Christ Church - Norfolk, VA

Here is Christ and Saint Luke's Episcopal Church in Norfolk, Virginia. They have some windows that need 'light' restoration work. I say 'light' because they do not need to be rebuilt nor taken back to the studio. All the work can be done onsite. The windows are beginning to buckle and if something is not done soon will buckle to the point where they need major restoration work. Right now we can add some additional barring and stop the buckling. Pretty straight forward. We worked on the two top windows you can see on the side of the chapel.

Scaffolding, about 40 feet high.

Close up of the panel reinstalled with the additional bars. These windows have an interesting history. They were all built by a studio in Europe before the start of WWI. As the windows were in transit the war broke out. The windows got as far as England  where they had to stay in storage for the duration of the war.  

Here is my portable studio set up in a small nook underneath the window.

My grinning mug happily working away. Took about 4 full days to do 2 windows. 

One up Web - Installing

Now comes the moment of truth. Because the panels are so big I do not know what they will look like in full transmitted light until they are installed. I also find out how good my measurements are. 

Not bad.

One up Web - Finishing

The fun stuff over now for the grunt work. First puttying. Puttying is a pain. You have to use your thumb to push the putty in the gap between the lead and the glass, both sides. Putty is good. Once the putty hardens it adds a great deal of strength to the panel.

After making a big smear, gotta clean it up. I use saw dust to scrub the panel clean, both sides. 

Finally, I add brass bars on the backside of the panel to add strength. These bars are bent to fit the contours of the lead lines and are 'invisible' from the front.

One up Web - Assembly

Cutting done, time to assemble the panel. Each piece is surrounded by lead came cut to the size of the piece. 

Watch it grow...

.... and grow...

After all the piece are assembled, I do the soldering. The solder is used to attach all the lead pieces together. Every joint is soldered, both sides of the panel.

One up Web - Cutting Glass

Cutting glass. I layout the patterns on sheets of glass. The trick is to use as much of the glass as possible.

Cut your big pieces first and move on to the smaller ones.

There are close to 300 individual pieces in each panel. Lots of cutting. Keep the shapes simple and it goes pretty fast.

One up Web - The Pattern

The sketch is done and approved, now I blow it up to full size to make the patterns I need for cutting glass.

Very high tech; sharpies, rulers and my free hand.

After I blow it up I cut it up to make the patterns. Every piece is numbered and marked so I know what type of glass to cut and where it goes. 

 

Time to cut some glass. 

One up Web - The Design

The design process starts with..... the open window, the hole in the wall. And here it is, 6 windows total, 4 are 6' x 3 1/2' each and the remaining 2 are 4' x 3 1/2' . Some quick math and that's 112 square feet of glass to fill. Sweet.

The client is One up Web, an awesome website marketing company located in Traverse City, MI. Notice the stone work pattern.

After submitting 3 design concepts the client selected this one. This is a drawing of one window out of the six. Just a simple pencil drawing on a sheet of 8 1/2" x 11".