Stained Glass

The book I read to research this post was Stained Glass for Dummies by Vicki Payne which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. I am going to write about the tools needed for creating stained glass. Basically there are 3 types of stained glass, there's copper foil which is the easiest to use, there's lead camed where you have to solder it & there's warm glass where you heat the glass in a glass kiln & one of the beauties of that is you can make 3d shapes. There is also hot glass which is glass blowing but that is very advanced & not covered in this book.

I personally wouldn't buy a glass kiln unless you intend making a career of it because they are very expensive plus a bit dangerous. There are 2 main types of glass cutter, the barrel type which is the most common, and the pistol grip type which gives you more control & is particularly good if you have something like arthritus. There is various types of power saw like the camed saw but if you are starting out you just need a hacksaw with 32 teeth which is apparently the best type of hacksaw. A glass grinder is useful for levelling the glass. Make sure you use a glass shield & goggles. You need a 100 watt soldering iron & a rheostat which controls the temperature of the iron. Finally there are several types of glass pliers which are used to just break tiny bits off the glass & they have to be smooth in order to do the job properly.