How to Make Lines & Curves in Stained-Glass Projects

Video Transcript

"Okay, some of the simplest stained glass designs and probably you know, if you very, if you are starting out with your very first stained glass project you are probably going to want to do a design that is mainly a geometric design based on lines, on straight lines. So when I say that I mean like a very common element in a stained glass design is you know straight lines, you know squares, triangles, trapezoids, you know, parallelograms those kinds of shapes and so I am just sketching out with my Sharpie marker, kind of an example, kind of a shape that is pretty common in a lot of stained glass windows. Just kind of a square surrounded by a few trapezoids like this and you know a lot of these patterns will keep going but you know a lot of these geometric patterns are based on straight lines. Okay, so I don't know, maybe these would go into more rectangular pieces here or something and you can kind of keep going. Okay, the reason for that is, that it is a lot easier to cut and break glass in straight lines, now that is not to say that you can't cut curved lines because you can but it is easier to cut glass in a straight line and to break it in a straight line. So that is why some of the easiest projects will have pieces that are shaped like rectangles or shaped like squares or diamonds, you know long pieces because these are really easy pieces to cut and break. Okay, you can also cut curves, but the thing with curves is it takes a little bit more attention, a little bit more skill and they can be a lot more difficult to break that piece of glass out and we will talk a little bit about that. The basic rule of a curve is that the looser the curve or what I mean to say is that the larger the radius of the curve the easier it will be to cut and break that piece than a curve with a much smaller radius, right so the smaller the radius of that curve the harder it is going to be to cut. The second rule of curves is that it is much easier to cut what we call an outside curve than it is to say, you can cut a circular piece of glass and there is sort of a multi-piece technique you know that is kind of used to do that but it is a lot easier you know to cut a piece of glass you know where this is the piece of glass than cutting a piece of glass with what is called an inside curve. So let's say that I wanted a piece of glass that is sort of shaped like this, this is a much harder piece of glass to cut because what you want is a smooth edge on the inside curve right, where as a piece of glass like this where you just want a kind of circle you can cut that circle but a lot of this glass is going to get broken away eventually with your grosing pliers and so, so anyway that is the basic concept of lines versus curves, the more lines you have the easier your glass cutting and breaking will be, curves are possible but you know, larger kind of radius curves are going to be easier to cut and break than small radius curves or kind of big sweeping curves, I mean in fact some curves are impossible we will talk about that later. And when you do cut curves, it is easier to cut kind of outside curve, that is to say you know if this is the piece of glass here, you know it will be easier to cut and prepare this curve here than it will be to cut this curve here because this is the outside curve, the glass is curving to the outside, but when the glass is curving to the inside it is a little more difficult, it can still be done but, so that is kind of the basic theory of curve versus line. "