Hinges

What are hinges in stained glass?

As the glass is the strongest part of a leaded or copper foiled panel, the joining materials (lead, solder) are the places where the panel can flex. If you have long straight or nearly straight lines extending to or toward the edges of the panel (vertical, diagonal  or horizontal), this is the place where the panel can completely bend (hence "hinge"). It provides a danger in handling that the panel will break. Even if the lines do not run all the way to the edge, any significantly long line will put pressure on the glass pieces at the ends of the hinges, such as a series of formal border pieces or narrow central pieces. It will be a weakness in the long term whether it survives the studio processes or not.

However, we all have seen leaded glass windows with single or multiple hinges that survive for many decades, and only as they loose support from firm cement and the ties to the saddle bars break away, does the panel begin to self destruct.

It is important to recognise where these hinges are to be able to place reinforcements on the panel.

But the real solution for making a panel that will last, it is best practice to avoid designing hinges into the finished work.

Negative assembly

To get a crisp design finish to a fused piece especially with thin elements like stringers it is often recommended to fire upside-down. This means that the bubbles move toward the final bottom of the piece rather than rising and disturbing the design on the top.

Assemble the piece on your workbench as usual on top, but use a toothpick or small brush to dab some GlasTac or other glue near the two ends of each piece. Let it dry overnight and then carefully flip the whole arrangement upside down onto the kiln shelf.

If you don't like the glue and flip over technique you can try another. Draw your design onto Thinfire shelf paper in negative with a graphite pencil. If you have a strong light source you can draw on the reverse (printed) side and trace the negative onto the upper face of the Thinfire. Then assemble your pieces upside-down on the shelf. You can assemble the whole in the kiln and there is no need for glue.

When fired, clean the piece thoroughly and decide whether you want that texture or a smoother surface. If you want the smoother surface, put in the kiln for a fire polish. This is often known as “flip and fire.”

Pounce Wheel

The pounce wheel is used in reproducing images and comes from a time before photocopying or carbon papers. It gets its name from its use together with a pounce bag. In the past the pounce wheel would make holes through the paper or card along the design lines. The paper or card is put over the material which is to have the imaged copied onto it. A small bag of black powder would be dabbed (pounced) on the cover paper leaving black dots on the surface below. These could then be used to trace the same image many times in what ever medium was being used.

Two Pounce Wheels of Different Sizes

As the photo shows, the pounce wheel consists of a pencil-like holder with the spiked wheel at the end. The wheel is on an angled axle similar to a bicycle to make it easier to follow straight lines by pushing away from your body. This allows a clear view of the line being copied. The smaller wheel is useful for tight curves.

The pounce wheel still retains a use in transferring images through opaque materials, although the full pounce process does not need to be used.

To copy part of one stage of a design onto a new one without using tracing or carbon papers you only need to layer a new sheet of paper under the current design and run the pounce wheel over the parts you want to copy. As you move the wheel along, it punctures through the top layer into the lower layer. Normally, the puncture marks are all that are needed to be able to reproduce the original lines.

A crude pounced design

You can also get symmetrical images by folding the paper along the centre line and running the pounce wheel over the line. Unfold the paper and use the puncture marks to make lines symmetrical to the other side.

You can use the wheel to create mirror images by running the pounce wheel over the card, turn the card over and draw using the puncture marks.

Large Edge Cames

The purposes for large perimeter cames are several.

Easy adjustment on site. It is often the case that windows are not totally regular in their dimensions, even though you have taken the measurements carefully. Variations in width and height can be accommodated by shaving the lead in appropriate places. This avoids having to take the panel back to the studio to reduce the size of the glass and put new perimeter came on the panel.

The width of the rebate has an effect on the width of the came to be used. The wider the rebate, the wider came you will want to use. The minimum width of came you want to use with a 10mm wide rebate is 10mm came. This will give a maximum of 2.5 mm of came showing if you have a glazing allowance of 5mm. Often 12 mm came is better. In general the came should be wider than the rebate is, but not so wide that the heart of the lead is outside the rebate. In church windows, where the panels are installed into the stone, the cames are frequently 16mm or 25mm wide to accommodate the variations in width and the flexibility needed to get the panels into the slots.

