Keeping Busy

I've been spending more time cutting glass than writing about it, which sounds about right. My current project is the Anthurium panel, the last piece needed to complete the tryptch for the kitchen hutch. Mostly I think it's going pretty well. For the other two panels in the hutch, check the stained glass pages on my website, www.cairone.com.

It started off with quick progress, since the curtains, tablecloth and flowerpot were larger, simple shaped pieces. Then I got to the dirt and pebbles in the flowerport. There were much smaller, getting to the scale that I call "fiddly." Making fiddly pieces takes a lot of time. They're not too hard to cut, but sometimes they crack off poorly. Just holding them down of the grinder can be a challenge. And if anything is likely to cause bleeding, it's trying to hold these tightly before the sharp edges and flakes have been removed from them. I've been redesigning on the fly to eliminate some of the fiddly pieces as I come to them. My working method allows for these redraws with no loss in accuracy. For those that can't be eliminated without compromising the design, it's a matter of doing the best you can, and keeping band-aids handy.

Keep in mind that below a certain size, most of the fiddly piece is lost under the solder anyway. But it's necessary for the structural strength of the panel that these pieces be there, and the tighter the better. Very likely, these are areas where stress is likely to accummulate, so gaps are undesirable.

Generally I use thinner foil on the smaller pieces, especially if they are the finer details in the panel. Ih the small piece butts up against a larger piece, I use wider foil on the large piece, and the solder smooths out some of the v ariation in bead thickness. For a longer run, say the stem of a flower, two thin foil edges runnning alongside each other make a distinctive thin line that has a nice artistic effect. Even a little curve to the glass makes the joint quite strong, presuming the fit is as tight as it should be.