Well this is kind of like that. I've got a great new business and I feel fairly sure it's not something people have thought of, so it doesn't necessarily fill a need, but once they see it? So what is it? Erotic stained glass. Oh yes. I'm calling my company Mike Co. Our slogan is "if you're not turned on, it's not Mike Co." Why yes, I do think I'm funny, thank you for asking. This was actually one of my quicker projects, at least in terms of calender days. From concept to completion it took a little less than a week and therein lies a tale.
Tuesday, July 13 2010
I needed to cut a piece of glass for the watch I'm making (also, I'm making a watch, expected release date is June of 2015). The problem was I wanted just plain clear glass. I assumed this was the sort of thing that I could just go to the hardware store and get, but that's apparently not the case. After striking out at a couple I went to Hobby Lobby because I figured they would have some kind of craft glass, which I guess they did, but not plain clear. I was pretty bummed out when I thought, GUESS WHAT THEY PUT IN PICTURE FRAMES! I found a frame that was 6 dollars and was also 50% off. I was pretty pumped because at that point I had been willing to pay far more than 3 dollars for the piece of glass. I went home and cut the piece I needed. It went quite well and I decided that somehow made me a master glass cutter. What else could I do with this new found skill I wondered. Stained glass! Of course! It was probably about 10 at this point though so I just went online, found out that Borders in fact did have a book on stained glass making and decided I would pick it up the next day.
Wednesday, July 14 2010
I go to Borders and I apparently have lost any concept of where any of their sections are. Eventually I find the crafts section and proceed to look past the book I wanted three times. Eventually I stopped being dumb though, found it, gave it a quick skim to make sure it would give me the knowledge I'd need. I think I had something to do that night so I didn't get too far into the book, but it definitely seemed like something I could do.
Thursday, July 15 2010
The night was apparently wide open so I was able to really dig into the book. I was pretty excited about the idea, but I needed a project and not just any project, something awesome.
So there I was, deep in thought, when the idea struck me, the aforementioned erotic stained glass. I quickly finished the book and decided it was definitely doable, the problem was I didn't know if I would be able to buy everything I needed at Hobby Lobby. I wanted to work on it that weekend, but if I was going to have to order some things it would have to wait.Friday, July 16 2010
A quick trip to Hobby Lobby confirmed that they had almost everything I needed and at the very least they had all of the essential items. On the way out I had this conversation:
Cashier: Find everything ok?
Me: Yea, I've got a big weekend project coming up and I just wanted to make sure that you sell everything I needed, which you do.
Cashier: What's the project?
Me: I'm making some stained glass.
Cashier: Oh cool, what of?
Me: Well it's a picture of an ass.
Cashier: You mean...like a donkey?
Me: Not....exactly.
(note, that conversation may not have ever happened).
Back at home I did a quick concept sketch of what this was going to end up looking like. Anytime I start a project I like to do a rough sketch so I have some concept to work around. Typically I just create these things in my head and work of that, which is fine, but sometimes details get lost so it helps me to have something on paper to work off of. Here's what I came up with:
Tragically I'm a terrible drawerer and can really only do stick people, but um, that's an ass.Saturday, July 17 2010
After waking up as early as I could bear I went out and bought stuff.
I go to check out and had this conversation with the lady behind me in line:Line lady: What do you do with all that?
Me: Make stained glass.
Line lady: Oh cool, what of?
Me: Well it's a picture of an ass.
Line lady:: You mean...like a donkey?
Me: Not....exactly.
(note, that conversation may not have ever happened)
Back at home the first thing I had to do was make a drawering to cut up to make my pattern. Here's what I came up with:
It's unclear to me why Blogger felt the need to turn that sideways. I was happy enough with how that came out so I moved onto the next step, dividing the picture up into sections.
If you click on the picture it will probably enlarge a fair amount at which point you can see each section has a number and an arrow. In addition, the sections on the underwear have a letter. The numbers are so I can lay the thing back out after cutting it up. The arrow indicates which way I wanted the "grain" of the glass to go. On the underwear the letter indicates a color, I wanted it to be pink and white striped. But there was a problem here. You can see from the first picture to the second picture the crack is extended all the way to the top. See within the basic constructs of stained glass making (at least the ideas laid out in basic stained glass making) there was no way to have a line just go up and stop. It's possible that in Advanced Stained Glass Making they have a chapter on how to make a stained glass ass crack, but for now I would just have to do some figurin'.
