Tips and Techniques Archive

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Stained Glass Information

How To Cut Glass 

For the beginner I would suggest just practice cutting on inexpensive clear glass first.  Learn to score your glass so that you get use to the amount of pressure you will need to put on your cutter to get the lovely ‘sound’ you hear when you know you are scoring the glass with the perfect pressure for a clean break.

Using your glass cutter, make your score, give a good tap with the back end of the cutting tool under the scored piece of glass. Tap several times up the entire length of your cut line.  Generally this light tapping will let you visually see that the glass is ready to break where you cut it.  Using a ‘pincher’ break the glass.

I have found that with certain glass, its breaks really easily, so once you get use to it, often just the tapping underneath will allow the glass to break on the cut.

When you are cutting small slivers or ‘taking bites’ off a piece of glass, tap underneath but then use your grozing pliers to break off the small pieces of cut glass.

I deal with textured glass differently.   If it has an uneven surface on the front of the glass, I will glue my pattern piece to the backside of the glass (be sure you have your pattern piece glued on ‘the wrong way’ so that when you are finished cutting from the backside, you end up with your cut piece of glass having the interesting textured side on the front of your glasspiece.

Textured glass can be more uneven, thicker and more of a challenge to cut.  It often is a bit more expensive than plain rolled glass as well.  Because of this, I would say do a little practice cutting first. Cut a small piece of glass off your sheet of glass and just get use to the pressure and challenges that this textured glass will give you.

If you are a beginner, better to practice on a small piece off your sheet, than glue you pattern onto the glass, cut away and find that you are breaking your pattern pieces as you cut them.

When I was learning, and even now sometimes, if I am uncertain how a type of glass is going to react to cutting, I will always do a few little cuts to sample what it is going to be like to cut.

Often with very textured glass, and very small pattern pieces with curves in them, I will aire on the side of caution and rely on my grinder for the intricacies of the curves.

Cutting glass takes practice.  Be patient with yourself and enjoy doing  your stained glass piece.

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Stained Glass Information

How Prepare a Stained Glass Pattern
The all important pattern preparation paves the way for the evolution of your glass project.
Your finished piece can only be as good as the pattern you start with in terms of the actual design elements.

You will need to print out 2 sets of your pattern. Often the patterns are ‘tiled’ so you will need to scotch tape each copy together.
One copy you will put onto your working board and the second copy will be the one that you cut your pattern pieces from.

Pattern Shears make for an easier cutting out of the pattern.
Pattern Shears have a triple blade design which removes the right amount of space between you pattern pieces so the project won’t  ‘grow’ as it is constructed.
I will list a couple of types of shears you can purchase.
The Inland Came (Lead) & Mosaic Pattern Shear:
These shears are made of ground stainless steel to hold an edge longer, this lightweight shear is comfortable and made with well designed handles and you use these for Lead & Mosaic patterns.
The Inland Foil Pattern Shear:
This shear is made of ground stainless steel  to hold the edge longer, is lightweight and comfortable with special designed handles, and is used with Copper foil patterns.
There is also the Mika “Two in One” Shear:
This tool is an innovative patented design with two interchangeable blades for lead and foil.  A unique precision-fit fulcrum screw for quick blade exchange allows precision cutting, even on thick paper.
Check with your local stained glass art store for these supplies, or if you cannot find them at a local glass art supply distributor, you can always look on the internet and find sources to purchase them from.

(look up some shear pricing and links to inland and mika)

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Stained Glass Information

Here is a list of Tools that I have in my  Stained Glass Art Room.
 
  • The Tools:
    There are many brands and styles of tools available and each artist has their own preferences. This is a list of what I use.
  • Regular sisors
  • Pattern Shears – Pattern shears have a triple blade design which removes the right amount of space between your pattern pieces so the project won’t grow as it is constructed.
  • Morton Maxi Surface for my cutting surface. (If you are a beginner and do not have this, you can use your tile workboard as your cutting board)
  • Pistol-grip Supercutter and cutting oil. I personally do not put oil in the cylinder as I prefer to dip my cutting wheel into a small cup of oil that I keep beside my cutting table. (There are many brands and styles of cutters available)
  • One set of breaking and grozing pliers. (There are many brands and styles available)
  • Morton Push pins (or some alternative method to secure your work onto your working board-small nails, horseshoe nails).
  • G8All Star Glastar grinder. Again there are many styles and brands available.
  • 3/4″, or 1″ and 1/4″ grinding heads. If you are going to be able to grind tighter curves, you need the 1/4″ head.
  • Safety glasses
  • Fid
  • Exacto Knife
  • Came cutter.
  • Lead vise – for lead came frame
  • Soldering Iron and holder.
  • Pro brush to apply flux
  • Cookie cutter tool (round blue tool you see in my instructional pictures) – not necessary, but I like as it saves the fingertips and allows nice even pressure when pushing glass into grinding head.
  • Old towels or rags
  • There are many brands and varieties of tools available for the stained glass artist.  Once you get hooked on this art form, you will find the ones you like the best.
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Stained Glass Information

Stained Glass
So once you have selected your stained glass pattern, you need to decide what glass to use.
There are many companies that manufacture sheets of glass for your stained glass or mosaic art projects.
Spectrum Glass, Uroboros Glass,  Kokomo Glass, Wissmach Glass, are four very well know manufacturers.

