one leaded glass door, 72 days

Since the middle of September everyday I think of it I snap a photo of my front door. You can see a slide show of my efforts on the right hand side. All the glass in the door is clear, handblown glass. As you can see depending on what is going on behind the glass, the glass is ever changing. I've had clients call and ask for the 'green' door when they are really looking at a photo that was taken in the spring time.

Restoration work

Somewhere south of Michigan. This is an annual pilgrimage I make every January to help my father on an ongoing restoration project at the chapel. We spend about 10 days removing a window. The window goes back to my father's studio in Reston, Virginia where it gets completely rebuilt. In August we reconvene at the chapel to reinstall the window. 

Here is an outside view of the clearstory windows. 

This is Jacob, the window we took out. There are 27 panels in the 3 lancets. If you can make out the dark horizontal lines they are 'T' bars holding up the individual panels. Each panel will get completely disassembled, cleaned and  rebuilt. 

The scaffold from the inside.

My grinning mug taking out the top pieces in the tracery.

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.