Week Two: Stained Glass

For my first planned date I decided to do something that I have wanted to do for many years! Stained Glass! I found a class at Glasslink on Coldwater Rd. that was three hours long and Saturday and it took us all the way through making an abstract suncatcher. We started off by learning how to cut glass, then how to cut glass to fit a pattern. Then we got to pick glass for our project. I was really kinda hoping that we would get to creat

e our own pattern so all of our pieces would look different, but that wasn't the case. They gave us the pattern to use and we got to pick our colors and put it together. I decided to go with blues and purples and Dan of course went with shades of green. As we were cutting our glass pieces we were also taught how and when to use the grinder to clean up the edges of the glass pieces. There were three other people in the class with us, all of whom had already taken 3 other classes, but it seemed that Dan and I caught on to it a bit quicker than they did.

Once all of our pieces were cut and cleaned up we were taught how to wrap the pieces with copper wire and burnish them to make sure they were wrapped snugly. This is what Dan is working on here. This was surprisingly more time consuming than what I would have thought. I also found it interesting to learn that the glass isn't actually held together by the soldering, it is actually held in place by that

copper wire that has a sticky surface on one side. The soldering adheres and joins the copper, but sticky tape is what actually holds the glass in place.

Here is my work in the middle of wrapping the copper wire. The colored pieces are the ones that we cut ourselves. The clear and round ones were precut to save some time in the

class.

Once all the pieces were wrapped in the copper tape it was time to start soldering. I was honestly a bit nervous about this part. I've never done any soldering and it seemed intimidating to me. I guess I just had the impression that it was a one shot deal, that once you put the solder on you couldn't go back and fix any mistakes. Well that certainly was not the case. It turns out that as long as you don't get the glass too hot you can pretty much keep going back and clean up or add solder... or in my case remove excess solder. I pretty much just threw a bunch of solder on with my first pass, then went back and took off all the blobs and pools of solder that I made on my first pass. I also didn't realize that you have to solder both sides of your work (which is kind of a duh comment), but every time I would get one side looking pretty it would leave a pool or mess up the other side, so I was constantly going back and forth between the top and bottom of the work to clean it up. Dan on the other hand seemed to go about it with a much more materialistic approach and just added a little bit at a time. And I must admit that I think his soldering turned out nicer than mine because it is more subtle.

We were also able to choose what sort of finish or patina we wanted for our soldering lines. So after we were done soldering and washed all the flux off of our work we painted off some sort of chemical that turned the solder lines either black or copper colored. I went with black and Dan chose the copper which looks really striking with his green glass. Then the last step was to polish it up and add a hanging chain.

Dan showing off our finished work. His is on the right and mine is on the left.

We were both done well before the other gals in the class... yet it was still about 45 minutes after the class was supposed to end. Under different circumstances I think I could have stayed there a few more hours just observing, chatting and taking it all in... but this happened to be my first outing without Baby Colin, so I was a bit anxious to get back home to check on him and I was worried that the class had gone over by so much. When we got home Grammy was feeding him his second 2 oz bottle which he didn't really seem very interested in, so everything was fine and with any luck my milk supply will be no worse for the wear.

All in all I had a lot of fun, of course as usual I couldn't get much of a reaction out of Dan either way, but I think he at least enjoyed himself. I pretty sure he wasn't miserable and he did a great job with the stained glass. It couldn't have been too torturous to do something that he seems pretty darn good at. The instructor said that we both seem to have a knack for this and should really think about continuing on. I didn't get the impression that Dan wasn't to pick this up as a hobby, though I would love to. I just doesn't seem like a very practical hobby, since you can only have so much stained glass in your house (and we don't really have much space for much of any with three little ones running around) not to mention that it is a very expensive hobby.

As far as the date goes, I really wish the day wasn't quite so rushed cause both Dan and I ended up missing lunch due to time restrictions and we didn't really get to talk much during the class, so it didn't feel like we got to spend much time together. But I'm still glad that I was able to do this with Dan and if it ends up being something that I pursue further in the future that he will know and understand what I am talking about and be able to appreciate the work that would go into each piece.