courses / the beginner’s course /
7 x 3 hour lessons. Basic techniques of Stained glass are taught, using the ‘Tiffany’ foil method. Students learn how to construct and complete a lampshade. The required tools, commodities and glass for your projects can be purchased from us.
It is commonly called the "Tiffany" stained glass method. One of the advantages of copper-foil glasswork over lead-strip glasswork is that you can assemble the glass pieces in three-dimensional shapes when soldering them together, in addition to two dimensional ones to which the lead-came method is limited.
Copper is chosen because it is easy to form and bend (malleable), solders well and is inexpensive. When Tiffany began using the method to construct his now famous lamps, his workers took thin sheet copper and using scissors cuts strips to the width of the glass pieces. The strips were spread with molten beeswax and before it cooled they were wrapped around the glass before it hardened. Today stained glass craft persons have available foil in rolls, already cut to specific widths and thicknesses with the adhesive already applied.
Glass pieces wrapped with copper-foil, before soldering
Wrapping the glass pieces with adhesive copper-foil. The foil is burnished onto all three glass surfaces with a wooden fid.
Soldering the copper-foil wrapped pieces
Flux is applied to all visible copper sparingly.
The fully-soldered pieces
Soldering the copper-wrapped edges; a bead of solder is run across every spot of visible copper foil.
The finished work, after tinting with dark patina
Applying the finishing patinas to even-out colour variations or to emphasize details. This is also useful to achieve the natural black patina that all lead gets with age.