Videos showing a larger stained glass studio in operation!

We found this set of videos yesterday from a stained glass business, Stained Glass Resources Inc,  doing restoration on a broken leaded glass window.  It gives you an excellent idea of what a large stained glass studio, with multiple work areas in use, actually looks like!  


This is a multi part series on the restoration and repair of a Tiffany stained glass window in the Historic Calvary United Methodist Church, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This restoration work was done by the skilled artisans at Stained Glass Resources Inc. They have received awards for the work that was done to restore the Tiffany stained glass window at Calvary United Methodist Church.


Be sure to check out all of their videos, they are extremely interesting and informative!

Click here to see  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96I8BWtoBAk

Glass bead making video (which is called lampworking)

Kristina Logan

We ran across this wonderful lampwork video on You Tube.

In this video, Kristina demonstrates her process of beadmaking at the torch, finishing the glass by cold working, and incorporating both her glass and silverwork into completed pieces of jewelry. She also discusses the history of glass beads and shares the philosophy of her work.

Click here to see video  Kristina Logan

Mosaic Techniques & Traditions: Projects & Designs from Around the World By Sonia King

If you are interested in mosaics and want to find a book with a lot of information, check out this excellent one by Sonia King.  Below is a link showing excepts from her book.

http://books.google.com/books?id=g3JT9c50VkoC&lpg=PA93&ots=c544IC5_q7&dq=sonia%20king%2Bkeystoning&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false

Blenko glass history

Blenko Glass Company has been a family owned and operated company since 1893.  Click on the link to find out about the company!  Blenko Glass Company  They manufacture glass dalles, along with Kokomo Opalescent Glass Company.


http://www.blenko.com/history.html

How to clean a stained glass window

The best feature of stained glass windows is that its appearance is constantly transposed by the different light it gets. Eventually dirt, soot and grime build up on the glass from pollution, smoke, and oxidation. Burning of incense or candles in churches eventually cause carbon deposits to build up on the glass. 

Eventually these deposits over the years reduce the amount of light that goes through the windows and give them a dull muted appearance. Cleaning the windows will remove these films and deposits and restore its original appearance. There are different types of cleaners depending on the condition of the windows.

The first attempt at cleaning the windows should be with water alone. If cleaning with the water alone doesn't give you the desired effect try using a nonionic detergent.

Stained glass windows often become covered with a yellowed layer of shellac, varnish or stains which may requires alcohol or solvents to remove. If these methods do not work try a stronger solution, provided that the windows are not painted. Stained glass can be cleaned with acetone, ethanol, isopropyl alcohol or mineral spirits to remove these deposits. Be sure to remove all chemical residue with a nonionic detergent and thoroughly rinse off the residue with clean water.

Before attempting to clean any painted windows be sure that the paint was properly fired on. If the paint is secure it can be cleaned with soft sponges and cloth using one of the above methods. Remember to always try cleaning with water first before trying any harsher methods. If the paint was not properly fired or simply applied cold this can cause the paint to flake off during cleaning. If this is the case be sure to use extra care while cleaning them.

Never use any acidic or abrasive cleaners on stained glass windows they may harm the window. Household glass cleaners that contain ammonia should also be avoided, ammonia can often cause a negative reaction with the putty or came.

Thank you Sharon Swanson for this information, to find out more about her glass art, click HERE. 

Making Wine Bottle Cheese Plates in Your Kiln.

Slumping is HOT!

After enjoying a little fruit of the vine....The first thing you'll want to do is remove the label from your bottle; for stubborn ones Goo-Gone works well.

Next be sure to wash and dry your bottle completely. Moisture is the enemy. It can cause the bottle to explode in your kiln, making a very big mess.

Bottles with painted labels are ok (actually - they are trey cool ;) but I suggest using a thin sheet of fiber paper under the part where the label comes in contact with the molds surface, otherwise the bottle might get stuck and ruin your mold. YUCK! see the picture below.

