I've always admired stained glass. Last year, I decided to give it a go. I think I'm hooked.
I bought a starter kit and some glass, read a book ( Rainbow Vision SG has a great starter book, and incidentally, is from Harrisburg), and started digging in.
I found inspiration for a first project from a picture online. I needed a pattern to work from, however. So naturally, I drew it in CAD.
I gave Inkscape a try, but quickly realized that I'm an engineer and not a graphics designer, so I switched to Creo Parametric (my favorite modeling software). This may have been overkill, but it got the job done. (I'm guessing most stained glass artists don't work with 3D parametric models of their desgins...)
I ended up with this, which is almost certainly not 1:1 as pictured:
Once I had my pattern, it was time for the real fun to begin.
Cutting glass is an odd experience, at least initially. You take your glass sheet, make a scoring line with your glass cutter, grab your breaking pliers, and then "pop", you have two pieces of glass. Each score has to be a straight line from one edge of the glass to another, so you start to get decent at laying out your pattern to get the most out of your sheet of glass.
During this process, it became quickly apparent that I needed a glass grinder to get the pieces to final shape and clean up the edges. The kit came with a grinding stone, but I think I would have lost what's left of my sanity in the process.
The grinder has a water basin and a pump to keep the diamond cutting head lubricated. It works amazingly well.
With all the glass pieces ground to shape, it was time to start foiling. There are two main methods of assembling stained glass: lead came, and copper foil. Copper foil is generally used for smaller pieces. This piece is 6" square. The foil is adhesive backed, and wraps around the glass.
The copper foil can be applied by hand, but I decided for sanity sake (again) to pick-up a foiling machine. That's the device you see on the far left-hand corner of my workbench. It's basically a tape dispenser with a guide to keep the glass centered. I'm getting the hang of it still, but I can't imagine foiling without it.
Finally, the foiled glass pieces are soldered together, and you get the final result which you already saw:
I've soldered electronics before, and pipes, but never glass. I still need to work on my solder beads, but that will come with time and practice.
I'm already lining-up my next project, so stay tuned...