cutting glass

Glass cutting. This panel is for a couple in Florida who instead of ordering a whole door with a leaded glass panel just wanted the panel and are ordering the door separately. The door is a craftsman style door. 

The first step is getting the rondels and laying them out on my template. The rondels dictate the rest of the  design. 

The template gets cut up into patterns which I use to cut the individual glass pieces. Here you see the sheets of glass I use with the patterns laid out on the sheets. The trick is to get as many pieces I can  out of a sheet of glass. 

Here I start cutting the sheet down to smaller pieces. 

The actual cutting. A close up of the glass cutter scoring the glass on the patterns edge. 

If you can make out the line in the glass that is the cut in the glass. Looks like a big scratch  This scratch is what starts the break in the glass. 

Here you see the first cut along the edge of the pattern.

You just keep cutting along the edge of the pattern until you've cut each edge.

Here are all the pieces that came out of that one sheet of glass. These six pieces have 37 edges that are individual cuts. It is a labor intensive process as you can see. Lots of repetition. 

And here are all the pieces that will surround the rondels used in the glass panel.

The final product after it has been leaded and soldered. What a difference the glass looks like from sitting on the bench. Not bad. When the glass sits on the bench you are seeing it with reflected light. Here the glass is shown in transmitted light.