Trying Stained Glass

My piece against the light

I was at an awesome event on the May 24th weekend this year called Fruits of Our Labour (fondly known as FOOL) and got the opportunity to try out making stained glass. One of the best parts about the SCA is there are often classes for anything you may be interested in and often at just the cost of materials. 

A wonderfully sweet and engaging woman named Sciath Ingen Chaennaig (We referred to her as Sciath- pronounced Sky-ah) taught the class and I learned a ton. We got to pick out our patterns on paper from a wide variety of choices and price points and then dove right in after a safety talk. The talk was mainly common sense. There are poisonous things as part of the process, don't lick them. We will be melting lead, it will be hot. 

My piece against white so you can see the colours

Each person had three copies of the pattern one for reference, one to cut into the individual pieces so that the glass could be cut and one to place the wet pieces of glass on to make them fit together.

Firstly I learned stained glass takes a long long time. I estimated I spent about 10 hours on this piece (with generous help from others pitching in so I'd finish in time). You have to cut out the glass on all straight lines and chip away on the convex edges and grind down on the concave edges. Grinding takes forever and is quite messy. I was particularly glad of my glasses and I still ended up with little glass bits all in my clothes, and hair. 

Next was this neat copper sticker material which needed to be folded and smoothed onto all the edges of the glass pieces. This was actually quite soothing, and it was here you could start to really see what the final piece would look like.

Then came the flux which is this poisonous sticky liquid that all the edges of the glass needed to be coated in so that the lead would stick to the glass.

The soldering step was my favourite part. I enjoyed watching the lead melt and smooth and connect the glass together. The patina at the end to make the lead black was neat too (and also toxic).

The pieces although cut out from the pattern were surprisingly difficult to fit together, which you wouldn't think as they were cut directly from the pattern, but the slightest bit off really made a difference. 

Over all I was much more appreciative of professional and hobbyist stained glass makers at the end of the class. I don't think stained glass is the hobby for me but I do love my finished product and picking out the glass from all the amazing options was so fun- I can easily see how people could love to do this.

A picture of me very tired but happy and my new piece

What do you think? Have you tried stained glass?