love affair with stained glass

<sigh> What a week it has been. Just and all round booger of a week.

I finally finished the Gabriel’s Trumpets piece, which I have been calling “hummers”, because it is so much easier.

I patina’d the flowers copper, and the rest of the piece black. I had a little problem with impurities leaking out of my solder. The solder is old, and discolored, and I cleaned it before I used it, but not well enough. Even after the patina was on, I had some mold bleed through. What to do, what to do? I went through one of my teaching books, and found the solution for polishing patina. Plain old liquid car wax.

It does take the black off a tad, leaving the metal more charcoal, with a hint of brown. And it gets super shiny, so you need to  like that look. The book said to use red jewelers rouge for the copper patina, but I couldn’t find any of that, so I just used the Zymol polish, and it seems to have worked very well. The best part? It polishes off all the mold spots that has leaked out.

I took it to work, to put in the door. The pattern had shifted a bit when I was doing it, so the size was just a 1/16′ too big, along one side. BOOOOO! I was going to need to bring a sanding block in and sand one side of the window down to allow it to fit. Fine, dang it!

I leaned the piece up against my desk.

Hours later, I was working on one client and my next client came in. She didn’t want to infringe on the current clients time (i think), so she asked if she could sit at my desk. I said sure. When it was her turn for services, she stood up and did something (don’t know what, my back was turned) and I heard Whump!!! What the hell was that? and turned around and there was the hummer piece, laying flat on the floor.

For a second I actually thought that it hadn’t broken. That proved to be a false hope, of course… you can’t blame a girl for hoping. My client was beside herself, blaming herself and apologizing. While a little tiny bit of blame goes to her, the vast majority of it goes to me, for placing the piece in such a vulnerable position.

There they are, the cracks. the two dark, thin lines going from the tips of the hummers wings, are not cracks. I was trying to figure out how to salvage some of the glass, but after playing with it a tad, I don’t think I can. All the large pieces will have to be replaced. What a pain in the ass. The hummers are going to be dangling free while I try to do this. I am still mulling the process over in my mind. I am having trouble getting over the fact that it will probably take me another 20 hours of work to fix it. Stupid, stupid me.

I am going to move on to the christmas orders. Get those done. Then there is Renee’s Ganesha, though there is no deadline for that. I might want to do a little something, something after the christmas projects. Oh, I have that cabinet door to repair, too. Humph. This is starting to look a lot like work…

On we go though, moving forward. I will try to learn something from this. Take better care of the piece!!! Hopefully, I will not have another instance like this. Though honestly, over the course of years, there are bound to be some screw-ups and breakage. Time to hit the shower and get ready for work. Have a great day everyone!

~ by kellig on November 4, 2009.

Posted in Custom, Flowers, Uncategorized