I assume the loupe and the calipers make it look like I'm doing some real thinkin' here (despite the fact that the calipers are off and there wasn't a lens in the loupe, also I think my eyes were closed). I came up with an imperfect solution that I'll talk about more later. After finishing my pattern and getting the sections laid out, the next step was to cut all the individual sections out and rubber cement them to glass. I'm not sure if I had used rubber cement since elementary school so I apparently wasn't very clear on the concept. I assumed that after 30 seconds it would be dry and I could get on with it. Also I didn't realize you're supposed to coat both surfaces. Probably would have been much of a problem, but between the cutting liquid and the water from the grinding some of the patterns slipped a bit, but that's getting a little ahead of myself. I apparently didn't take any pictures of the patterns glued to the glass or the cutting process at all. So imagine a 12" x 12" sheet of colored glass with little shapes glued to it. Now imagine me cutting the shapes out. Now imagine me grinding the pieces of glass until they were the exact right shape. This took a long time and I felt I shouldn't run the glass grinder after 9pm for my neighbor's sake, so I got all the pieces cut on saturday, but only about half them ground down.Sunday, July 18 2010
If you've managed to keep up with all the imaginings then you should be able to tell that once all that is done and laid out I had something like this:
Again with the sideways! I made a mistake during this process. Really what you want to make your pattern out of is some kind of really heavy stock. The book recommended Oak Tag, which I didn't have the patience to look for, so I just assumed the drawing pad I had at home would be thick enough. It was and it wasn't. It did work ok, but next time I definitely will not be using it. Next step was to peel off the patterns and wash the individual pieces off. This is to get any rubber cement off as well as any residual cutting liquid or glass dust.
This was a really exciting point in the project for me. Again, most of the vision here was all in my head, and with the patterns being glued on I didn't have a real great concept of what this was going to look like. I was quite happy with how it looked. I had been worried because Hobby Lobby didn't have as wide a range of colors as I was hoping so I wasn't sure these would come together as well as they did. Also, without the patterns on I was able to see how well I did at getting the pieces to fit together perfectly. I did not do well. There weren't really any huge gaps, but still. The only thing that really worried me was the ass-crack part, but again, more on that later. The next step is to foil the glass, which entails taking what amounts to copper tape and lining the edges of each piece. I think I finished one piece on Sunday before calling it a day.Monday, July 19 2010
So during lunch and after work I finished foiling all the pieces.
The idea is you go over all these copper edges with solder and when it hardens it makes a frame that holds everything in place. If you click to zoom you can see my crack solution. What I did was take the two pieces of the body and only foil half of where they meet. In addition I made that section of foil a little wider than it would normally be and cut it so it sort of rounded off at the top. This was a fine plan, but for it to really work the two body pieces needed to be cut/ground perfectly so that the part above the crack came together seamlessly, this was not quite seamless, so I was a little disappointed. So then came the soldering. First off you tack solder any place that two seams meet. This is to hold everything in place so an accidental bump won't move everything out of place.
This was definitely a learning process. The "tacks" ended up with way too much solder on them, but they worked and it was fine. The next step is to then go over every seam with solder to make the frame.
The crack is much more clear now, my dream was that if it was over-exaggerated a bit then it would distract from the actual crack in the glass above. I guess it worked. I don't know. Next step was to do the back side. BUT I THOUGHT I WAS ALL BACK SIDE. Word play. Delightful.
Before
After. Notice that on this side there is no ass-crack. The seam just goes all the way up. This was to try and get some more structural support, it's really only meant to be viewed from the front (OR IS THAT THE BACK!?). You can also see I did the edges of the entire piece. I then did the edges on the front. Last step was to wash the whole thing off. Get the numbers off as well as any flux and any little bits of solder that jumped off the seams.
And that was pretty much a wrap.Tuesday, July 20 2010
Do you know what it feels like to wake up to the sun's light, filtered through a piece of stained glass that looks like an ass? I don't either. That was taken in the dining room and it was rainy and dark when I woke up so I had to take the picture at lunch. BUT WHAT GLORY! They should have sent..a poet. I feel silly saying this, but it looks a lot better in person. The crack effect, which is completely ineffective in this picture, actually doesn't look too bad. It isn't quite finished yet. There are some finishing products that Hobby Lobby didn't sell that I have on order. One of them will make the solder dark and the other will make the glass shine better. In addition it turns out my new soldering technique was not ultimate, so while it is sturdy, it's not as sturdy as I'd like so I think if it's going to be displayed it will need some kind of a frame. I think I'm going to build a backlit shadow box, but that probably won't happen for a little while (but stay tuned!).Epilogue
For those of you keeping track, this was 36 pieces of hand cut hand ground glass. All told it took probably 10-12 hours of work. It turns out making stained glass is a lot harder than you'd think. Well, unless you think it's pretty hard, then I guess it's exactly as hard as you'd think. It probably sounds cliched, but I couldn't be happier with how this turned out. Don't get me wrong, it's far from perfect. The soldering isn't the best and the pieces weren't ground perfectly, but in the end it turned this into a learning project. Of course you're saying, couldn't you have done the learning projects in your book and then this would have turned out perfect? First of all, shut up. Second of all, I had a plan, I was wingin' it (wingin' it's a plan).
So to all the people who told me I would never be able to make a stained glass picture of an ass (I was gonna call it a stained ass picture, but the focus groups said that sounded disgusting) GUESS WHAT FUCKFACE, I DID IT. Word, I'm out.
1 comment:
Really cool! Think of oak tag as a file folder and you'll have an endless (possible word play?) supply.
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