Monthly Archives: September 2014

I wrapped up the stained glass for the Thorsen cabinet today, leaving just the rub out and final assembly for tomorrow.

The glass took longer than I expected.  The process, once all the pieces are cut and fit, is to clean them, add the copper foil tape and solder them together.  Sounds simple, and it is.  It takes some time to do the steps, but what really soaked up the time (and heat) was the copper frame I made.

Glass cleaned and copper foil applied and burnished down.

Rewinding: I made a copper surround for the stained glass, because I wanted a solder bead around the periphery of glass.  Copper is a great conductor, and it really pulled the heat out of my soldering iron.  I’ll have to get a bigger iron before I do this again.  The one I have has plenty of power to solder glass, but not really enough to solder a copper frame like this.

It took a long for the copper to heat up enough so I could flow in the solder, and I had to move really slowly.  This made my solder seams along the copper a little sloppy, although they don’t really show in the finished cabinet.  It sort of reminded me of my first welding project when I was a kid.  I had a ’73 Pontiac Firebird and I wanted to put a roll cage in it.  I bought an oxyacetylene welder and used that to weld the tubing in.  If you’re not in the know about welding, that’s not the typical way to do the job.  I had to use a giant tip on the torch.  It felt like I was welding with a forest fire, and it took forever for the metal to get hot enough to form a puddle.

The roll cage came out looking good, and I think this will be ok too.

Soldered…a little sloppy where the glass meets the copper framework, but not too bad.

After soldering I scrubbed the assembly to get rid of the flux.  Then I applied a black patina, and polished the seams.  This shot is with the cabinet door sitting on top of the glass panels.  They aren’t installed yet because I still need to rub the finish out.

Mock up of the door with the glass

I managed to sneak in an hour of shop time today, and finished cutting and grinding all of the pieces for the stained glass panels for the Thorsen cabinet door.  Remember the Thorsen cabinet?  I swear, I’m going to finish it soon and stop writing blog posts about it.  It really hasn’t been that complicated a project, although the door had it’s share of challenges.

Where I left off, I’d finished the top panel and the three right hand panels for the door, leaving just the large main panel.  I was a little worried as this glass has been a little fussy to cut.  It has a rough texture with some bubbles, inclusions and significant differences in thickness across the sheet — all of which adds to it’s beauty in my view.  I really like this particular clear glass, both the texture and the iodized coating.  I’m bummed they aren’t making more of it, the factory changed to using a texturing roller to produce it, which gives it a pebbled appearance like a shower door.  Ick!!

Anyway, my point is that it’s tricky to cut, especially big pieces and large cuts.  I got the large clear panel blanked out, but had two cuts get away from me as I was removing the cut out sections where other colors will go.  I was on the verge of starting with a fresh sheet, but I really, really liked the large wave or undulation in this glass.

Clear glass cut and fit to the pattern — the score ran off in a couple of spots unfortunately

To make this piece of glass work I had to change the pattern to account for the extra bits of glass that cracked off.  I traced the clear onto my pattern in red sharpie.

Updated pattern to account for the reality of the glass

You can see my annotation for the colors on the pattern.  I traced the pattern onto the three different colors of glass I’m using, and cut them as close to the line as my skills would allow, then ground them to fit.  The gaps are all perfectly acceptable, and will help the solder joint have a more organic feel.

The next time I get a little time in the shop I’ll clean all of the pieces, add copper foil, and solder them.  This is the last major task for the cabinet, the rest is just a light rub out of the finish, and assembly.

All of the glass cut for the door to the Thorsen house cabinet

I got a couple of hours in the shop before it got too hot to work today (when is the weather going to break anyway?), and made good progress on the stained glass for the Thorsen cabinet door.  If I could get a solid day in the shop I’d be long since done I think.

Anyway, I started by re-making two pieces of the top pane with a different color for more contrast.  I think it will look better this way.  So it changes from this:

Before…

To this:

After.

Once the seams were soldered the first one would have looked less uniform, but I like having the purple there.  It’s hard to get the final effect looking at just the pieces, so I’m going on faith a little .  If it looks horrible when I’m done I can always hurl it across the shop after all.

Then I started on the small panels on the right, I laid out the clear, cut and found all there panels.  I followed the same sequence as I showed in my last post, I cut and ground the full sized pane to fit the opening in my copper framework, then I cut and ground the areas the needed to be removed for the colored areas.  With some nice music on the stereo this goes really quickly.

