Stained Glass Panels for the Blacker House Sconces

Between several new work crisis this morning I started on the stained glass panels for the Mahogany sconces I made, inspired by a sconce I’ve seen from the Blacker House.

Let me put a giant caveat here: I’m just this side of clueless in terms of doing anything with glass.  Anything beyond spritzing it with Windex and wiping it off is new ground for me.  I took a one day class on stained glass recently, and splurged and bought a glass cutter, running pliers and a little glass grinder.  Trusting in my ability to proceed without having a clue, I’m on my way.

Basic Stained Glass Setup

I started by cutting some patterns (templates?  mockups?) from 1/8″ MDF to make sure I had the sizes just right  Because of some small variations in my woodworking the CAD patterns for the glass I drew up were slightly too tall, and one of them was slightly too narrow.  I adjusted the fit of the MDF mockups until they fit both sconce bodies without any problems.

Finalizing the size for the glass panels

Then I did the next easiest thing I could do, which was to cut a blank glass panel for the back of the sconces — I’m not going to make a stained glass panel for the back as it won’t show.  I’m just using a piece of the same glass as the main part of my pattern for the sides.

Blank panels for the backs cut and fit

Now the hard part, cutting all of the little bits of glass according to my pattern.  The cuts I made on the practice piece at the class were sloppy, so I ended up with several big gaps, which meant big, wide solder joints.  It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t really nice either.  I feel like my cuts are better already, although this glass is darker than what I’d used previously so it’s hard to see the lines through the glass.

I cut the big section at the bottom first, the little indent cut came out pretty well.  Not perfect, but the next stop will be the grinder.

Starting with the front panel…

This top background pieces are really tricky, I did my best with them, and then marked them where they will need to be ground.

Tricky cuts

For the tiny little pieces in the middle I cut them close and will have to grind them to fit.  And that is my next task.

All parts for one sconce front panel rough cut