I love working with stained glass.

It's so beautiful.

It changes with the light of the day as the weather changes outside.

It just brings me a lot of joy.

♪♪ ♪♪ I am Sara King from Red Thread Upcycles in Winterset, Iowa.

I started doing stained glass about 20 years ago.

I had a friend show me in college.

Years later when my kids were little I started playing around with it again during their naptimes.

My uncle found out that I was working with stained glass and coincidentally he had been in charge of a church renovation and he had a bunch of excess glass that was headed to the dump and he saved a bunch of boxes for me.

And so I had a ton of material to work with and play around with.

So I really credit him for helping me get my business started.

Sara: And today I'm going to demonstrate some basic stained glass making techniques using the copper foil method.

The project we're making today is this cardinal sun catcher.

The first step is going to be putting down a protective surface so that we don't damage our countertop with any chemicals or solder.

You're going to need something a little more substantial than newspaper.

You can use an old corkboard or piece of plywood.

Sara: We're going to take a look at our glass.

I have red for our cardinal.

We're going to determine which is the smoothest side.

That will be the side we're tracing our pattern on.

Now, the pattern I will be using is one that I've used for quite a while.

It is one that I have hand drawn.

Sara: Trace a line, they stay on better while I'm working with the glass, but then wipe off easily at the end with alcohol wipes.

I trace the outline of the cardinal first and then do the interior lines.

♪♪ Sara: I'll find my goggles because we'll be doing some cutting.

♪♪ Sara: There we go.

Here's our cutter.

It's a pretty basic cutter.

But when you cut, you go from one side to the other, applying steady kind of moderate pressure in one smooth continuous stroke.

You don't want to pick your cutter up and you don't want to push too hard otherwise you can break your glass before you get to the other side.

And if you score too lightly then it may not break along the line that you want it to.

♪♪ Sara: I like using my right hand and my left hand kind of as a guide.

♪♪ Sara: Okay, and then you're going to use the end of your cutter, this ball right here, and you're going to tap along the line you just scored.

♪♪ Sara: Flip it over.

You're going to tap the other side.

And if we do it correctly, it will come right apart.

♪♪ Sara: Just like so.

♪♪ Sara: And we're going to use that same cutting method to do the rest of the pieces of our cardinal.

For smaller pieces, you can use your pliers flat side up right next to the line.

Whoops!

And just crack just like that.

♪♪ Sara: Okay, now we're ready to smooth our edges down with a file.

Start with the head.

By filing the edges, that allows the copper to better adhere to the edges.

♪♪ Sara: I have filed all of my pieces, all of my edges are smooth, I washed all of my pieces to get the dust and oil off the pieces from my previous work.

And the next step is to copper foil tape the edges.

You take a piece and you pull out some foil, pull away the back.

You're going to put your glass right in the center of your tape the best you can.

And you're going to pull the tape taught and you're just going to wrap that right around the edge of the piece.

Press the tape down on either side of the glass.

Pinch it down with your fingers.

Sara: Next you take your burnishing tool, your FID, and you're going to press all the way around the edge and you're going to ensure that that copper foil tape sticks nicely to the glass.

You're going to lay it down and press all the way around the edge of the glass getting a really nice seal, kind of careful with the tape that you don't end up putting any tiny rips in it.

Flip the piece over and do the same on the other side.

Sara: We are all ready to solder.

The first thing we want to do is put on a glove.

I usually only wear one for the hand that I'll be handling the sun catcher with to keep chemicals off of it.

I prefer not to wear one on my right hand, the hand I solder with.

Now is the time we get out our flux.

It is a chemical that helps the solder stick to the copper tape.

We're going to start just by adding a bit of flux to the joints because that's where we're going to start with our solder.

We're just going to tack the joints down and then we'll go back and solder all the lines.

Sara: I like to use the iron to grab little bits of the solder off and dab it right onto my project.

Okay, now that all the joints are tacked down, if I was to bump the sun catcher the pieces won't come part.

I'm going to go back now and fully flux all the copper tape and we can start soldering all our lines now.

Make sure you use plenty of solder.

I dropped some solder onto the glass and that's okay, I can pick it right back up with my soldering iron.

Sara: Make sure to reapply flux as you need to.

And you can go over your soldering lines as many times as you'd like, as long as you keep applying flux, to make it as smooth as you want.

Let's smooth this out one last little bit.

♪♪ Sara: We'll flip it over and do the same thing on the other side.

♪♪ Sara: You can hold him up and see if there's any spots you missed, any lumpy spots you want to take care of before you turn your iron off.

But he looks pretty good.

So I'll go get him washed up and we'll take a look at the final product.

♪♪ Sara: I scrubbed him up with a little dish soap and warm water.

I didn't submerge him or anything.

I just had him under the running water, and I didn't scrub too vigorously because I don't want now my soldered edges to pull away from the glass.

I wanted them to stay nice and sealed.

I added a string so now he's all ready to hang in my kitchen window.

Sara: Stained glass is a really great hobby.

Don't be afraid to dive right in.

I know there's lots of other videos online and resources.

It's a great hobby.

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