that was finished Cheryl soldered the door while Joey ground and wrapped another one. Then Joey cut the few missing pieces for the remaining 2 doors to be made in this size. Later on in the night Joey wrapped the pieces you see below while Cheryl went to work on her wood door.

Russ began to rout out the back of the wooden door to make room for the glass insert  and then the glass insert was screwed into place.  When he walked away Cheryl jumped in and continued with the carpentry work!  Once the wood insert was removed they inserted the glass and held it in place with some clips.  The finished project looks identical to the one you saw here last week but that’s because they are all supposed to match! Here’s the latest door.

Jane has had to miss classes for a few weeks in the past 3 weeks but that doesn’t mean that she’s not working on glass while she’s at home. When she came in today she brought a window in that only needed 2 borders to complete it. The big decision was whether or not to make the outer border green or some other color. I wasn’t thrilled with the green border but I thought that using the background glass again as the final border would really look good. Everyone agreed and this is what Jane left with. I just love her colors.

Mary Lynn missed a class last week but made up for it this week by coming in on two nights.  With a big move going on at work I hope she doesn’t wear herself thin trying to squeeze in class next week!  She got a lot accomplished this week though. She’s making 4 clear class inserts for a cabinet she’s just had made. It’s a Fleur de Les design with two borders made out of 4 different textures of clear glass. We got her pattern drawn up and then she cut and ground the 2 of the 4 Fleur de Les on her first night. Then on Wednesday night she finished grinding her pieces, wrapped them and then tacked one together so we could cut the background glass out for her first window. She’s moving along at a break-neck speed but her grinding and wrapping was absolutely flawless.  Her Fleur de Les came out perfectly symmetrical  and that’s not easy to accomplish this early on in learning this craft.  I can’t wait to see her finished doors!

Gerald got his Irises all wrapped and tacked together and then began cutting the glass for the grass behind the Irises. Rather than using the pattern he’s laying the Iris section on top of the sheet of glass he’s using for the grass and then tracing out his pieces. It’s a pain to keep shifting things back and forth but he saves time because there’s very little grinding involved in doing it this way. It’s really starting to take shape now.

Grace finished her first project this week. Her LSU with a Tiger Eye looks great and her soldering is really amazing. She can make some long perfect lead lines on the first pass that don’t need any touch ups at all. We’re not sure yet what she’ll be working on next week but we do know that it will be going in her kitchen. Here’s her finished LSU window hanging out in the sunlight.  Expect big things from Grace because she’s handling all of the work like a pro!

While grace was finishing up her window Janice was busy grinding her address window. She must be feeling really confident now because she managed to get the entire window ground before she left and everything lined up perfectly without any need for pointing out any flaws (there were none!) Regrettably, I forgot to take a picture of it before she left but I colored in the pattern using pictures of the glass samples so you can see what she’s got accomplished. The picture below is a very accurate rendition of what she finished this week. This window will be finished soon!

Ellen came in with her magnolias all cut and ready to be ground. She spent her time at the grinder getting everything to fit perfectly and when she left she accomplished her task. She planned on wrapping as much as she could when she got home so next week we should be able to see better what her flowers look like– all the white pieces tend to blend into one another when the pieces aren’t wrapped to show all their edges.  This window is going to be about 24 inches wide when it’s finished so don’t be fooled into thinking that it’s a small window by the picture here. As you already know, Ellen is a consummate professional at this.

We had a new student join us this week. Her name is Denise and she’s caught on to the whole stained glass making process about as quickly as a person can. Her cutting was perfect, her grinding flawless and even her wrapping and soldering left me nothing to find fault with. She plans on doing something with grapes in it for her first project (which she’ll start next week). It will match the butterfly that she made this week which was done in a nice deep purple waterglass.

And finally we have Christine. She was busy as can be assembling and then soldering the flower sections of two more hand mirrors. After that was finished she went to the grinder and ground some more. We are having a problem with the batch of mirror that we have and and waiting for some new mirror to come in before Christine cuts any more mirror and that’s the only reason we don’t have any finished this week. Christine is moving faster and faster each week and I think she’s very confident about her abilities at this point. Hopefully we’ll have some finished mirrors next week!

