Two Down, Ten To Go

     I finished soldering the second panel today. That's two down and ten more to go. Tomorrow I'll shine this one up, stow it on the rack, and lay out the third one, which will be the final one of this triptych.

Strong Line

    I thought I'd show how the Strong Line works. The first thing I do is put protection, in the form of Band Aids, on the ends of my fingers. The snipped ends of the Strong Line are really sharp. I'm also learning how to play the Celtic harp, and lacerated fingertips don't work well. Talk about two hobbies in conflict with each other!















   

    Strong Line is very narrow copper coated steel, .020x.103., Inserted in the lead (or zinc) channel, or between pieces of glass,it adds strength to the panel. It flexes on the flat side, and is rigid on the narrow side.










   







 I leave room between the cut pieces, to accommodate the Strong Line. I cram it into every available place, paying special attention to the vertical runs. My first panel  has more flex than I'm comfortable with, although once it is installed it will be fine. I'm hoping that this one is sufficiently rigid.
    After inserting what seemed like miles of wire, I soldered one side of the second panel. Today, I'll frame it with zinc came, turn it over and solder the other side.

Center Panel Ready For Solder

    After seven hours of foiling and two-plus rolls of copper foil tape, the center panel is all foiled. If you've not seen this done, each piece of cut glass is edge-wrapped with copper foil tape which is sticky on one side and shiny copper on the other. A product called Strong Line, which is a stiff copper reinforcement is threaded through the seams where possible. The seams are given a light coat of flux, then lead is soldered to the copper.















    I use a small table foiler which helps me place the foil tape properly on the glass. I used to do it by hand but the copper foil is like little razor blades and shreds the fingertips. I still hand-foil tiny pieces, but the table foiler is a great time saver...to say nothing of finger-saver!

The Center Is Ready For Foil

    The center Dove panel is all cut out and ready for foiling. Foiling will probably take two days, and tomorrow is a shopping day. I hope to get the foiling finished by end of day on Thursday.

   I was never any good at cut and paste in kindergarten, but I just couldn't help myself. I printed out a picture of the first panel (soldered) and the center panel (unsoldered) and then cut and paste them together to see how it was coming together. Except for the fact that the wonky angle of the original photos makes it a little goofy, I'm pretty happy with the results. Yes, in real life, they actually line up.

Working In Slow Motion

     The work never goes as fast as I expect it to. I was hoping to finish cutting the glass for this panel today, and still have about two hours of work to do. Tomorrow is Super Bowl Sunday and I probably won't get any done until Monday.

The Window Of Opportunity

    I've had a bad cold for the last week or so, and today I pushed my window of opportunity just a little too far. I wanted to cut just one more piece before I quit for the day and wound up cutting it across the grain Can you spot the piece?  The background glass should be cut with the movement of color going horizontally. It wasn't until I took photos, then looked at the photos that I realized my mistake. It's the big piece between the sun rays. I'll re-cut that piece tomorrow.

The Eyes Have It

   I haven't been able to work on the glass as much as I would like this week, but it keeps coming along, one piece at a time. I originally made the beak out of some amber colored glass, but it was too light and didn't have enough contrast, so I switched it out for a dark brown glass. The eye ring is a dark amber translucent glass and the center of the eye is dark blue.  The white glass, Spectrum Firelight, is a little tricky to cut because it is textured on both sides. Sometimes the cutter takes a little unplanned journey of it's own.