The finished product sitting in my living room window

I liked all the sun shining in now that the windows were opened up again, but I thought the living room could use some more color and interesting atmosphere, so I decided to make a stained glass piece to fit into the top section of one of the windows.  The final product is about 23 inches by 31 inches in dimension.

Final sketch of the stained glass design. Each separate piece is numbered.

Before starting the drawing, take a measurement of the window.  Remove about 1.5 inches from the total width and height of the window for the stained glass pattern size.  This gives 3/4 inch on each side to allow for the zinc frames that go around the outside of the stained glass (plus a little wiggle room).  This much room will allow you to use 3/4 inch framing material if you wanted.  I used 3/8 inch frame so that was more than enough extra room for me.  It's better to have a little too much room than not enough - if the thing doesn't fit in the window then you'll have a big headache trying to fix that.  After you put it all together and place it in your window at the end you will be able to get a better idea of how much extra room you ended up with.  If you end up getting too much of a gap on the sides you can just put a slender piece of stained wood over the boundary to keep the glass in place and block out the light coming through.

Honestly - why couldn't I find a huge compass at the art store? Everyone kept saying to use a string which I found to be pretty inaccurate. Here's my home-made drawing compass made from scrap wood and a carpenters pencil.

For my design I needed large circles.  You really need perfect circles if you want it to look professional at the end.  Some suggest to use the string-and-pen method, but I found this to give little precision.  You could also use a bowl or anything else with a circular shape to trace around, but this limits you to what you can find.  The only other option is to use a compass, but they're usually pretty small.  I looked all over for a large compass, but couldn't find one anywhere so I decided to make my own.  You can see the design to the left.  There is a carpenter's pencil attached to the drawing side.  For the pointy side just hammer a small nail into the wood, then use a dremel or grinding wheel to grind off the head to a point.  At the pivot point, just drill a big hole and hook it all together with a big nut & bolt with washers.

After you get the design drawn out you will want to make a couple copies of it.  One copy for cutting out your glass patterns and one copy for placing your finished pieces of glass onto.  It's a good idea to leave the original alone as a third extra copy just in case something goes wrong.  You can get a bunch of carbon-copy pages and just transfer it to another sheet manually, but it's a lot easier to have someone else do it for you.  FedEx Kinkos, PostNet or any other copying facility can usually do this.  Just take a measurement to make sure the dimensions haven't changed on the copy as this could cause discrepancies when cutting out the glass pieces and placing them down on the pattern.  It's also a good idea to make one of these copies laminated if you have this option.  At kinkos it cost me about $20 to get a sheet this large laminated.  That's pretty expensive but it makes life easier if you're putting wet pieces of glass down on it.  I think there's also some Do-It-Yourself laminating techniques out there, but I haven't looked into that.

Lots of sheets of stained glass.

This is my glass cutting station. One place to break glass, one place to assemble.

Common tools for cutting stained glass.

First you'll have to buy your glass sheets.  You can get glass sheets from your local stained glass supplier.  If you have no one local you'll have to buy it off the internet.  Take time to find the proper colors for your pattern.  Most stained glass stores have a light table to lay down your glass and see how the colors work together.  Otherwise you can just hold them up to the light.  I chose mostly glass which did not have patterns in them, but you can find some glass with swirls and wisps in them.  Keep in mind that it will be important to keep the pattern in the proper direction or you will end up with an ugly piece which lacks proper flow.  For this reason I chose standard patternless glass so I had less things to keep track of.  The only glass which had a pattern to it was the middle circle of the sunburst.  You can see that piece of glass in the image to the right.

Here are the basic suppies you'll need for transferring your pattern to stained glass:

1. Pattern shears
2. Oiled glass cutter
3. Snapping pliers
4. Cutting surface
5. Fine-tip Sharpie marker or paint pen
6. glue stick

The pattern shears are necessary for getting rid of a small strip of paper from the edges of your design patterns.  This gives you a small gap between all your pieces to allow you to apply the copper foil.  Without creating this small gap your pieces would not fit together in the end.

The Oiled glass cutter is obviously the most important tool.  They are self-oiling as long as you keep the oil reserves topped off.  It will take you a long time before you have to refill the oil reservoir on one of these. 

The snapping pliers allow you to easily break the glass piece in two after scoring a mark with your glass cutter.

The cutting surface for stained glass is typically a plastic grid pattern that lays on top of your table.  You cut all your glass pieces on top of this work surface.  All the small pieces of glass flakes and particles fall into the grid pattern so you don't have to constantly brush off your work table after every cut of the glass.  This is important since you won't be able to score a line into the glass without it being on a reliable flat surface.

The glue stick is used for attaching the paper pattern to the glass piece.  That helps for grinding the glass to the proper shape.

Start out by labelling each piece on the design with a number.  This will allow you to figure out where it's supposed to go later.  I found that it was easier to work on one area of the design at a time.  This way I didn't lose track of all my pieces of pattern paper.  If you cut out all of them you'll end up with a headache if they get mixed up.

After you cut out each piece, place it on a piece of glass and trace around it with a sharpie or a paint pen.  Mark the number on the glass piece as well.  Don't worry, all these sharpie marks and paint pen scribbles come off glass really easily, and the cleaning solutions used on the final step take care of any remaining marks.

Glass pieces with numbered paper attached - ready for grinding.

To the left is an example of a stack of glass pieces with paper attached to the face.  These are ready for the grinding process.

The wizard glass grinder. It's a good grinder.

Here you can see the yellow sponge on the back of the grinder. It feeds water directly to the surface of the grinder which keeps it from getting too hot.