Paul
Bayou Salé GlassWorks 

Since my mind isn’t what it used to be I had to ask Ellen what that phrase was that she mentioned last week that I couldn’t remember to include in the Blog. For some reason I kept thinking it had something to do with the word ‘BRAIN’ but as you can see from the title, it was RAIN not BRAIN. At any rate, we’re unsure of what it means but isn’t that true of most idioms? I’m hoping it has something to do with Hurricane Dean…

Ellen finished the second of her cabinet door inserts this week. It was pretty much a repeat of her last class, but in reverse ’so to speak’. Here’s a shot of the two of them together outside in the sunlight. Personally, I think they’re ‘the bee’s knees…’

Next we have a look at the fleet of hand mirrors that Christine has made over the past 4 weeks. She’s ‘keeping her nose to the grindstone’ and averaging one a week which is excellent progress but she has quite a few sets of flowers cut out and waiting to be ground so she’s making some great strides towards speeding up her already fast production schedule. Here’s what she’s made so far.

Tiffany and Jimmie have finished their transom window! It was soldered last week so all they had to do was wash it, color it, wash it (again), and then wax it. I kept hearing them say “Wow, it looks completely different when it’s cleaned up” and that certainly is the case. You never get a good feel for how good a window looks until you’ve washed off all the chemicals and grime from it. All in all they finished this window VERY quickly and made the work apear to be ‘as easy as pie.’ Take a look at what they made to hang above their front door.

Grace came in with her tiger eye all wrapped and ready to go. It didn’t take long for her to tack it together and then get the border cut and attached. She ‘put her best foot forward’ and even got more than half of the front soldered! And let me tell you something: for a first time solder job it’s amazing. Grace seems to have really gotten the hang of this quickly ‘like a dog to a chew toy’! Here’s her window all put together with a striking black border surrounding it. Look to see this one finished next week.

Cheryl finished her Hot Air Balloon Window and I’m going to hate to see it go. After getting the border tacked on and then soldered into place she finished it off with some zinc channel around the edges. It was a lot of work to get finished but if there’s one thing Cheryl is not it’s ‘wet behind the ears’ when it comes to her glass work. Alas, when the end of the night rolled around the window still needed to be washed and colored. Since it was dark outside and I really wanted a picture of this window in the daylight I offered to clean it and color it the next day so I could take a picture of it in the sun. Cheryl isn’t one to ‘look a gift horse in the mouth’ so I didn’t need to twist her arm to agree to it. Since it ‘rained cats and dogs’ all day Thursday I didn’t take my pictures until Friday afternoon (which helps explain why this is late this week). Here’s her finished window.

Joey tacked together the front of his second cabinet door and then took all the pieces that he’s cut for the others home with him to see what he can get ground over the course of the week. With the front of his this window soldered I’ll tell you that it will certainly be ready next week and you’re getting that ’straight from the horse’s mouth’. Joey has shown great progress with his skills lately and I think he has this ‘under his belt’ now.

Janice came in with no pattern to start working on which normally slows us down since I need to take time during the class to draw out a pattern (which never goes quickly, but ‘that’s the way the cookie crumbles’ as they say.) She told me she needed a window about 19 x 12 with the numbers 1607 in it so we printed the numbers out, slapped a border around it and then added some fancy corners just to make it look more festive. About an hour into the class she had her pattern traced out and began picking glass. She went with red numbers on a white background with green and blue corner accents. We’re unsure yet of the border but we’re leaning towards blue. Janice started cutting her corner pieces first and within 15 minutes they were finished. She moved on to the red numbers and then still had time left in the class to start cutting the white background glass. ‘By the skin of her teeth’ she was able to finish cutting everything save for the border which she won’t cut until everything she cut this week is ground, wrapped and tacked together. Janice moved quickly and efficiently throughout the glass cutting process and managed to get 30 pieces of glass cut. This window is almost finished already!

We missed seeing Jane, Fran, Mark,  Mary Lynn & Gerald this week. They all called saying that they were ‘three sheets to the wind’ but they would try to be here next week. Now, you didn’t actually believe that did you???? I hope not! I didn’t think it would be that easy to ‘pull the wool over your eyes’ anyway. Jane will be back in 2 weeks but she’s not sitting at home watching Big Brother and eating all day. She’s hammering out windows in her home workshop and has requested a pattern for when she comes back! Fran wasn’t ‘up to snuff’ this week but we should have her back next week working on her Owl Window. Mark is ‘busting his hump’ at work doing a lot of overtime making up for the fact that they are shorthanded where he works. Mary Lynn should be back next week so she can start on some door inserts for a cabinet that she’s having built. And lastly, Gerald has been working 12 hour days for a while now and got stuck at work again this week.  :-(  It sounds like it will be a busy here next week though so check back and see what’s happening here.

