The last day of Glass Art Intensive Learning was spent finishing the projects we started at the beginning of the week.
Today we learned how to solder, which is an art all in itself. Soldering is the metal that goes in between the pieces of glass to hold them together to be one piece. The metal used for solder is a mixture of lead and tin. You first place a sticky layer of copper around the edges of every piece of glass you’re using and line them up where you want them to be in the final product. Then, you use flux, an activator that allows the metals to stick to each other, and paint it on top of the copper. The flux only lets the solder stick to the copper parts, though, so there are no worries about it staying on the glass.
The final step, is that actual soldering itself. To do this, you use a hot tool that looks kinda like a screwdriver (except it’s really hot!) to melt a thick wire made of the tin/lead mixture to melt into the cracks and hold together the glass pieces. Once you clean it all up and make it look pretty, you rinse off the extra flux, and you’re good to go!
It was a really interesting process that I’d definitely recommend trying!
— Griffin and Jessi