How do I make a stained glass sun catcher? Sun catchers are made by using a technique called copper foiling. To create a sparkle that might shoo birds away from your garden, you can dangle a freebie compact...
To create a sparkle that might shoo birds away from your garden, you can dangle a freebie compact disc from a string. A stained glass sun catcher, however, might be the perfect way to add a gorgeous sparkle outside or inside the home, without shooing anyone away.
While you could buy a stained glass sun catcher, you might just want to make your own.
"Stained glass sun catchers are usually made by copper foiling," says David Dillon, owner of Austin Cut Glass of Austin, Texas, who has been in business for 25 years. Stained glass creations can be made through several methods, he explains. Some glass patterns are etched. Other glass patterns are leaded, a technique in which the cut glass is held together with lead.
One stained glass web site (http://www.stainedglass.info/index.htm) says that some artists consider only windows assembled with clear glass as leaded. But, the site says, panels assembled with stained glass are also considered leaded.
Dillon adds that another technique for creating stained glass windows is beveling.
With stained glass sun catchers, Dillon says that copper foil works best for assembly because it is lightweight and is less likely to stretch or even break when the sun catcher is hung.
"You make them with copper foil, because when you use a 60, 40 solder, it doesn't stretch, it doesn't move, it makes a good solid piece," he says.
"Sun catchers are usually hanging pieces," he continues. "If you try to hang a panel that you make out of lead, the weight of the panel sometimes can allow the window to stretch or pull apart because it is just made in a different situation."
As with other stained glass projects, sun catchers require basic tools, he says, including soldering irons to attach pieces, and lead or foil, depending upon what kind of frame you want to make. The tools don't change when working with copper foiling.
"With copper foiling you need the same basic tools: the glass cutter, pliers, and grinder," he says.
But because you will be working with copper foil when assembling pieces, you will have to add a foiling machine to your tool set, he notes.
"You have to have a foiling machine, because, instead of using lead, you wrap these pieces with copper foil," he says. "The foil is what allows the pieces, when you solder them together, to stay together."
The copper foil method is the same one used by such innovative stained glass artists as Louis Comfort Tiffany, who utilized this method for his famous lamps, Dillon says.
Cutting the glass for a sun catcher typically requires pattern cutting. "Usually people who make sun catchers and things like that do pattern cutting," Dillon says.
Instead of having a glass table, he says, you typically make more than one pattern. Once you make the patterns, you cut one pattern completely out, tape it to the glass, and just cut around it.
"That way they can cut it off and then put it back together," he says.