Devitrification spray can be applied to the bottles to prevent a hazy or a scummy appearance on the glass after it's fired. (I don't bother with this).

If you would like to hang your bottle for decorative purposes; take a piece of 20 gage copper wire (or fine silver) shape in a U and insert it in the bottle top before slumping.

Use a clay mold that has been pre treated with glass separator. Separator should be reapplied between firings and dried completely, as needed. Check the tiny vent holes, in the mold - under the glass, to be sure that they are not plugged with the separator.

My Firing Schedule for med. to lg. bottle:

•1. 600 Degrees Per Hour to 1000 Degrees Fahrenheit, soak (hold temp constant) for 10 minutes

•2. It is only safe to peek* into the kiln from 1000 degrees and up- otherwise you will shock your glass and it will crack.

*Please protect your hands and arms with heavy kiln gloves and your face and eyes with tinted safety glasses!

•3. Heat AFAP (as fast as possible), to 1375 to 1425 DF, (depending on the size and thickness of your bottle)

•4. Soak (hold temp constant) for 5-15 minutes or until the bottle is slumped to perfection.

•5. Watch it closely during this time it can move rather fast!

•6. Allow the Kiln to cool until the temperature falls to 1000 DF.

•7. Soak for 10 minutes at 1000 DF.

•8. Annealing Stage; slow cool at 180 DPH to 800 DF.

•9. Next turn off the kiln and let it cool naturally to room temperature; don't peek*! (see #2 above)

After you remove your project from the kiln; be sure to vacuum any spall that comes off the copper wire to avoid contaminating your next project.

You may want to adjust the temperature and/or soak time according to the size and thickness of your bottle.

Practice is the best teacher and sometimes an error is the result of what will be some of your favorite pieces.

Most importantly, have Fun!

Bottles from my Kiln

Snowman Cheese Ball

Belvedere Bottle

Bottle stuck to the mold...YUCK!

Hot Glass in the Kiln

This interesting tutorial was written by:

shetrick on HubPages

While Sue Hetrick received most of her formal training in art from HACC, Central Pa’s Community College; she continues to learn from her own experimentation. Her ceramic pieces are crafted to be functional works of whimsy. The same can be said for her glass fused and slumped pieces, which tend to be her favored creations. The addition of wire wrapping make the glass pieces uniquely her own. Whether ceramic or glass, Sue crafts works of art that incorporate fun into function.

How to Use Stencils in Fused Glass Art Work

This great tutorial was made by GeltDesigns, visit their webpage HERE to view all of their wonderful art work and excellent tutorials! 

Using stencils can add interesting dimensions to your fused glass art. This tutorial will explain how to use stencils with glass frits and glass powders when creating fused glass art work.

Instructions

1

Gather your tools, materials and glass fusing supplies. Prepare your glass fusing kiln, kiln shelf and work space.

2

Begin the project by cutting your glass. In our example we used one 6x6 inch square piece of clear bullseye glass, but you can chose any color fusible glass in any size that suits your project.

3

Stencil.

Cut a stencil (or series of stencils) out of a file folder or 25 lb. piece of paper with a craft knife or identify commercial stencil(s) to use for your design.

Stencils can be used to create shapes as well as lines. In our example we used one stencil to make the sailboats and another stencil to sift the curved lines of blue.

4

Determine the color pallet of powder and frit to use for your design.

5

Scoop out the powder with sifter and sift powder over stencil.

Place your glass on a piece of paper and then lay the stencil over the glass and evenly sprinkle a liberal amount of powder through a sifter over the stencil.

6

Lift the stencil carefully once you have applied a thick powder layer. The image from your stencil should be left on the glass.

7

Repeat using the next stencil until your design is complete.

8

Set the stencils aside and sprinkle the powder through sifter to even out your design on the entire glass sheet.