Aesthetics have an effect on the width of the perimeter came too. Various people want more or less came showing. The important limitation is that the heart of the lead should be within the rebate.

In autonomous panels the need for large edge cames is to act as a framing device. Zinc might be used but there are other possibilities than using a different metal that will provide as good or better solutions.

Light Box Flexibility

Light boxes can be constructed in a variety of ways. The simplest to construct is the free standing, horizontal, single purpose light box.

You need to consider the size of the box in terms of surface area. This will relate to the space you have available and the scale that you work at. Having determined the surface area required or possible, you need to think about the height. The top should be of a height so you can stand or sit with a straight back while drawing, cutting or painting. This will vary according to your height and whether you will be standing or sitting. Typically these heights will be the heights of the benches and desks you already use, but you need to check again that you are actually working with a straight back, as this will reduce the fatigue you might otherwise experience.

Note that if the box is going to be sat at, it will need to be narrower to be able to reach to the opposite side. If you will be standing at the box, it can be at least half again as wide as the sitting version. A sitting version will also affect the depth of the box containing the lights. It may not be possible to have anything deeper than 100mm. This will produce some problems with the evenness of the light, but nothing that will make it unusable.

Then you need to consider the depth of the box. In principle, the deeper the box the better diffusion of the light. But there are limits. If the box is really deep, more lights will be required, and potential storage space is lost. I recommend about 150mm for the depth of the box. I then place the fluorescent tubes at 150mm centres across the box. It does not matter which direction they are oriented. That will be more determined by the available fittings and the dimensions chosen.

The flexibility you have in building your own box includes a number of things which could be constructed separately or in combination.

You can cover the light box with a sturdy work board to do all kinds of work on top. So this makes a combination light box and work bench. This top can be hinged so you don't have to lift it off each time you want to use the bench. It should have some support mechanism so it does not fall on your or your work. I have used a chain that allows the board to go back just beyond the vertical. These chains can sometimes get in the way of your work.

In addition to a separate surface the box can be an area of the work bench. The important element is that the rest of the surface of the bench should be at the same level as the light box top. Any variation runs the risk of breaking the glass you may be working on. The cover for this can be hinged to protect the surface when the light is not needed.

Often you will be working on pieces smaller than the illuminated area. It is possible to arrange things so that each light fitting can be turned on and off independently to allow light reduction or intensification as you need. It is simpler to have sheets of opaque card to place around your work area to reduce the extraneous light that will overwhelm the glass that you are selecting or painting, for example. In the case of too much light the glass or the painted lines and shading look darker than they really are as a result of your pupils contracting against the light.

You could add a variation to allow the light box to be used as a near vertical illuminated glass easel. This requires a set of hinges, a ledge on the hinged side and a support of some kind at the back, similar to a piano lid support. This is most useful in painting and in waxing up the pieces to view the whole panel before leading or foiling.

You need to think about the amount of flexibility you require the box to have when considering the materials to be used. If you want to use it as part of your display equipment, it needs to be mobile and so relatively light. This will interact with the materials to be used in construction. In this case you may want to make greater use of metals for their strength in relation to weight. 


 You probably will use opaque acrylic sheet as the surface. If you do, you will need to give it internal support to keep it from bowing. The best for this is another piece of acrylic – clear this time – glued to the top sheet and to the bottom of the box between the light fittings.


Additional information:
Uses
Requirements
Top surfaces

Lighting

Light Box

Light boxes are in many ways a development from the glass easel. These were used in studios to wax up the painted glass and display it as it would be seen in a window. Sometimes the glass painters painted across all the glass at once, so this method enabled them to see the results immediately.

Nowadays people tend to use back lighting for these and other purposes, so the light box has become more popular. Some of the uses are outlined here:

The light box is very useful when tracing or altering designs. The back lighting enables you to use other paper than tracing papers to transfer the design elements. You can fold the paper along the lines of symmetry to check on how the lines match, or to copy the lines from one side onto the other side at the designing and cartoon stages.

