All the leaves are gone.

The Chickadee Light Box was my third stained glass project and my first attempt at a lamp. It turned out better than I could have imagined. I love to turn on the light and just sit in the room with it glowing in the corner. (Maybe that's a little weird, I admit. But the soft light is peaceful.) The chickadees happily guard the entry of my house.

I've basked in the glory of my first successful lamp long enough. I figure that it's time to get on with the next one. I had the idea for a fall leaves lamp at the same time as the chickadees design. (Again, thank you to Ichiro Tashiro for his inspiring work.) So last fall, I wandered around my yard and took some snapshots of my maple trees.



I first thought a "realistic" leaf was the way to go. But as I studied the outlines of "real" leaves, I thought better of it real quick. There are a lot of curves and overlapping parts. I know my limitations. My stained glass experience was not up to the task of creating 6-8 realistic leaves. Especially when I'm building a complicated three-dimensional lamp.

Instead, I traced the outline of a leaf photo that I liked and made a posterboard cut-out of it. I actually made three identical cut-outs.

Once I drew the borders of the lamp panel (6" x 9") I played around with the placement of the leaves. When I was happy, I traced around the leaf cutouts and moved on to the next panel of the lamp. All the while I'm thinking about how the glass will cut and grind. I could easily design myself into a corner, making pieces that would be very difficult to reproduce.

As you can see, the first panel is completed. I'm taking cues from panel #1 to design panel #2. These panels will make one corner of the lamp. On the fly, I decided to take curves out of the design. Instead, I've gone over the leaf tracings with a ruler to straighten every curve.

Now all four panels are designed and labeled. I will photocopy them for safekeeping. My next step is to transfer each panel design to poster board. I will then number and cut out all the pieces using my foiling shears.

Scritch scratch I was making a lamp.

An unusual peace has descended upon the shop. The table saw has been quiet for several days now. There is still work being done. But replacing the saw's loud grumbling is a soft, gritty scratching noise. A sound that I can only describe as what a fistful of gravel would sound like when scraped across a chalkboard. Anyone who has ever cut glass will know the sound well.

In a previous post I described my last stained glass project, a rendering of my antique hand plane. In that post I only touched on some of the techniques that I used to create the stained glass panel. This time, I've taken more photographs and will explain in more detail how this project will come together.

So, what is the new project? My new project is a lamp. Notice, I didn't say lampshade. There are plenty of stained glass lampshades out there. They are attractive and many are complementary with Arts & Crafts design. But this lamp is altogether different from anything I had seen before. You'll see what I mean as the lamp comes together.

Before I get ahead of myself, let me give credit where credit is due. The original piece that inspired this project was created by an extremely talented glass artist named Ichiro Tashiro of Japan. I borrowed heavily from Mr. Tashiro's work in the making of this lamp.

Let's start with the images. This lamp has four glass sides and a glass top. The glass portion will sit snugly in a wooden base. The four glass sides will have images. In this case I chose birds.

These are black-capped chickadees. I chose them for this project because they are common all across the northern part of the United States, and because they are active and cute.

Using a common ink-jet printer, I sized and printed black and white versions of these photographs. Now is a good time to talk about size. I had already decided how large the lamp and its base was going to be. In this case, I wanted each panel to be 6 inches wide. I also wanted the wooden base to be a square of 6 inches. Using the "golden rectangle" ratio of 1:1.6, I made the glass panel height 9.75 inches. (6 x 1.6 = 9.6) OK. So I rounded up a little on the math. It will look fine, trust me.

After figuring out the specific dimensions for each glass panel I determined how large the birds should be for a pleasing design. I also chose which direction the birds would face and the layout of the branches. Only two sides of a square object can be see at one time (I'm not counting the top as a side.) Therefore, only two sides of the lamp will have a detailed image of birds. The other two sides will probably face a wall, much like I did when I misbehaved in kindergarten.

Using expert drafting equipment of a ruler, a pencil, a carpenter's square, and a sheet of paper, I was able to lay out the 6 x 9.75 inch panels. From the black and white prints I traced pencil outlines of the birds' prominent features and the twigs they are perched upon.

After making the simple pencil sketch, I went over the drawing another time with a pencil and ruler, making my lines straight. I thought the panel would look better that way. You be the judge.

Bonding and copper foil.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I decided to spend some quality time together. We agreed that taking lessons of some kind would be a great way to accomplish that task. We could sit by each other for three hours a week and work and talk and grow together. (Or something like that.) So she set out to come up with the subject we would learn.

I think her first idea was swing dancing. Not a chance! We were both athletes once (a long, long time ago) but dancing was never a strength for either of us. The next idea was golf. That one never got off the ground either. Finally she signed us up for stained glass class. We just recently completed the six week course and I have to say, it was time well spent for both of us.

The photo above is a product of that class and my very first attempt at stained glass. It is a rendering of my 1929 Stanley Bailey No. 4 hand plane. Now, I had many pre-made designs available to me at the stained glass store. There were flowers and plants and puppies and dragonflies. I'm sorry, but I could not force myself to choose one. None of those designs had enough... testosterone. I ended up making my own design. Here's how I did it:



First, I took a photo of the item to be immortalized in glass. I set the plane on a pine board that was propped up on my workbench. I actually took several photos, but this one appealed to me the most.



Using a typical ink-jet printer, enlarged the photo and printed it out (in black and white) in sections on six 8.5" x 11" pages. I then cut out and taped the pages together to create what you see in the photo above.

The next step was the tricky part. I had to decide where to divide the image so that it would make sense as a stained glass panel. I began tracing around the obvious parts, like the handles and the metal base. I decided that some of the larger pieces should be "broken" into smaller ones. (Remember, I have no stained glass experience at this point, so what do I know!?) You can see some of those lines in the photo.

I then put carbon paper onto poster board and placed the photograph on top of the carbon paper. I traced the lines I made earlier and the carbon paper transferred them to the poster board. Once the outlines were clear on the poster board I used copper foil scissors and cut out all the different pieces. These individual pieces are the templates I used to cut the glass.

We were taught to paste the poster board cut-outs to the glass and then run our glass cutters along that template. Once the "scratch" was made onto the glass, there are special pliers we used to break the glass apart. A glass grinder finished each piece.

The rest of the project was copper foiling, assembling, soldering and applying patina. There is a lot of work in a stained glass project! I'll show you some of these steps in more detail in a later post.

In the end I think it worked well. Some of the glass parts were difficult to make, but not impossible. It was definitely a challenging project but I would do it again the same way.

Taking the path less travelled.

Welcome.

This blog is devoted to the work of my own hands guided by creativity and thought and inspired by nature and the work of great craftsmen. As I create I will photograph and video the progress so you can walk beside me in the shop.

The craftsmen who influence me are too many to mention, but most found their fame in the Arts & Crafts movement in the United States at the turn of the 20th century. The short list is Gustav Stickley, Charles Limbert, and Charles and Henry Greene. Of course, there is a notable exception in William Morris, who was British by birth and didn't live to see the 20th century. He died in 1896, but his ideas and actions influenced all those who followed.

Enough with the history lesson! Grab your tool belt and meet me at the workbench.