Michigama Glass: Studio up and work beginning

Here it is February 7th. Finally got my studio back up and running..... My first project was a window repair job. In 1996 I had been asked to do two large windows for a local home. I had never done windows this large, but jumped at the opportunity. After working with the home owners on a design, I set out to construct them. In late 2010, I was contacted by the home owners. During a fall clean, one of the home owners had knocked out the pins that secure the window into the frame. The window toppled forward and smashed into a metal cart, fracturing about 6 large pieces of glass. Devastated, the home owners contacted me, hoping I could do the repair work.

Now any glass artist/craftsman will probably tell you how important it is to keep a record of the type of glass used in each project. One would think that I had done just that, but on this particular project I had no record of materials used. Frantic, I began trying to match the glass.... Unfortunately, the local shop didn't have what I needed in stock and it would take weeks to get it in. As luck would have it, I found a box of glass that I had forgotten about. I found the exact glass used from the original job in the box. I had more than enough to do the repair work.

The first step was to get the broken pieces out of the window. Not an easy task. There's always the risk of cracking or breaking other pieces nearby.Each piece has to be broken up into smaller pieces by scoring the remaining glass, running the score line and then trying to separate the pieces without breaking the surrounding unbroken bits. As you can see, it creates quite a mess of glass shards.

The next step in the process is to reheat the lead solder and remove any excess from the new openings:

Once I had the old solder removed, I then cut out the new pieces of glass, foiled them in copper foil and began soldering them into place. This is view from the backside of the window. Solder tends to flow between the pieces and bunch up.