The light box can help select glass colours either initially or when the main pieces have already been established. The combination of the glass over light shows how they interact with each other. At later stages when the main glass is cut, it can help avoid unwanted bright or dull areas.

Possibly the most common use is in cutting dark or opalescent glass. The additional light allows you to see the cartoon through the glass and so cut directly from the cartoon. This can be enhanced by blanking out the excess light from around the glass or cartoon.

The light box enables the arrangement of the cut glass pieces to be assembled to view the colour balance and have a virtual view of how the panel or window will look as a finished piece. An additional step toward the result is gained if each piece is outlined in white-board markers – use black pens - to represent the lead or copper foil and their widths. This stops the light between the pieces from causing you pupils to contract, and gives a more accurate representation of the appearance of the final pane.  White-board markers can just be wiped off the glass without using spirits.

The light box is important in painting. The back lighting shows the effect of the painted line or level of shading immediately. This allows adjustments to be made quickly and accurately before firing,

Depending on how the light box is built, it also can be used as display lighting. This can be as up-lighting or backlighting.

Additional notes:
Light box requirements
Flexibility
Top surfaces
Lighting

Reworking Designs

Principles of design practice for stained glass, 5

Having created the design, you should consider re-working the designs for a variety of reasons. Some of these are:

- to save time in the later stages of the work. It all too easy in the excitement of creating a new piece to want to get directly on with making, however this often gives construction or design difficulties that have to be solved in the making, leading to compromises. In general far too little time is spent in the design stage. Time spent on the design will be more than saved in the construction and will produce a more satisfactory piece.

- to ensure the structural stability of the piece. Although reinforcement should be considered from the beginning of the design, this is the time to ensure that the piece will stand up to the use it will receive during its – expected – long life.

- Make sure you have investigated every possibility to answer the challenges of your design.

There are a number of activities that can help with these elements.

Reworking will enable you to maintain the essence of the design while simplifying lines and easing the labour of the construction of the panel. Often the design contains a number of lines that are not essential to the whole design.

As you re-work the design, you can make sure every curve, dip and angle are to your liking and so improve the whole. Redrawing also helps understanding of the design and the placing of lines. It will also help in considering the placement of lead came and the widths to be used.

Make sure the design is still structurally sound. The design should avoid long nearly straight lines with few interruptions, especially those that go from edge to edge in any direction. The lines should interlock rather than have many joins onto long lines.

It gives an opportunity to ensure that you can cut all the pieces. This is the time to look at the negative or background pieces to make sure you can cut them as well as the foreground pieces. Usually people are so concentrated on designing the main image that the background becomes too complicated to cut easily.

Make successive tracings with each change, so there is a record, allowing you to step back wards to an earlier version if necessary.

If this re-working stage leads to the realisation of design problems, there are some things that can be tried:

• Cropping the design can transform it. The focus of the design can be enhanced by removing some of the surrounding “information”. The change of proportions say from landscape to portrait can make significant differences.
• Enlarging and using only a portion of the original design can be a solution. This is similar to the cropping operation, but has the added advantage of making the pieces larger and easier to cut.
• Further simplification of background design lines can be considered. This will bring the focus back onto the main part of the image.
• Changing relative proportions can transform the design, e.g., by enlarging a busy background, it can be made simpler and easier to read the whole panel.

Elements of Design:

Designing for strength 

Colour selection

Design lines 

Design sources 

Reworking designs 

Design Sources

Principles of design practice for stained glass, 4

Use the everyday visual experience and make interpretations and adaptations. E.g.,

• draw lead lines on an illustration to make it suitable for stained glass, using the fewest lines possible
• Use your photographs of interesting subjects and scenes

These may never become useable designs or cartoons, but will increase you abilities to design from the real world toward the abstract.

Make and keep sketches as personal references. These do not need to be finished drawings, just a reminder of the thing(s) that caught your eye. Many artists always carry around a notebook to record these observations. Even if you only make drawings on paper napkins, make a folder to keep these separate sketches together.

