light made solid

In stained glass, there are two main ways in which you can assemble the pieces of glass together into a window. Lead caming is the more traditional technique and is especially used on larger windows. The copper foil technique is much more recent, and works better on smaller glass pieces, and is used especially frequently on three-dimensional glass objects such as lamp-shades and boxes.

The copper foil technique was pioneer by Tiffany in the late 1800's. It allows you to have a narrower clearner looking connecting area between two pieces of glass than the more traditional lead caming would allow. Consequently, it does not work well for big or heavy projects.

The technique works roughly like this: basically, you take each piece of glass in your window, and you wrap adhesive copper tape around the edges of it. This copper tape comes in different widths, depending on the thickness of your glass.

The tape folds over onto the front and back of the glass just a little bit. We brush these down with a chemical that helps the solder stick to the copper foil. Then you take a soldering iron, and solder together the glass pieces. The solder only sticks to where your copper foil is on your glass, so you have to be careful how you apply the foil. Smooth even lines around the borders of the glass work best. After that, we apply another chemical on top of the solder, which turns it to a black patina. That way, when you're looking through the illuminated window, you're not distracted by the lines, and it all ties together into the window image.

It makes for a very nice elegant look on your smaller windows and stained glass projects.