I've always stressed that pinning your project down as you grind it is an important part of getting your windows to assemble correctly. It's been an constant battle but almost all of our students now use pins while grinding. Although that's great I still need to stress how important it is to push your pins into the project board so they stand in a nice straight line. I see too many pins pushed in at angles which still allow the glass to slide on the pattern. In the picture below you can see an example of how your pins shouldn't look. The pin on the right has actually been bent to help secure the glass but once the pin is rotated the glass will be free to slide about which means that the finished project won't fit together correctly.
Okay, so onto our first completed project of the week. Cindy's Harley-Davidson Window is, well, perfect. The colors, the design, and the craftsmanship all come together to make a perfect piece of stained glass. A lot of people worry about all the extra lead lines that need to be added to make text possible in glass, but as you can see it's the color that defines the text more so than the lines. This is beautiful work and I can tell that Cindy's pins were perfectly placed.
Carol made this stained glass box with a simple little tiny set of instructions that I emailed to her a little over a week ago. :-) Okay, they might have been a bit verbose but she accomplished the task with them and now has this beautiful Rose Box under her belt.
Cindy also made this Alabama Window with most of it being accomplished while she worked at home. Although this window is considerably smaller than her Harley-Davidson Window I suspect they have close to the same number of pieces between them. There are an awful lot of of rhombuses* in this window!
Linda L's first Mermaid Lawn Ornament is completed and already staked and ready to post. She's got two more of these in the works and they all look great!
Here's a look at Mary Grace's latest Study of Rectangles. I've always said that black patina works great with clear glass windows and this is no exception.
Our last fully completed project this week is Rowena's 3D Sunflower which she completely assembled by herself while at home. She did a beautiful job on it and instead of making it Lawn Ornament she put a hook on it and will be hanging it in a window. Remember that ANYTHING can become a lawn ornament so, likewise, a lawn ornament can always be turned into a suncatcher if you just add a hook to it rather than a post.
Now we move on to our works in progress starting with Bonnie's variation on a study of rectangles. There are a lot of connecting lines in this window so perfect placement and perfectly straight lines are going to come into play big time here. A worse case scenario on this window would be when the lines don't match up, but Bonnie is such a perfectionist that I know we have nothing to worry about.
Betty is working on not one but two versions of her clear textured Fleur De Lis Windows. One is almost ready for solder while the second one will need background and borders cut. She'll deal with that when she comes back in.
Brenda has her Eating Disorder Window ready for borders (why does that sound so odd?) She got her background cut, ground, wrapped and tacked together while she was in class this week. She's going to use a double border featuring black glass and the teal you see in the picture.
Ann's Stylized Cross Window will certainly be completed when she comes back in because she got her border cut and attached this week. But can she get both sides soldered during a single class? Well, she doesn't have to because she also managed to get the front side of this window soldered this week as well! Now that's what I call progress.
Charlie has not one, but TWO of these windows all cut and ground (and they're much larger than you might think). He has one of them foiled already and the second one went home with him so he could work on foiling it while we were on our Stained Glass Cruise with the Tuesday night ladies (and Becky from Thursday morning). These will will get a double border next, but from here on out Charlie will be working on them one at a time rather than as a pair.
Jeannette is making great progress with her large Peacock Window. I've always felt that the tail feathers are the toughest part so that's what I had Jeannette start with. As you can see she has them all cut out and has even begun grinding them. Once these are tacked together the rest of this window will be a piece of cake.
Shelley tried to get out of class without my taking a picture of her latest duck window but I ran out to her car, placed her unsoldered window down on the grass and took a picture of it outside. As you can see it's looking good!
Vickie has her Fleur De Lis' started in a big way. The FDL's are tacked together and one of them even has the background glass cut out already. She's taken one of them home with her and she hopes to be able to grind the background before she comes back into class. I think we'll be seeing borders added to these when she comes back in.
Linda F began working on this butterfly lawn ornament and only has one piece left to go before she solders it together. She didn't like the way one of the pieces fit so she threw it away and will re-cut it when she gets home (where she has her glass).
Natalie's Pelican Window is very near complete here. She's got one border ready to be attached and will follow that with a second border when she returns. Then she'll move on to the soldering process. Don't you love her background glass? It looks just like a painting.
Although you can't see it, Terry's started cutting her clear glass background for her large flower window. It's almost six feet tall so she's made a very wise decision to cut it in half and make it in two sections for added strength and transportability (there's a new word for ya!)
And Cindy's also begun making another Spinning Butterfly Suncatcher. She's already very close to having it all cut out as you can see in the picture.
Martha's Duck Windows are looking VERY good! This week she got her two skies all tacked together and her border pieces all ready for wrapping. That leaves only channel and soldering left to go.
Myrt's Kitty in a Window Window has its front side all soldered. She'll get a brass channel attached to this and then begin soldering on the back side of this window when she comes back in. Before you know it Myrt's going to need another project to work on.
And lastly we see that Linda L has her second (of three) Mermaid Lawn Ornaments all tacked together and ready for its final pass of solder. She hopes to have the last two soldered before she comes back into class and I have no doubt that she will.
Next week we're going to talk about skimming as opposed to grinding. They both involve passing your glass through your grinder but they are very different techniques. Come back and read all about it!
Paul
Bayou Salé GlassWorks
* A rhombus (most commonly referred to as a diamond)
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