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What You Must Know On Stained Glass Art
Scoring and breaking stained glass is an art that you can achieve but not without some practice. All it takes is a little patience and you will soon be able to cut and break stained glass like a pro! The first thing to do when cutting stained glass is to relax when you are handling stained glass. It will make the work go much more smoothly.
Scoring and breaking stained glass is an art that you can achieve but not without some practice. All it takes is a little patience and you will soon be able to cut and break stained glass like a pro! The first thing to do when cutting stained glass is to relax when you are handling stained glass. It will make the work go much more smoothly.
Stained glass cutters come with different handles which make the choice one of preference and fit. Once you have chosen your favorite cutters, it is best not to let other people use your cutter. They will put pressure on it differently than you do which changes the balance of the cutter.
Special “running” pliers are made for breaking straight lines. Some glass pliers have smooth gripping surfaces. Others have teeth for scraping off rough edges or shards of stained glass. Gripping one side of the glass firmly with your thumb along one side of the score gives the glass some stability. The breakers are used on the opposite side, pointing toward the score. You use a quick pulling away and down motion.
Be sure to hold the stained glass cutter straight up and down. If your cutter is leaning to one side, it results in a beveled cut, causing the stained glass pieces to fit poorly. Make sure you glass is clean before you cut it so that nothing interferes with a smooth score. Cut on the smooth side of the stained glass.
Using a low wattage soldering iron as one might find handy from household projects is a bad idea. Irons of less than 75 watts do not retain enough heat to handle the large amounts of solder that are needed to complete your stained glass project. When the iron loses heat from constant use, the solder suddenly becomes sticky and slow and the joints become messy and unstable. Not only will your stained glass project look unprofessional, it may well fall apart!
The first step in soldering your stained glass project is to heat up the soldering iron. Once it is heated it is important to clean the tip to remove impurities either by wiping it on a damp rag or sal ammoniac (a naturally occurring mineral that reacts with the heat of the soldering iron to clean residue when the tip of the iron is rubbed across it). Next, brush the tip of the soldering iron with a little flux and then melt a little dab of solder onto it. When the solder melts into a shiny liquid bead, you will know your soldering iron is ready to use on your stained glass project. Start by soldering all of the joints in your stained glass piece, that is any area where two pieces of came intersect. Then you should carefully run a bead of solder along all of the sections of came on your stained glass project.
Stained glass is a beautiful and unique art form that has existed for centuries. Although many different techniques, such as painting on the glass, have been created over the years, the process of making colored glass, true stained glass remains nearly unchanged after all this time. The stained glass making process begins with some basic natural raw materials like sand (silica), soda or potash, lead oxide or lime and one of the various metal oxides to provide the different colors used in stained glass designs. These raw materials, in their proper proportions are then mixed in a large vat and heated to 2500? F turning the mixture into molten glass which can then be processed in a variety of ways depending on the effect desired for a particular piece of stained glass.
Other techniques use a special type of cement or other metals “foiled” to hold the stained glass pieces together. The methods for creating stained glass have survived and proven effective for thousands of years and will almost certainly continue to do so for many thousands more to come.