Take photos of shapes and interesting images. These can then be used later to develop images.

Make up composite images by using overlays or collage. This helps develop your compositional abilities.

Work on abstraction in your design practice:

• Study abstract representations. Dissect – decomposition is a popular word - and analyse how the work is put together.
• Use geometric design as an introduction to abstract design. This forces your attention to structure, balance and colour.
• Once the distribution of the physical and visual weights is understood, this enables the jump to more free forms of abstraction.

Elements of Design:

Designing for strength 

Colour selection

Design lines 

Design sources 

Reworking designs 

Beautiful Design Lines

Principles of design practice for stained glass, 3

Stained glass is a graphic medium where line and colour are very important. Achieving pleasing lines and forms requires practice and use of various approaches and techniques.

The two dimensional world is one of abstract thought. Work and development are the way to creativity – there is no mystical talent. Practice drawing every day – set aside time to do it, if you normally shy away from drawing as an exercise.

Study and learn from what has gone before. Look at the images and objects you admire and analyse what you like about them and why. Also consider what things could have been done differently. Consider how those changes would affect the character of the piece.

Of course, maintaining your creative attention is difficult, so when blocks occur try some or all of these things:

• Put the work aside for a day or two before taking it out and looking at it again.
• Alternatively, pin up the design on a wall where you can look at as you pass by. When you see a change to be made, do it immediately and pin it back up.
• Get a new perspective, e.g.:
  • Turn it upside down. This will enable you to observe differences and spot inconsistencies
  • Look at it in a mirror. You might see people studying still life or live subjects together with their drawing in a hand mirror to get a new perspective that will help spot difficulties.
  • Put the design on the floor and climb a ladder to look at it. This provides distance and changes the angle at which you look at your design.

Remember that design tends toward realism or abstraction. You need to work on both forms, remembering that glass is a graphic medium that tends toward abstraction. Working on both forms develops your flexibility and knowledge. Having a working knowledge of both enables you to have a responsive approach to the client.

Elements of Design:

Designing for strength 

Colour selection

Design lines 

Design sources 

Reworking designs 

Responsive Colour Selection

Principles of design practice for stained glass, 2

The graphic form of much stained glass means that the medium is about line and colour. This requires that you think about both your and the viewer's response to the colour combinations. Respond to your instincts. Use you feelings about colour and their relationships. Try different colour ways. Formal training does help, but experience develops your skills. The individuality of the piece depends on the use of your instincts about the colour. There are some checks you can make while selecting colours.

Think of colour and impact. Hot colours tend to have more impact, as they give bright points or areas. Impact can also be created by using non-complementary colours together. If a more subtle impression is desired, use tonal variations without great contrasts.

Vary areas of colour and their proportions. This provides interest to a panel. It avoids a mechanical symmetrical appearance, even if the design is symmetrical

Think about colour balance. Although the colours may vary it is important that the weights of the colours are balanced so that the focus of the panel is not taken to another part because of the imbalance of the colour with the design.

When you are in difficulty selecting or arranging the colour, step back and view from a distance. This is one of several techniques to enable you to get a larger or different view. Others include viewing the design through a mirror, viewing through half closed eyes, look at the design from the other end, and viewing the design from acute angles.

When something feels wrong, trust your intuition and use other colours. Colour theory is just that -theory. It is through using your reactions that the piece becomes individual.

Seek out the nuances of the glass in tones and textures. These alter the perceived colour and weight considerably.

Keep the design lines simple when your emphasis is on colour, light and texture. This allows those qualities to dominate the panel, rather than the lines.

Always make a coloured drawing, before choosing the glass, as a reference. This is a rendering of your original idea. It provides a reference as you select the colours. It is something that can be altered, of course, but does provide an essential reference point.

Choose glass colours in the kind of light for which the panel is intended. This is essential, as the glass colour is subtly different in daylight, incandescent, and fluorescent lights.

