Making time fly

Yesterday I discovered just how fast a person can make time fly when involved in a brand new hobby. I’ve been kind of looking at my glass project for most of the week, thinking I oughta do something with it. Yesterday was the day. Something has to be prepared for class on Tuesday. I started working on it around 3:00 in the afternoon and the next thing I knew it was 8:30. So anyway.

This is what it looked like all week.

As I said before, the colors didn’t sit quite right with me, so I cut new glass and came up with a more pleasing combination. 

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This is what the mess looked like while I was in the middle of grinding glass. The white paste stuck to everything is glass grindings. And this time I wore glasses. It’s a good thing because I got peppered with glass shards.

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This is the glass grinder with a diamond head grinder. Beneath the grid there is a reservoir for water. A small sponge sits behind the grinding head that soaks up the water and cleans the head as it spins. It also kicks up a lot of water. I haven’t used the head enough to dull it yet (and it will dull after about 10 hours of glass grinding), so I ended up grinding a little more than I needed in some places.

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Here we are after I washed the glass. Looking a little better.

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And here it is so far. After washing the glass, I wrapped the edge of each piece in copper foil. If there is a more tedious enterprise, I have yet to find it. I’m thinking that anyone who makes a project with a few hundred pieces of glass must be near insane by the time they’ve finished this stage. This will definitely not be my favorite part of stained glass making. But it’s a good opportunity to listen to music and sing to the dog....

There is a chemical that I’ll paint on the edges of the copper foil that will make the solder bind to the copper. So, soldering is the next step and I think that’ll wait until class. I have a couple of questions before I charge ahead and ruin it.

It’s a little crooked here and there, but I think it’ll turn out okay for a first effort.

Funny thing. I left my supplies in a large canvas bag beside the dining room table last night when I went to bed. It appears that Terry was very much taken with all the activity yesterday (maybe my singing, too) and she knew all that stuff in the bag was really cool MOM STUFF. Just as I’d settled in for a nice autumn slumber I heard a loud THUD. And then another THUD. That usually means that Terry is into something so I crawled out of my comfy blankets and went downstairs to see what she was up to. Well, she’d gone over to see what important stuff was in the canvas bag and decided to haul a couple of bottles of chemicals out. She had them in her bed with her. Not chewing on them, fortunately. Just snuggled up to them. I guess she wanted to feel like a contributing member of the project. What a dog. Everything is now put away behind the closet door so she can’t get into it. She was very disappointed.