The easiest glass to work with is perhaps Spectrum.   Their glasses are ‘evenly’ rolled and manufactured so cutting them is fairly consistant.
I also really like Kokomo and Wissmach glass as they have a bit more texture and additional varieties.
I would suggest for a newer person to the stained glass art form, you use any of the above 3 types.

If you are a beginner, its a good idea to practice doing some cutting on cheap picture frame clear glass from a second hand store.
You just to get the feel of  using the cutting too.
Even though I have a lot of experience cutting glass, I always do a test cut on whatever company/color glass I have just to get a sense for the amount of pressure required to cut it.
Some glasses need to be ‘scored-(cut)’ on one side verses the other due to texture consideratons.
If a glass is textured, do your cutting on the smooth side of the glass.

Uroboros offeres very beautiful and unique glass pieces, and it is not quite as easy to cut as the above 3 glasses mentioned, but it is very worthwhile to use in some of those ‘special’ pieces of art. It is also exceptionally beautiful for  stained glass lamp projects.
Heres a few things to consider when selecting glass.

  • A stained glass window gives the viewer a diversity of appearances.
  • The various levels and intensities of light shining through, from early morning until late into the evening, make viewing stained glass quite fascinating as the look of your stained glass window is ever changing.
  • Things to consider when choosing glass would be the degree of transparency or opaqueness you want to see in your finished stained glass window.
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Stained Glass Information

Stained Glass Pattern Design Services
In your search for a stained glass pattern, although there are thousands out there, you may find that you just cannot seem to locate that  perfect pattern.
Perhaps it’s the shape or size of the pattern that won’t fit your dimensions.  Or maybe you have a photo of a scenic or animal or flower you just love and would like to see it become your pattern.
Perhaps you’ve found a  pattern that is pretty close to your vision, but needs some artwork changes.
Some  artists  do offer you a custom art service  for a fee and will work with you to draw the pattern of your choice.   Artist Nancy Rasmussen  is happy to get an email from you with an art suggestion and discuss what you would like to have drawn.
Many artists drawing patterns will use a photograph as a template.
The scenic, flower and bird patterns that you will find in Nancy’s collection are created off photographs she has taken, so if you have something you would like to see transformed into a pattern, you can email, perhaps send a photo of your concept and see if it is a project that Nancy would be available to take on.
Art fees vary with complexity of the design, but many images have possibilities to be turned into a stained glass pattern.

You can always use the google website search function  to locate the stained glass pattern or information you are looking for.

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Stained Glass Information

Stained Glass Patterns
Your  first step to your copper foiled stained glass, leaded stained glass, mosaic, etched or painted glass begins with the pattern.
You want to find a pattern that inspires you.
You are going to put time and effort into your glass project so plan to build your artwork from  a pattern  that really appeals to you.

Next you’ll be thinking about where you going to find that pattern.
You can go to the library, to a stained glass art supply store, or you can go on line.
Personal experience for me was that the library was a pretty good source to find good reading material and to get ideas from the many beautiful stained glass publications, but I found actual stained glass pattern books had more ‘ready to go’ patterns available.
The internet is by far the easiest source for finding pattern templates for your glass work.

Simply type into google search what you want to build:
For example ‘chakra stained glass pattern’,
Google immediately gives you results of what you are looking for.
Then its just a matter of looking over what the various artists are offering for sale and picking the pattern of your choice.

In many cases, you can buy the patterns digitally and instantly.  In other cases you will be purchasing a book that you can mail order.

Instant download stained glass patterns give you the opportunity to get going on your project when the inspiraton hits!

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Quail Stained Glass

Stained Glass Patterns for Instant Download
Quail Stained Glass Pattern #2004  $8.99

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Copper Foil for Stained Glass

 

I build all of my stained glass patterns using the copper foil method.
I have done some leaded stained glass windows, but prefer copper foil because I can build such small detailed pieces
and I just like the process more than the leading technique.

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Free Stained Glass Pattern Instructional Videos

I recently had a conversation with someone that had never seen stained glass done and I suggested he watch my free stained glass pattern instructional videos.

His comments were that ” he found them very encouraging as he felt confident that by following the instructions he would be well on his way to  building his first copper foil stained glass piece.”

I really enjoy offering these free stained glass lesson videos as its always really exciting when a potential new artisan gains some knowledge from my experience.
I also am happy to answer any questions that I can if you send me an email.

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Stained Glass Patterns for Instant Download!

http://www.plentyofpatterns.com Individual Instant Downoad Stained Glass Patterns Store is
Open for business.

You can now buy my stained glass patterns
individually and instantly!

You get TWO types of high quality  patterns of
the stained glass pattern of your choice.

One stained glass patter is non numbered.
One stained glass pattern is fully numbered for your
convenience.

This is great value!
This section of the store offers
“Instant Download”
of your stained glass pattern files.

Bookmark the store as it will grow.

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