Elements of Design:

Designing for strength 

Colour selection

Design lines 

Design sources 

Reworking designs 

Designing for Strength

Principles of Design Practice for Stained Glass, 1

There comes a stage when each of us moves from using patterns developed by others to trying to realise our own vision. This is the time where in attempting to reproduce an image from our mind or from natural and man-made forms that we begin to encounter difficulties with the medium of glass and lead or copper foil.

There are a number of principles that should be kept in mind while designing, or at least referred to when the design is reaching its final stages. This series of notes is an attempt to outline a number of the most important points in designing glass panels, especially larger ones.

Structural strength

The panel needs to be strong to last for a long time. Glass is a very resilient material; so is lead and solder. It would be a shame to design a panel in long-lasting materials that will not last because of the design and construction. There are some things to remember about creating a strong panel.

The strength of a panel is in its glass.

Glass in compression is stronger than steel. It is only when it is in tension that its weakness - or fragility – becomes apparent. So the structural arrangement of the glass needs to be such that each piece of glass supports its neighbours. It also needs to use shapes that are strong.

Avoid the following shapes:

• Hour glass shapes – those where the ends are wider/larger than the middle - will crack at the narrowest part. If the shape – usually a negative or background one – is necessary, break it up into smaller pieces that make sense in the whole design. It is also possible to add details that will break up these shapes, but be careful that the details do not detract from the whole.
• Exaggerated, deep inner curves will crack at apex of curve. If unavoidable, you should consider adding design lines where the glass would break anyway, or moving elements closer together so they almost touch to avoid the single deep inner curve.
• Thin long and tapering glass pieces will crack at the point or be covered by the lead or copper foil. Where you need to have such shapes, try drawing the lead or copper foil lines on the design. You can do this on a piece of tracing paper to avoid messing up your original design. This will show you how the finished panel may look. Alternatively, you can divide the long tapering piece of glass into several pieces so that any flexibility of the whole panel does not break the long thin piece. Short thin pieces are not so likely to be broken by any movement of the panel.

Lines radiating from a single point provide weak areas. This is due to long thin pieces of glass being liable to breakage. Break up long thin pieces of glass with lines. This ensures that the length of the glass is in a strong relationship with its narrowness.

Avoid “hinges” - lines that run from edge to edge – as that provides an area where the panel can bend. This is why windows made up of rectangular quarries need so much support and even then over time begin to concertina.

Don’t over complicate the cut lines. This makes for difficulty in cutting the pieces. Also the more difficult it is to cut the pieces of glass, the more likely it is to fail by breaking after being installed.

Elements of Design:

Designing for strength 

Colour selection

Design lines 

Design sources 

Reworking designs 

Edges for Copper Foil

When doing a foil project which does not have a zinc or lead came frame, do you use a wider foil so it has a wider solder line? 

You do not need to use wider foil on the edges, but I have often done so to give the edge just as much "line value" as the internal beads. However this needs to be planned from the beginning. If you simply add a wider line on the outside, many times you will compromise the integrity of the design at the sides. You need to cut the glass a fraction larger to accommodate the thicker foil. Two millimeters added to the outside edge should be enough.

Glass Selection

I have produced some notes on some of the elements in the selection of glass.

Here are the links:

Glass Density
Clarity
Advancing and Receeding Colours
Light and Dark
Colour Combinations

Choosing Glass for a Harmonious Appearance, 3

Different colours, of course, have different appearances. The most commonly known one is the hot/cool colour combinations. This still applies when dealing with opalescent glasses, where reflection is the dominant experience of the colour.

But in glass where there is quite a bit of light transmission, the receding and advancing colours are not exactly the same as in painting and opalescent glass. The greatest separation comes with intense red (close) and intense blue (distant). In some circumstances these can be experienced as apparently being in different planes.

There are a few distinct advancing and receding colours, but most are much more subtle and are not all as expected from the experience of reflected colour. Clear, for example appears nearer than a strong blue. It is up to each person as to how far they wish to take these combinations.

Those who do want to investigate, should go to a place where they can view windows with small pieces and a variety of colour in strong light. They can then record which colours appear to “float” above others, or recede.

