Yesterday, my brother showed me how to do the copper foil technique for assembling stained glass windows. I’ve been working for him in his studio for about six months now. Most of that time has been spent doing restoration painting for various 100+ year-old churches around the region. That involves a fair amount of hand-painting, but also a whole hell of a lot of stenciling, which gets really boring after the millionth time you do it.
Anyway, the copper foil technique was pioneer by Tiffany. It allows you to have a narrower clearner looking connecting area between two pieces of glass than the more traditional lead caming would allow. It’s especially well suited for doing smaller panels, which is what we’re working on right now. Basically, you take each piece of glass in your window, and you wrap this adhesive copper tape around the edges of it. The tape folds over onto the front and back just a little bit. Then you take a soldering iron, and solder together the glass pieces. The solder only sticks to where your copper foil is on your glass, so you have to be careful how you apply it. After that, we have some kind of corrosive chemical that you apply to the solder, which turns it a black patina. That way, when you’re looking through the illuminated window, you’re not distracted by the lines, and it all ties together into the window image.
It’s pretty cool once it’s all done. We’re putting together a bunch of small windows for people to buy as Christmas presents and what have you. If anybody’s interested in seeing pictures and prices, let me know.
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