If you are a fan of stained glass, then you know that it can be both beautiful and expensive. If you want to have more stained glass in your home, but do not want to pay a lot of money to purchase the glass, try your hand at making stained glass on your own. There are a couple of free tutorials on the Internet that give a step-by-step breakdown of make your own stained glass explaining the process as well as the different types of glass and techniques that you can use.
Instructions
1. Select your pattern, glass and tools to get started making stained glass. The "Do Stained Glass" by Randy Wardell quick guide (see Resources) gives tips on select these things if you are a beginner. This quick guide is from Wardell's book "Quick Success Stained Glass--a Beginner's Instruction Guide." Cathedral glass is a glass type you may elect to use. You can view a description of the different types of glass on the quick guide site. Several types of tools are listed that you may need, including a glass cutter and safety glasses. Patterns can be found in the print version of the book.
2. Work with the pattern. Once you have found a pattern that you want to use to make stained glass you will want to number each section of the pattern and then cut it apart. An example of this is on the "Make Stained Glass" tutorial at Step 2. You will then want to transfer the pattern to the glass by tracing it onto the glass with a glass marking pen.
3. Score the glass and break out the pieces. To score, or cut, the glass you will use a glass cutter. You can learn about the types of cutters on the quick guide tutorial "Do Stained Glass" by Randy Wardell under the "Tools" heading. You will score along the lines of the pattern that you traced onto the glass. Once you are done scoring, break out the pieces. You can do this by hand or with pliers. You can learn about the two ways under "Break out the Score" on the "Do Stained Glass" by tutorial.
4. Work with the pieces by grinding and foiling them. Compare your glass pieces to the pattern that you cut out. Any pieces that are not the right size can be ground down to fit with a grinder. The "Fitting and Shaping" part of the "Do Stained Glass" by Randy Wardell gives tips on using the grinder. The edges of each piece of glass must be foil wrapped. You can learn do the foil wrapping under the "Foil Wrapping" part of the "Do Stained Glass" by Randy Wardell tutorial.
5. Solder the glass pieces together. A metal web is created by soldering all of the glass pieces together which holds them in one piece again. Learn the proper soldering technique for making stained glass under the "Soldering" part of the "Do Stained Glass" by Randy Wardell tutorial.
6. Use glass cleaner to clean your project. If you plan on hanging it, you can solder a copper wire hanging loop on the back. Just be sure that you only solder it to the soldering seams that are already present.
Tags: Glass Randy, Glass Randy Wardell, Randy Wardell, Stained Glass Randy, quick guide