9

Place in your prepared glass kiln. Fire using the following schedule as a guide:

Ramp ºF/Hr Target temperature Hold for
1 500 1440 10
2 Full 950 10
3 150 750 0

Firing your new kiln for the first time

by Glass Fusing Made Easy
http://www.glass-fusing-made-easy.com/


On this page, we will be discussing the first firing kiln procedure. When firing a kiln you need to watch and control the temperature inside. These steps will help you achieve the desired schedules. These procedures are typically done at temperatures around 1300-1500 degrees Fahrenheit.

For a first firing, it is recommended that you fire the kiln to about 1000 degrees Fahrenheit and hold it there for about 30 minutes. For the first firing, only place the shelf and posts inside the kiln. 

There is a refractory coating that is placed on the element grooves in the firebrick lid. As the elements in the lid expand during the first firing, any loose particles or pieces inside the grooves will fall into the empty firing chamber. Once the kiln has cooled, vacuum the lid grooves and the inside of the kiln, being sure to remove any particles that might have landed on the kiln shelf. Then the kiln is ready for future firings.

Keep an eye on the glass in the kiln is an essential part of glass fusing. A good peep hole or glass panel is a great help in seeing what is happening to your project.

Although kilns are hard working pieces of equipment, they don’t stay new looking for long. The steel case can tarnish and small cracks can become visible in the firebricks. This is routine and nothing to get alarmed about. It is an appliance, and pieces of equipment get dirty and soiled during usage.

Even though the firebrick is fragile, it can routinely withstand high temperatures over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. Correctly taken care of, firebricks can endure hundreds of firings.

So, can you do glass fusing in a ceramic kiln? Yes. The basic difference between the two kilns is that glass kilns usually heat from the top and ceramic kilns heat from the side.

Although your new piece of equipment can seem intimidating at first, it is only a tool and can be easily mastered. Read these simple instructions on the firing kiln procedure and fire up that kiln.

Creating woven glass art

We ran across this really informative tutorial below on how to make glass look like it is woven.  We like the idea of making your own clay pattern bars.  This allows the glass artist to make weaves of varying sizes!

How to Weave Glass

http://www.weavezine.com/content/how-weave-glass

We all take things for granted, at least I do.

Nothing points this out more than trying to do something familiar in a new way, or with new materials.

Weaving is an art that assumes the materials used are flexible. Yarn and thread bend easily. People who weave baskets and cane chairs soften the fibers by soaking them. With enough force, metal can be bent and woven. But how does one weave something that is not flexible at all and, if stressed, will break?

Actually, it’s not difficult if you think about weaving in a different way.

Consider a tabby weave where the warp is made up of flexible threads and the weft is rigid sticks. What makes this work is that the warp threads bend up and down, around the rows of sticks. The shape these warp threads take on is a sine wave—remember high-school trigonometry?

Looking at the weaving from the side, the even and odd warp threads form a shape like a continuous row of figure eights laying on their sides, with each weft stick slipped into a hole in the figure eight.

The trick to weaving glass is to think of the weft as a set of sticks that do not bend and the warp as a set of sticks that are pre-formed into a series of curves that fit together to create figure-eight shapes like those in the example above. Once the warp is shaped, it is a simple matter to slip the weft threads into place by inserting them into the holes of the figure eights from the side.

Since glass in its solid form does not bend without breaking, we will use heat to make the glass fluid enough to bend. This is done by heating the glass in a kiln and using forms to shape it while it is in a semi-fluid state.

Project Notes

For this demonstration, I chose to make an eight-inch-square plate of woven glass. Since the weft threads will have a natural spacing between them to make room for the bending of the warp threads, I decided to also space the warp threads a bit apart to create a balanced plain weave.

I made each warp and weft thread out of a piece of soda-lime art glass one-half inch wide, eight inches long, and three millimeters thick.  Although I used soda-lime glass, the process would be the same for any type of glass.  For each plate, I used nine warp threads and nine weft threads.

Note: Many people who weave glass use the round glass rods sold for glass bead making. I use flat glass because I like the results better, and because I already owned a quantity of flat glass.

To cut the glass, I used a hand-held glass cutter, glass pliers, and a straight-edge.

