Mike’s Blog

Well I have finished my first three stained glass projects. Pictures of the completed pieces can be found in my gallery. I have one more project that I had worked on this weekend and am just about finished it. I did not take any pictures of it during the process but I will have pictures posted of the finished project soon.

I will be creating a picture frame next and I will try and get some picures up along the way.

I get wrapped up in what I am doing when I start a project that I sometimes forget to stop and take some pictures of the work.

When I had signed up over at SurveySpot I never thought that I would get anything worthwile out of it. I have been a member of ZoomPanel for over a year now and have just gotten enough points to get halfway decent stuff. Well through SurveySpot some of their surveys have cash payouts. I still did not believe that I would see any of this money for filling out the surveys. So when I hit the $25 mark I decided to have them send me a check. Well a couple weeks later I got a $25 check in the mail. Hard to believe I know but they have now gotten me to look forward to getting the emails about new surveys to fill out.

I currently have three stained glass projects in the works. In the stained glass class that I am taking we are learning the copper foiling process.

The first one that I started was a cardinal.

I found the pattern for this on the Spectrum Glass website. They have over 200 free patterns to download.

The second project that I am working on is a red tulip. I got this pattern from a beginning stained glass book.

The third project consists of some fruit. I also got this pattern from a beginning stained glass book.

All of these projects are still works in progress, mainly because I have not learned how to solder them yet. That will start this Wednesday in my class. So I am hoping to get these finished up by this weekend and get started on some new stuff.

I am using a combination of new glass and some glass that I got from my father on these projects so I am not sure of the model numbers of the glass itself. I am hoping that on future projects I can document the glass model numbers that I used.

I will be posting pictures of the different stained glass projects that I am working on in my gallery. These pictures will consist of as many different dtages of the project as I can get. Most of the stages will consist of the pattern, the cut glass, the foiled glass and the final soldered project. Check back often to see what I have been working on.

Stained Glass Project Pictures

Since I have started taking a stained glass class I have found a need for a light box so that I can trace my patterns. I didn’t want to have to go out and buy one so I started looking around at what I have to work with. I ended up finding an old 2×2 flourescent light fixture that I removed from my kitchen to put in a ceiling fan. This light is meant to be hardwired in place so I needed to add a switch and cord to that it would be portable. I used a regular household light switch and cut holes in the side of the light fixture for mounting. I used a grounded cord for this light fixture since there is a lot of power in flourescent lights and the fixture is made of metal. The thin piece of plastic that is used to diffuse the light is not thick enough to use to trace on so I went out and bought a piece of 1/8″ plexiglass and cut it to size and mounted it on the outside of the access door on the light. Only problem is the plexiglass is clear so I used white spray paint and coated the inside side of the plexiglass with a light coat of paint. Once the paint dried I put everything together and plugged it in and it worked great. With the added weight of the plexiglass this light box is pretty heavy and hard to move. To fix this I added a chest handle to the same side that the switch is on and now I can move the light around with the handle. The chest handle works great since it folds down when you are using the light box.

More pictures of the light box can be found here