The Wine Window

Saturday morning I woke up and it was rainy and miserable. Also, my lead hadn't come.  I ate breakfast and went back to bed.  When I woke up it was sunny and there was a five pound box of solder on my mailbox! Magic!

The completed piece!  I really need to work on my photography skills, and get myself an updated version of photoshop.  That pink is hideous and I did the best that I could with gimp but it's just not the same...


On to the next project: a masochistic attempt to repair/strengthen/frame what I consider to have been the magnum opus of my college glass practice: The Wine Bottle Window

The window...has seen better days.  The construction itself was a labor of insanity love involving several bottles of wine. Hahaha. I took several (and I mean several) empty bottles and, using a glass saw, cut off the bottoms and necks.  Some of the bottles i then split in half, others I left as is.  These bottles were then sent through the glass kiln to flatten.  I cut what felt like a billion 3"x3" squares which I then painstakingly sandblasted with the leafy pattern you see.

As you can see, I got some amazing pieces of glass.  Lots of bottles bubbled, many had interesting residue left from labels, and some even fused together.  That center square is one such example.

You can see some more of the variations here.  Also, the original red border was added on the insistence of my teacher, but I never really cared for it.

Eventually, time, gravity, and an insufficient soldering job had the piece folded and broke in half.  So now I want to fix it.

Step one of the repair process: removing old lead.  This process takes some time and requires snacks, drinks, music and/or netflix.  Because you will be holding that soldering iron to that nasty old lead for a long, long, loooooong time.  Try not to burn your bare legs.  Or wear pants.

Some more of the window.  After the solder, lead and glass bits were removed then you have the problem of the glue from the copper foil.  You'll be scrapping. A lot.  WD-40 helps to take some off.

The window in its current state.  I removed the solder and foil along the break line, and the red glass from the edges.  I scrapped the glue off and even removed a badly cracked piece.  With this window there are more than a few cracked pieces, however most of them I'm leaving because the cracking happened during soldering, not from a drop.  The wine bottle glass is very, very fickle and the heat from the soldering iron tended to make it crack.  I liked the variation so left it for the most part. 

From this point on I need to clean the edges and re-foil.  I will also place some strongline along the broken joint.  If this is not enough to keep it stiff I will have to buy some iron bars and tack those on.  I will also tough up the solder where it is thin (I was a bit stingy with the solder back then!)  Finally, it needs a frame of some sort.  This window was a lot of time and effort so it deserves the proper care!