The principle of glass cutting is that you use the wheel of a glass cutter to score the surface of the glass. The glass-cutting pliers have rounded jaws which, when used to squeeze the glass, cause it to break along the score. A straight-edge is useful for scoring straight lines.

Interestingly, once the glass is scored it should be broken immediately. If the glass is left unbroken for months after being scored, it heals enough that the score may no longer break cleanly. This is because, even in its solid form, glass is a bit fluid.  In fact, very old windows that have been in place for a long time are actually a tiny bit thicker at the bottom than at the top.

The photograph below shows the strips of glass assembled into the basic shape of the eight-inch plate I plan to make from woven glass. I use this step to check the pattern and placement of the warp and weft strips.

The next step is to bend the warp glass into the desired shape. For my plate, I decided to use nine warp and nine weft threads. Only the warp threads need to be bent, but they must be bent enough to allow the space required for the weft threads to slip between the layers (in other words, through the holes in the figure eights).

The glass I'm using is three millimeters thick, so I need to make forms that I can place the glass on to create a three millimeter gap. This is easier than it sounds. I use clay to make the forms because it is readily available and can be reused. The trick is to make the forms three times thicker than the thickness of the glass. This ensures that the opening is wide enough to easily weave in the weft threads (remember, they can't bend at all) even after taking into account the fact that the clay will shrink when it is fired.

To make the forms uniform, I used two wooden dowels about nine millimeters thick and a piece of PVC pipe as a rolling pin.

The clay is rolled out by placing the clay on a board between the two dowels. The rolling pin rests on the dowels and forces the clay to reach a uniform thickness. Using a sharp knife, I cut strips about one-half inch wide and about twelve inches long.

Since I’m using nine strips of glass in the warp, I need only five pieces of clay to use as forms—one for each odd number between one and nine. All nine of the pieces of warp glass will be placed on the clay strips. Then, when I do the weaving, every other formed piece of warp glass will be turned over so that the part of the glass that goes up in one row will go down in the next.

Note: I could have done the same thing with four pieces of clay. It is just a matter of deciding whether to work with odd or even side of the sine wave. For an illustration of what I mean, look at the curves in a shaped warp thread (picture below). See how there are five bumps on the top and four on the bottom?

After the clay forms have been cut, the clay must be slowly dried and fired before it can be used. I dry the clay between pieces of newspaper with a thick piece of glass on top to prevent warping. Once the clay strips are dry, they are ready to be fired in a kiln. Some of the clay pieces broke during the drying process, but that doesn’t matter because I can repair them with a bit of plaster.

I fired the clay strips at 1900 degrees Fahrenheit, but could have fired them to a lower temperature. The only requirement is that they clay be fired to a little higher temperature than the glass will be fired at, and the glass will be fired at 1200 degrees F.

Once the clay is ready, I used Elmer’s glue to glue each one onto a piece of fiber paper on which I drew an eight inch square. Fiber paper is special paper that contains silica and is commonly used to keep glass from sticking to the kiln shelf during a glass fusing or slumping process.

The fiber-paper square allows me to space the clay strips properly and evenly. Elmer’s glue will burn up in the kiln, but that is not a problem because I’m only using it to keep the clay strips in place on the paper until I get the whole thing into the kiln.

The clay is still not ready to use as a form because the glass will stick to the clay if I don’t do something to prevent that. So, after repairing the cracks in the clay strips, I cover the clay with several layers of kiln wash. By the time I’m done, you can no longer even see the cracks in the clay strips.

Next, I place the clay strips glued to the fiber paper into the kiln and carefully rest nine of the glass strips (my warp) on the rows of clay, placing them perpendicular to the clay strips.

I also placed the weft strips into the kiln on a piece of fiber paper. I do this not to shape them, but so the heat can melt and round out the sharp edges of the glass strips, both to match the look of the warp threads and to make the weaving easier.

I placed little pieces of fired clay (the red bars) around the glass to weigh down the fiber paper. Fiber paper curls as it fires and can reach up and touch the glass, causing a little smudge on the glass, so the clay weights are used to hold it down.

