Stained Glass Day 2 - Pattern and cutting
Cutting and tracing the pattern can be the first major tedious task on a very large stained glass project. It normally takes me a few days, but I sat down today with the mission to at least get the pattern onto the glass and get the glass into more manageable pieces. I did succeed in getting that done.
Each piece of the pattern gets numbered and cut from the others and laid out on the glass to follow the gradient of the glass to capture the pattern I'm looking for. The most important parts for me on this piece are the bones, so I laid them down first on the part of the glass with the straight vertical stripes that I want in the marbling.
Each piece gets traced in sharpie onto the glass and I cut the glass into smaller, more manageable pieces. This way, when I'm doing the more detailed cutting, if a piece of glass breaks along a weak point (some glass has major faults, especially hand-rolled glass), it won't break in a diagonal across every piece of the project. It's a lot easier to re-cut 3-4 pieces than to start all over again!
The black opaque spectrum glass cuts like a dream. Smooth lines and easy breaks. The white, because it's got the marbling and texture, is not going to be so kind. I can already tell its not going to be so easy. I'm a little worried about the narrowest long pieces, but cross your fingers for me!
So that's all I got done today, but several hours' worth of work. Going to pull out the cut table and begin the detailed cutting process tomorrow. Hope the weather stays good!
Each piece of the pattern gets numbered and cut from the others and laid out on the glass to follow the gradient of the glass to capture the pattern I'm looking for. The most important parts for me on this piece are the bones, so I laid them down first on the part of the glass with the straight vertical stripes that I want in the marbling.
Each piece gets traced in sharpie onto the glass and I cut the glass into smaller, more manageable pieces. This way, when I'm doing the more detailed cutting, if a piece of glass breaks along a weak point (some glass has major faults, especially hand-rolled glass), it won't break in a diagonal across every piece of the project. It's a lot easier to re-cut 3-4 pieces than to start all over again!
The black opaque spectrum glass cuts like a dream. Smooth lines and easy breaks. The white, because it's got the marbling and texture, is not going to be so kind. I can already tell its not going to be so easy. I'm a little worried about the narrowest long pieces, but cross your fingers for me!
So that's all I got done today, but several hours' worth of work. Going to pull out the cut table and begin the detailed cutting process tomorrow. Hope the weather stays good!