‘Elvis has left the building’ and so have I. Take care!

Paul
Bayou Salé GlassWorks

Ellen came up with a good title for the blog this week, but since I didn’t write it down and now I can’t remember what it was she suggested. It was clever and witty and therefore there’s no way I’ll ever recall what it was on my own. Getting older is NO fun!
And speaking of Ellen, she managed to solder the first of her two windows and then get it washed and waxed. With this one finished she has only one more to go which I’m sure she’ll wrap up next week. Here’s a look at the first of 2 cabinet door inserts you’ll be seeing here this week. And here’s a belated but heartfelt Birthday wish to Ellen who celebrated a birthday this past week.

Our second cabinet door was completed by Joey. You’ll recall he had the front soldered last week and this week it came in with the back side soldered as well. He asked me to go over it and fix any soldering problems but there really wasn’t anything to fix so he washed, colored and waxed it before we dropped it into place in the cabinet door. Tell me this picture doesn’t look like it belongs in a catalog!

And when he finished with this first door of 5 Joey then ground the pieces for his second door which he then took home to wrap.

I have to admit that we’re on a roll with finished projects this week. Mary Lynn was the next person to finish her project and I could tell by the look in her eye that all her fears of how this would turn out were banished. And it’s no wonder– Just look at this window! Now that she has this one under her belt she’s talking about other projects that she wants to get started on. We even had this one completed quickly enough that we were able to get a picture ouside with a little sunlight behind it.

Shortly after Mary Lynn finished her window Janice finished her version of the Iris Window. The only real difference in these windows are the color schemes and the finished size of the window. Janice wanted a wider panel so it wouldn’t get lost in the window she is hanging it in. We doubled the width of it and ended up with yet another stunning design that I know Janice is quite pleased with. Although this was taken indoors the picture came out much better than most of the ones we take with a fluorescent light behind them. In fact, I think it looks just as good as if the picture were taken outside, which is very rare indeed. I can’t wait to see what Janice tackles next!

Gerald was back in after taking a little time off and he resumed working on the Iris section of his window. He’s decided to split this LARGE window into three sections to make the transportation of this project a little easier. With all the leaves and stems completed I’d say he’s moving right along. I guess we’ll be seeing this section tacked together next week.

Christine made her 3rd hand mirror this week and the proceeded to cut, grind, wrap and then tack together her 4th mirror! Normally she manages to just get the next one ground so it’s safe to assume that she’s become more confident and that her skills are growing with each class. She took a lot of glass home with her this week and plans to cut out some more mirrors at home throughout the week. Next week we’ll have a photo of all the mirrors she’s made so far so be sure to check it out. This is her latest offering, complete with a flower center in the bottom flower.

Jimmie and Tiffany did a first here this week. In all my years of teaching (about 25 years worth) I’ve never had 2 people work on the same project simultaneously. I wasn’t sure if they’d get in each others way while soldering this but apparently they didn’t because they got both sides of this LARGE window finished in one class! You’ll see the finished panel here next week when they wash, color and the wax it. It looks great already!

Fran began working on her newest window which is an Owl. The pattern may look familiar but she’s made a few adjustments here and there. And although she got all of the medium colored feathers cut out I just wasn’t quick enough with the camera to get a picture of the cut pieces on the pattern. But look here next week to see just how much further she’s gotten. Now that she has a grinder at home I think we’ll really see her moving along!  Here’s a picture of the pattern she’s using.

Grace amazed me with her speed and her precision in grinding her pieces to the pattern. Most people are afraid to push against the glass to give the grinder something to chew into but Grace appears to grind about as quickly as I do. With the LSU section of the window completed and the tiger eye section all ground she started to wrap her remaining pieces her in class. I’d say she’s got about 1/3rd of it wrapped and the rest went home with her so it will be wrapped when she comes in next week. This will be ready to solder when she comes back so the toughest part is now behind her.  Here’s a peek at what it’s shaping up to look like.

Then we have Cheryl’s Balloon Window which just looks better and better each week. I was watching her solder and thought back to her first projects where she could get the solder onto the foil, but not smoothly. Watching her this week was like watching an old pro at work. She moved quickly and evenly through each line getting the solder to bead correctly on almost each of her first passes over the foil. She’s come a long way and this window shows it. Next week she’ll have the border on it!