Slumping is a term that describes what glass does when it is heated just enough to become soft and change shape, but not enough melt or fuse. For the type of glass I am using, this requires a temperature of about 1200 degrees Fahrenheit.

Fusing occurs when two or more layers of glass are melted together and become one. For this glass, fusing happens anywhere from 1350 to 1500 degrees Fahrenheit. The fusing process is continuous and must be watched to get the desired amount of intermingling between the two layers of glass.

To slump my warp and create the sine waves, I processed the glass at 1200 degrees Fahrenheit for about 20 minutes. Because glass must be heated and cooled slowly to prevent breakage due to temperature shock, the whole process of ramping up to the slumping temperature and then cooling back down took about eight hours.

The photograph above shows a piece of warp glass that has been bent in the kiln and a piece of unbent weft glass. The two pieces remain the same length despite the bending because the warp-thread strip stretches as it is shaped by the heat.

Once the glass is cool, I wash it to remove traces of the burned fiber paper and kiln wash. At long last I am ready to weave the glass. Weaving is the easiest part of the whole process and takes only about five minutes!

I lined up the nine strips of slumped warp glass on a clear piece of base glass that is eight inches square, flipping over every other piece of warp glass to create the figure-eight spacing. After the warp is in place, I slid the weft strips in from the side. I carefully positioned all of the pieces onto the clear base, using a few drops of crazy glue to keep things from sliding around. Like the Elmer’s glue, the crazy glue will burn off in the kiln. At this point, I have the option to add a few decorative touches to my piece. On the two plates shown below, I have added decorative balls of dichroic glass as an accent.

Note: A clear-glass backing isn't necessary for a woven glass piece. The fused strips will be strong enough to hold their shape after firing. Because I am making a functional plate, however, and because I've chosen an open plain-weave structure, I'm adding the clear base sheet so that small items put on the plate won't fall through the holes in the weaving. The clear plate backing also adds strength to the piece, another important consideration for a functional plate.

This whole thing (woven strips, clear glass backing, and decorative accents) is placed on another piece of fiber paper in the kiln.

This time I want the weave to collapse, fusing the warp and weft pieces together and fusing the woven strips onto the base piece. This time through the kiln, I will process the glass at 1350 degrees Fahrenheit for about seven minutes. Again, due to the need to slowly ramp up and cool down, the whole process takes about eleven hours.

The weaving is done, but my plate is not quite finished yet. Instead of a flat plate, I want to create one with a graceful curve.

The last step is to slump the woven glass sheet onto a mold that has the graceful curve I want to impart to my plate. Such molds are made of ceramic materials and are commercially available from any glass fusing or ceramics shop. Like the clay strips, I cover the commercial mold with a layer of kiln wash to prevent the glass from sticking to the mold during firing.

The fused weaving is placed onto the prepared mold and it goes into the kiln for the third and final time.

Because the glass only needs to slump, it is processed at 1200 degrees Fahrenheit for about ten minutes until it collapses into the shape of a plate with slightly turned up edges.

If you look closely, you can see the clear glass base underneath the weaving.

The woven glass strips are fused to the clear glass base; but because I stopped the fusing process before they melted flat, the strips have a lot of texture and rise above the clear base. Dishes like these make good soap dishes; the soap is held aloft on the woven strips and the water drains down below.

I used a plate mold to shape my woven glass, but any shape could be used. Some people even open the kiln while the glass is soft and manipulate it into shape by hand—using proper tools and safety precautions, of course.

Instead of creating an open weave out of flat strips of glass, I could have used glass stringers (thin strands of glass) or the round glass rods used for making glass beads. Or, I could have made a warp-faced weave by making more warp threads and placing them closer together. You can also weave glass into other weave structures, but this may require more than one set of clay strips on which to shape the warp threads.

If weaving glass sounds like a lot of work, just remember all of the work a weaver does to warp a loom. And the next time you are weaving, be thankful that your threads can bend!