Clear panels cut for the three right hand panes

Then I started cutting and fitting the colored glass.  I laid out which colors I wanted to use in which spots on my master pattern to keep it straight.  Where I cloud shape should span two panes I made them the same color.  Again, that effect is lost when you’re just looking at the pieces, so it important to have a master pattern with this information.

Purple, White opalescent and pinkish/clear opalescent colored glass added to two of the small panes

And finally the larger pane at the bottom right

So that just leaves the large pane on the bottom left.  The larger panes are trickier for me, especially with glass glass like this that has inclusions and irregularities.  It’s really prone to having the crack propagate away from the scored line, but I have three sheets, so I should be able to get it done.

Before it got too hot yesterday and I abandoned ship to go buy a new TV (and ultimately returned to the shop to knock together a kludge to hold the TV and related paraphernalia) I made a credible start on the stained glass for the door of the Thorsen Cabinet.

I started by setting up a wood frame to hold the two copper surrounds I made earlier.  The intent with the pattern board is to hold the two copper frames in orientation as they will be in the door, and to keep from springing the sides and messing up the fit.

Wood base set up, 3/4″ MDF, and 1/8″ hardboard strips to hold the copper frames in position

I fit some paper into the wood frame, and started developing the pattern for the glass.  I traces the inside edge of the copper frame, then sketched the “cloud” design in pencil, tweaking it until I was happy with it, then I inked in with a fine point sharpie.

Pattern for the class developed

The process for cutting the glass is pretty simple in concept, score and snap, but the reality is that curves add complexity.  And the uneven texture of the glass gives it a mind of it’s own.  I cut the pieces of glass for the left side first, but got a crack in the big one.  That’s life, I bought extra expecting that nibbling out little pieces in a big sheet was going to be tricky.

First cuts on the textured, iridized clear. Note the unfortunate crack on the bottom right.

I really love this clear glass.  It has a few bubbles and an irregular hand-made appearance.  It’s “iridized”, which means it has a thin metallic coating that gives it a purplish cast.  Part of why this piece got away from me is that I scored it on the front instead of the back.  The back is smoother.  Also the glass needs to be well-supported when scoring, otherwise the pressure from scoring will start a crack.

Part of this errant crack is my fault…

So I ignored the bottom section and focused on finishing the top section first.  I used grozing pliers to snap off any little pieces that didn’t come off and the score, then I ground the edge so it was a slightly loose fit in the opening in the copper.

Top piece fit in the frame

Then I laid it over my pattern and traced the cut lines for the cloud design.  I flipped the glass face down and scored it in stages.  First a straight or sweeping cut to get close to the layout line.  This can be snapped by hand or with “running pliers”.  I’ll have to do a separate post on the tools as I don’t have pictures handy.

Pattern traced onto the clear

First cut scored on the back of the glass. Note that I tried to hit the high points and keep the sweep of the cut gentle

Once the first cut is snapped, I scored a service of shallow arcs into the inside curves.  These will be snapped off using the grozing pliers.  I’m not really very good at this, but it seems to work.  If I can get within a 1/16″ of my line I’m happy.

Cuts scored for the inside curves

After snapping all the little bits, and repeating the cuts on the other end of this piece, I’m ready to take it to the glass grinder.

Cuts all made

After grinding, it’s not perfect relative to the original pattern, but it’s close enough for this design

These are the three pieces of glass I got to use for the cloud shapes.  I’m starting out with the one on the bottom left, which is spear, white, pink and champagne.  I suspect I’ll make a few pieces in more than one color as I go through this and decide what looks best.   All of these have an iridized coating like the clear that I’m using.

Glass for the clouds

Same process for the little pieces, with a slight twist.  Since the glass isn’t clear I have to use a light box to see the pattern through the glass.  I ink it onto the front of the glass, then flip the glass over on the light box and ink it onto the back.  The difference in color between the two sides is surprising.

Pattern traced onto the front of the colored glass

…and then traced onto the back of the glass for scoring.

I score and break from the back, and grind from the front.  I am aiming for a slightly loose fit between the pieces — not gaps (there will be some, and that’s OK) — but enough clearance for the copper foil that will wrap all the bits.  Without the lead boarder the design looks a little anemic at this point.  I’m also going to re-make one or two of the parts in different colors for more variety.  But this is where I left off before my son convinced me to stop so we could go TV shopping.

Parts cut and fit for the first panel.