I consider myself lucky because we always have fun throughout the classes. There’s always laughter going on and everyone enjoys the company of each other. The people that you read about here each week are no longer strangers to each other and every week we learn a little more about one another. It’s certainly fun and I look forward to it as I’m sure our students do.

Paul
Bayou Salé GlassWorks

The title of this weeks Blog comes from an unfortunate incident involving a piece of glass that was ground and ready to wrap. The unfortunately part of the story is that it ended up in a few hundred pieces on the cement floor rather than in the window that was being worked on. So we just cut another piece and pretended it never happened. All in all it’s just another day in the life here at Bayou Salé GlassWorks.

Let’s start with Ellen who wrapped the flowers and bird pieces for one of her ovals and then cut the oval backgrounds for her 2 Hummingbird Windows. She got one of the backgrounds wrapped and even tacked together (see the left side of her picture). She took the pieces of the background for her second oval home to wrap during the week. We’ll see even more progress next week when these ovals get placed in the background glass.

Grace came in and finished cutting out the eye section of her window. We made one color change to avoid having the eye disappear into the purple that surrounds it and everything is looking good. Grace not only finished cutting out her glass but she made great progress in getting her window ground. Most people are timid about using the grinder and worry about grinding away too much of the glass or they simply don’t apply enough pressure for the grinder to cut into the glass but Grace ground each of her pieces perfectly and quickly. The bottom left corner of this window is fitted and ready to be ground. Great job, Grace!

Cheryl cut out and ground the pieces of glass for her sky. She picked a pale blue mixed with purple that looks fantastic behind the bright glass that she used for her balloons. The picture below shows her window resting on a table with no light behind it but even unlit it has a great look about it. I can’t wait to see this with some light behind it.

Joey soldered one of his cabinet doors and will finish it off next week for sure. Once again, his soldering has come a long way almost overnight. I always say that soldering is like riding a bike– it’s hard to explain how it’s done but once you do it you’ll never forget how to do it. Well, Joey is certainly riding his bike now. Next week he’ll grind his second window in this series of cabinet doors he’s doing. Don’t you just love the Southwestern/Frank Lloyd Wright design…

Janice got her border tacked onto her window and then got her first real soldering lesson. The butterfly that everyone makes on their first night in class just doesn’t have enough lead on it for someone to really get the feel for soldering so it’s the second project that a student does that allows them to ‘get messy’ with the leading of a window. It’s usually slow going at first but Janice (although a little unsure of herself) is doing just fine for a beginner. She’s getting a nice amount of lead on each line and doing it in a smooth manor. I’m thinking that this window may be finished next week.

Mary Lynn, like Janice, walked in a bit apprehensive about starting to solder her Iris Window. This is always the case with the second project so her fears weren’t anything new to us here in the shop. But Mary Lynn put her best foot forward and not only soldered the front of her window but the back as well! Considering that this is her first real project she’s done remarkably well. Next week she’ll wash it, color it and then we’ll take a picture of it hanging before she takes it home with her.

Tiffany and Jimmie got to see how a strip cutter is used to make borders nice and even. Their window was off ever so slightly (about 1/8 of an inch) in one corner they also got to see how easy it is to fix that by trimming foil to cover gaps that might appear. And trust me when I say that being 1/8th of an inch off is NOTHING bad at all. Now that it’s all together it’s 100% square with the correct measurements all around and no one can tell that the window was ever off. I have to say that I honestly don’t know what will happen with this one next week. Since Jimmie and Tiffany will both be soldering it together they may move through it quickly. Or they could get in each other’s way and slow each other down. With one person working on it I’d say that it would be at least two weeks until it’s finished but with 2 of them doing it at the same time I just don’t know how far along we’ll get next week. So come back and see what happens a weeks from now!

Last but not least we have a picture of Christine’s latest Hand Mirror. It’s the same pattern that she used for the one she made last week but this time she went with different colors for the flowers. As she was waiting for the mirror sealant to dry she cut out another set of flowers that she’ll assemble next week but this time she’s altered the pattern a bit. Let’s see if you can see what’s been added in the mirror that she finishes here next week at Bayou Salé GlassWorks…

Paul
Bayou Salé GlassWorks