Did it!
It was a pain, as I foresaw, but not too bad. Most of the problem was because I didn’t wait long enough after gluing the pattern down. The glue hadn’t dried completely, so when I cut it, it was flooded with water from the saw, and the patterns loosened. The Taurus Ring Saw is fantastic, but it is very wet, and very chip-y. My hands are completely covered in glass bits and chips, and soaking wet, when I finish. The glass bits area problem, all over my hands. You can’t just brush them off, they need to be rinsed of. For that, I have to go into the house. I grabbed the doorknob, and had several pieces of glass insert themselves into my skin. Not fun. I bleed for my art!!
I experimented with gloves when I did the turtle head. The tight ones. Worked out much better than I anticipated. I had thought that they would get all sliced up, but they didn’t. So that I great.
One drawback with the ring saw is this. If you paste the pattern on, and then just cut it out with the saw, you loose a bit more glass than is ideal. I like my pieces nice and tight after I cut them, with just enough of a gap for the foil. I know that it is overly particular of me, but what can I say? I’m particular. You can see in the photo above how there is quite a bit of space between the pieces. When I did the shell, I just pasted the entire pattern to the glass and then used the saw to cut out the individual pieces. I ended up with a 1/4″ gap in the whole shell, when it was all said and done. Totally unacceptable. I was hoping to save a bit of time by using that method, but no dice.
With the turtle head, I clumped a few pieces together, strategically, and then cut them out. I will use foil overlays to mimic a solder line. That is what the black lines are on the pieces.
I did the same thing on the larger flippers, to very good effect.
Wow. That came out big. Oops. The only drawback of this method is that I am too lazy to do the backside, so the piece ends up being one-sided. With this turtle, it isn’t as much of an issue because the shell pattern looks like hell ont he back, so it really should be viewed from only the one side.
Ok, that’s it for tonight folks. Have a great one!
love affair with stained glass 