But that IS the sun!

Let's start with Grace who finished her medical themed window after she got her border and final Zinc channel attached. Since she had soldered both the front and rear sides of her window last week she didn't have much to do in terms of completing this. The real work was in cleaning it. She washed off all the chemicals and then took a brush to the the front and back sides of her window. Next she went over all the lead with some steal wool to prep it for the black patina. It may not sound like much but there was well over an hours worth of work in just those simple steps. Once the window was dry she applied the black patina and we let it sit for about 5 minutes or so before washing it clean. After a second good scrubbing we waxed it and took this picture. Even without any sunlight behind it I have to say that her window looks GREAT!


Gerald is trying to set a record here by making the most number of windows in a small time frame. In a repeat from his performance from last week he came in with nothing started but left with a finished window. What you see here is the finished product of about 3 and a half hours of work. It may not be the most complex window there is but it's more than enough of a window to keep a beginner student busy for at least 4 or 5 weeks. Next up we'll be seeing Gerald finish this series of 4 windows by taking on the final section of his tiger's tail.


While Barbara was at home this week she wrapped all of the glass she ground and then got them all tacked together. When she came in she traced everything out onto her background glass and then cut it all out without breaking a single piece of glass. This means that the swirled design in her backgound runs perfectly thoughout her window which really makes it shine. She even got 80% of her backgound glass wrapped! She's taken it home with her again this week and has taken some clear iridized glass to make her final border which means that this will be in the soldering stage when we next see it.


Sheila wasted no time and jumped in on cutting out all the ribbon sections of her inner border. She used a medium purple and did remarkably well. Those pieces were traced onto that glass as tightly as possible which means that she was able to waste very little glass at all. It's always difficult to utilize glass efficiently because if you place your pieces too close together you may very easily break a lot of pieces when you try to separate them. We had no problems with that this week though. Next week she plans on tackling the purple flower itself.
Cheryl cut out the yellow glass for her sun and her moon and then ground all that she accomplished in glass. She's taken it home with her to wrap so I suspect we'll be seeing her working on the rays that radiate from the sun. There's really only straight cuts left to finish this window and it's really shaping up nicely. She was concerned that the blue 'wind' was getting lost in all the blue glass but not that it's wrapped you can easily make out the face of the wind.

Janice got all 12 pieces of her final border cut, ground and soldered into place. We thought about putting the Zinc channel around it but ended up deciding to wait another week since the zinc reacts so badly with the solder when you leave them together for any length of time. So Janice began soldering her window and has actually moved along quite far this week. This window is almost ready for hanging. Janice will be doing a second version of this one when this one is completed. In fact, she already has the center Fleur De Lis cut, ground and wrapped!


Although we missed a few students this week we did get a surprise visit from Joey who helped Cheryl by grinding some of her pieces while he was in. It was an unexpected (and great) surprise to see his smiling face walk through the door.

We'll see you all next week,

Paul
Bayou Salé GlassWorks