Stained Glass Workshop & Kiln Work
Hi All, Gav here! You know the space is no stranger to eletronics, lasers and 3D printing, but that’s certainly not all we get up to. Recently, I got a bunch of glass tools, and a bunch of us have been having fun making stained glass pieces, as well as doing some kiln work. Here’s a few pieces we made: It’s a rather addictive medium to work with! There’s a huge range of colours and effects you can get. Stained glass is quick to get ideas out with, but for more intricate stuff we can use a kiln to mix and fuse pieces together. Glass cutting during the workshop: The pieces laid out and ready for copper foil to be added. The table is actually a light-box, which helps positioning translucent glass for various effects: Also that table isn’t just a slab of egg-crate. According to the vendor, it’s a entire sophisticated glass cutting system, and it comes with a 50 page manual showing how to set up templates for various angles, reliably repeating cuts, etc. A few of us have ideas for giant hexagon themed pieces, and that’ll make doing hundreds of pieces a tad easier… The space already has a large kiln, but for testing ideas and various glass combinations, I recently bought a microwave kiln. This allows small glass pieces to be slumped, tacked or fully fused together. Here’s a pieces ready for firing: And some pieces we finished earlier: Most of these are just playing with settings, rather than being a particular design. By controlling the time of firing, we can select how much the glass fuses or slumps together. I’ve left a big selection of the specialist tools and glass stock for people to play with. If you’ve got an idea for a fused or stained glass piece, feel free to have a go!* (Get one of us to show you how to handle & cut glass safely, of course). There’s also a prize for the first stained glass Robots and Dinosaurs logo to be made :-)