After grinding each piece, rince it off in a bowl of water and dry them off with paper towels.

You can grind and cut as you go along or you can cut out all the pieces at once then grind them all afterwards.  I like to cut a few at a time then grind those then move onto another section.  This way if I mess up on a piece here or there it will allow me to alter the remaining pieces to make everything fit together well.  Here is a list of steps necessary for creating the glass pieces:

1. cut the piece out of the main sheet of glass
2. glue the pattern to the glass
3. Grind the edges up to the paper pattern
4. Rinse off the glass
5. Dry the glass on a paper towel

Rinse off the glass in a small basin or a 5-gallon bucket filled with warm water.  The paper pattern will fall off the glass when it sits in the water for a few seconds.  The water also rinses off any glue or ground up glass fragments left over on the surface of the glass piece.  The glass has to be clean when applying the copper tape so it sticks to the glass.

It is important when grinding the glass that you touch all edges of the glass piece with the grinder.  Even if you cut out the glass really close to the pattern you want to grind just a little against the edge because this creates a course surface which allows the copper tape to adhear properly.

After rinsing off the glass pieces set them on a paper towl and dab them on top with another paper towel.  Let them dry thoroughly before applying any copper tape.

A table-top foiling machine.

This is how the copper foiler is used on a piece of glass.

This is another type of foiling machine.

 There are a lot of different types of tools for helping out with applying the copper tape in a mroe speedy, efficient way.  You can see a couple of the ones I have above.  The one on the left, the Diegel Foiler, is useful for all kinds of pieces, big or small, but you have to fold the copper tape over the edges manually.  The one on the right, the Table Top Foiler, crimps the copper tape over the edges automatically. 

With either of these speed-foiler designs you'll need to use a burnishing tool in order to get the copper tape fully sealed against the glass.  In the first image on the left you can see a couple of burnishing tools.  The white one is called a Kwick-Crimp tool.  It's a great tool that allows you to apply pressure to all three sides of the copper tape at one time.  The black plastic tool next to that is just a typical hand-burnisher tool.  It has a few special shapes in it to make it easier to apply pressure to all types of shapes that a piece of glass can end up having.

If you want to go really cheap you don't need any of these special tools to accomplish the task.  You could just tape up all the edges and crimp them by hand then use a spoon or a piece of wood to burnish the sides of the tape.  The tools are only there to make your life easier if you have a lot of pieces to do.

 Put the glass pieces together as you get them copper foiled.  This ensures that they are all fitting together properly as you get them cut out.  Initially you want to place them onto the paper with all the numbers on it.  That way it's easy to see that everything is lining up properly.  After the pieces are all put together you should transfer them over to a homasote board.  Homasote board is available from Menards.  It is heat resistant, so it gives a good surface to start soldering all the pieces together.  Just buy a piece that's big enough to fit your project.  Use some tacks to get the edges lined up straight.  Also make sure your corners are at a proper 90 degrees.  Transfer the design from the paper pattern to the homasote board before you start soldering.  Don't worry if the pieces are a little loose since it will look perfectly fine once all the seams are soldered.

 The first step to soldering is to brush on a small amount of liquid flux to any seams which you want to solder.  Follow up the flux with a solid melt of solder along the seam.  Don't spend too long soldering on any particular spot because it can cause the glass to crack at that point as it heats up too quickly and expands.  It can also cause the solder to leak out the bottom at that point instead of staying on top of the solder seam.  As you get the solder applied close to the edge of the project make sure to leave the last bit of the seam empty from solder.  This leaves room for the zinc border to fit on.  When the front is done carefully flip the project over and apply solder to the back side.

When all the seams are finished being soldered you can start putting on the zinc border frame.  Get all the pieces cut first then put them in place.  Solder all the corners to get everything in place.  Next solder all the seams which lead into the frame.  Heat up the frame before the solder seam because it will take longer to heat up the frame and you won't want to risk cracking the glass by applying heat to it for too long. 

After the seams are complete and the frame is on you will need to decide if you need some further support material.  Roughly speaking the rule of thumb is that if there is more than 3 square feet of material then it's a good idea to solder on some supporting structures.  There are two types of material you can use - round stock and flat stock.  Round stock seems to be the standard, but flat stock is good for small seams if you don't want it to be seen on the front side.  Flat stock also gives less possibility of the entire piece flexing to the front or back while using less material which means a lighter product in the end.  On this project I have applied two strips of flat stock from top to bottom.  Since I have a lot of straight lines it is easy to hide any lines that happen to cross a piece of glass.  The shadow on these portions is visible from the front, but not noticeable since it continues one of the existing straight lines.  Ideally, though, you should try to make sure you can't see any part of the support structure on the back side.

The next step is to clean up the project.  You can use soap and warm water to get all the flux off of the surfaces.  Dry it off thoroughly with paper towels when it's cleaned up.  After all the water has dried up you can apply the patina.  There is one patina for the solder seams and another for the zinc border frames.  Follow the instructions on the corresponding bottles to get the correct results.  Once these have been applied you can wash the whole thing off with soap and warm water again. 

Finally, it's all done!  You can now put the stained glass piece up into your window.  Use a couple of thumb tacks to keep the piece stable inside the window frame.  That will keep it from falling forward.  The alternative to thumbtacks is to nail in a thin piece of wood against the frame which overlaps both the wood frame of the window and the zinc frame of the stained glass piece.  Below is a couple pictures of the final product in place in the living room.

finished product in the window

finished product in the living room