Choosing Glass for a Harmonious Appearance, 2

Clarity of colour

When considering the representation of distance or depth you need to look for glass that is less pure. The colours that are muted or have a touch of white, blue or grey will provide a good representation of distance. The pure colours will appear more brilliant among the more muted colours.

This is where glass samples can be most useful. By holding them up to the light, you can see the effects one glass has on another and how one colour will appear among the others.

Choosing Glass for a Harmonious Appearance - 1

There are at least two major elements in choosing glass: density and clarity. A third is the “hot/cool” effect of colours. The appropriate combination of these elements leads to a panel with bright or hot spots where you want them. You can create a dramatic image or a more restrained one with more gradual gradations of light without obvious bright or dark areas.

Density

Density relates to the amount of light the glass allows through. Clearly black is the most dense glass – allowing no light through. In general, glass can be divided into opalescent and transparent.

Opalescent glasses range from the very dense opaque to less dense translucent glass.

Transparent glasses have a variety of densities too, although almost always less dense than opalescent glass. The density of transparent glasses relates to the intensity of the colour and the texture of the glass.


Colour intensity

The intensity of the colour is related to the amount of light allowed through. The intensity is directly related to the saturation of the colour. A further effect on colour intensity is the thickness of the glass. If you look at a handmade sheet of glass with different thickness on one end to another end, you can see the gradation of the colour and the amount of light that comes through.

Glass Textures

The texture of the glass affects the density of the glass. A smooth glass will have less density as the light passes through without dispersion. As the glass becomes more textured, the light is more dispersed and so appears more dense.

Cartooning for Acute Angles

When you are designing panels, you can prevent some leading difficulties. If you have shapes that join at acute angles, you can alter the design to make the leading simpler.

Say you have two balls touching. You can design the panel so the cut lines intersect or touch each other. This makes for extremely acute angles in the cutting of the cames. Two balls touching in the presentation drawing will not look the same if leaded that way.  So if you make the edges of the balls just a few millimetres separate, the cames will pass each other, just touching, and so have the appearance of the presentation drawing, rather than the appearance of overlapping.

You separate the lines by the thickness of the came you will be using for that area. If you are using 6mm came, the cut lines should be just less than that distance apart. This will allow the cames to go around each shape and the flanges of the came will just overlap. This makes for quick leading and a clean appearance.

Colour combinations

You will need to decide which colours combine well, whether they are toning, harmonious or complimentary. By getting to grips with the rules of colour, you can give your work a professional look.

Primary colours
Primary colours are three key colours - Red, Blue and Yellow. They cannot be made from any other colour.

Secondary colours
If you mix equal amounts of the primary colours, you get the Secondary colours - Purple, Green and Orange.
Red + Yellow = Orange; Red + Blue = Purple; Blue + Yellow = Green

Tertiary colours
If you mix a primary with a secondary colour, in a ratio of 2:1, you get a Tertiary colour. Red-Orange, Blue-Green etc.

Cool versus hot
Look at a colour wheel and you will see the left hand side of the colours are 'warm' or 'hot' and the ones on the right are 'cool' or 'cold'. This is useful when you want to create a mood in a particular room or need to make your space cosier or lighter.

Neutrals
Neutrals are one of the easiest groups of colours, or non-colours to work with. They don't appear on the colour wheel and include Black, Grey, White and sometimes Brown and Beige. They all go together and can be layered and mixed and matched. No neutral colour will try to dominate over another.

Except for the blue, these are examples of neutral colours

Accent colours
An accent colour is a colour used in quite small quantities to lift or to add punch to a colour scheme. An accent colour should be in a complimentary colour. It works best if it's a bright, vibrant colour. Accent colours are perfect if you're scared of using strong colour - simply add a splash of an accent colour. Keep most of your piece in shades and variations of one single harmonious colour. Then pick out just a few objects in an accent colour.

Clashing colours
To use clashing colours is thought to be a no-no in formal settings. But in more informal or vibrant settings they can look fantastic, if they are used carefully. If they are of equal tonal strength, you can mix them together. Don't stop at two, you could try three or four. But if one is paler or weaker than the rest it will get lost in the overall scheme.