Stained Glass Stuff

Glass Tips

Repair Tips

Here's how to do repairs in stained glass with copper foil:

If the piece is merely cracked, consider leaving it in place. Repairing can sometimes cause more damage, and if it is an older piece, finding an exact match may be impossible. If it was damaged as the result of some form of physical abuse, and small shards of glass are missing , daylight is visible through the broken part, with sharp bits exposed, then it should be repaired.
First, use fine steel wool to remove any patina from the solder lines around the broken pieces, on both sides.
Next, score the remaining part of the broken piece with your cutter in a criss-cross pattern, from edge to edge, being careful not to skip over the solder seams onto any adjoining pieces. Also try to go out from each corner while making the score lines. The more the better.
Now put on your safety glasses, and get out that old crummy Fletcher cutter, the one with the gold ball one one end and the funny silver teeth just above the cutting wheel, and, positioning the piece over a large garbage can, or in the middle of your work-bench, start tapping the broken, scored piece of glass with the ball on the end of the cutter, in the middle first, and then work out to the edges. You should see the glass start to break, just like when you are using your running pliers. Keep tapping the glass and it should start to fall out. When most of the glass in the middle has falled out, then switch over to the teeth end of the cutter and stick the cutter teeth first into one of the glass shards around the edge. Gently start to move the cutter up and down and wiggle the broken shards out, one at a time. Remove all the glass possible, but you might not be able to get the glass in a tight corner. Don't worry about it, it will come out next.
Now take your soldering iron, (making sure that your sponge in damp), flux one side of the solder seams around the hole where the broken piece was, and melt off the bulk of the solder seam, slowly going all the way around the hole. Wipe excess solder off on your iron stand sponge. Do the same on the other side. Now, position your iron underneath your piece, bring the iron tip up to a corner, and apply it to the corner joint. You should see the solder melt down very soon, exposing the piece of copper foil that was wrapped around the piece of glass that was broken. With a pair of grozier pliers, reach in and very gently tug out that inner piece of foil, but try very hard not to pull the foil from any other glass pieces off with the foil that you are trying to remove. If some other foil does come off, then remove that entire length, scrape clean, wash off, dry, and re-apply a piece of the same type of copper foil, cut to size. It's less work to only remove the offending piece of foil, so try your best. Once you have a hold of the foil and it's free of the solder seam, slowly move your iron tip around the hole, still under the piece. The foil from the broken piece should pull away, but if you come to where the foil overlapped, go back to where you first started pulling the foil off, and go in the other direction until you are back at the other end where the foil overlapped, and the piece of foil should be free!
Re-flux the exposed foil lines, and quickly remove any solder blobs, particulary in any corners with your iron, wiping excess off on your sponge again.
Take your piece of glass that best matches the broken piece, cut to a slightly larger size, and position underneath your piece. Trace with a pen around on the glass the shape of the hole. This works great for panels, suncatchers, and some panel lamps, but if its a Tiffany style lamp and you can't get the glass close enough to trace accurately, flip the lamp or whatever over onto a flat surface, on to of a piece of white paper, and trace the hole size onto the paper. Cut the shape out of the paper, put on the piece of new glass, trace around it, and then cut out. *Make sure that the grain of the new glass is in line with what is on your piece when you are tracing the new shape onto the new glass. If the grain is misalined, it will look funny, or bad. Cut the piece out, grind to shape, doing lots of test-fitting in the hole, until it fits.
Clean any flux off the new piece from your test fittings, and apply the same size and colour backing of copper foil that was used on the piece that you removed. You can check the colour by looking at the piece that you removed, while the size you should be able to figure out by the size of the solder seams on the rest of the piece. If they are really skinny, like Ally McBeal, then it was 3/16" foil, if it was a regular looking seam, it was 7/32" foil, and if it was a wide seam, then it was likely 1/4" foil.
Fit your replacement piece into its place, making sure that it is level with its surrounding pieces. You might want to tape it into place, or even use a small length of popsicle stick, and tape it to two sides of the hole, so it spans across the middle of the hole. Lay the new piece over top of the popsicle stick, and tack the new piece once. Check its position, and if you are happy with it, then tack it twice per side.
Proceed to solder it into place. If your fit wasn't perfect, or the piece is a little rough, fill in any gaps with some 50/50 solder. Let it cool, and then finish off with 60/40 solder. Try to blend your new solder lines with the quality of the solder lines on the rest of the piece. You don't want a perfect solder line drawing attention to a new piece of glass on a panel with bumpy solder lines. It will stand out.
Wash off the flux, scrub clean, and patina if required. If copper patina was used on the piece, don't worry when you apply the copper patina. It will not match if the panel is not brand new as copper patina ages much more than black patina. Wash the patina off, and polish if it will blend the piece in. If it's a dirty old piece, don't bother, you'll just be drawing attention to the repair again.

Brass Came:

Do the same to remove the glass, but instead of pulling off the copper foil, take a hacksaw to the came, and cut into the corners at a 45 degree angle where possible (edge pieces) or else straight on two ajoining sides. Remove the two lengths of came, cut a new piece of glass using the same techninque as above, but make sure to compensate for the heart of the came on the two sides that you removed. Measure from inside the came, at the heart, to the other side. It sounds hard, but just take your time. Once you have the new piece of glass fitted to shape and all its edges ground, start to reposition it on the two sides that were not removed, and also start wiggling into place the two lengths of came that you removed. It will likely that some physical persuading, but not too much! You don't want to create another repair to do. Once it is back in place, make sure that the came is level with the surrounding came, and solder over the cut line with 50/50 solder. Solder over all cut lines, clean, and then use a gold paint pen to cover over the silver coloured solder joints and blend them in to the brass came.

Lead Came:

Lead came repairs can be done in two ways. One is the same as doing brass came, with a hacksaw, the other involves bending the lead came. Knock the piece of glass out, chip out any remaining putty, take your lead dyke cutters, and cut in at every joint at a 45 degree, on the back side of the panel only. With a pair of pliers, or using a solid wooden fid, bend upwards to a 90 angle the part of the lead came that covered the broken piece of glass. Be very careful to not bend the body of the lead came. Do this all the way around the gap in the panel. This should expose cleanly the exact size of the hole. Measure and cut out a new piece of glass, grind, and insert it. Now, very carefully, use a pair of pliers to start bending back down to about a 45 degree angle the bend part of lead came. Once this is done all the way around, take a wooden fid and flatten down to the glass the bend lead came. Flux and solder the joints where you had cut in with your lead dyke cutters, wash & dry, and re-putty both sides of the new piece of glass.