BY Joseph Cavalieri | February 7, 2010

Glass, paint, knives & heat

The technical process of making a stained glass panel is cutting, painting and firing the glass, copper foiling, soldering and layering the glass. It sound fast and easy when written in one sentence, but the process is pretty labor intensive, and requires a kiln to bake the paint onto the glass.

At this point production of “The Horse Seeking Revenge on the Stag” is set to start.  I have decided on colors, size and have reference materials for the animals. I start with the silk screened parts. The 2-headed birds will be silk screened at three different sizes. The original bird was hand drawn, scanned, cleaned up in Photoshop and re sized, I then send the image out to be transferred onto a silk screen.

Once I have the screens, I mix my enamel paint with a silk screen extender base and print on the smooth side of the glass. To permanently adhere the paint onto the glass, the printed birds are set into a kiln and baked at 1250 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the same technique stained glass artisans used in medieval times, except they didn’t have thermostats on their kilns. The paint melts permanently on the top surface of the glass. This is why the color and illustrations of stained glass windows last for so long, once the enamel paint is set it is indestructible, unless the glass breaks that is.

A diamond tip glass cutter is used to scores the glass, then it cracked along the score line as seen above. For more intricate cuts I use a ring saw, which is a diamond coated wire which slowly slices through glass.