How To Repair Stained Glass Window

Methods For Repairing Broken Stained Glass

Fixing broken stained glass is a necessary evil. With glass as a material breakages are inevitable. Yous know the scenario; you're happily soldering away on your latest slice only to turn it and realise there's a crack in the glass. And y'all don't have enough art glass to replace it. This is what happened to one of my readers Ken Keith. He wrote to me asking for suggestions to fix it.

Luckily, at that place is a style to fix this cleaved stained glass without dismantling your work and driving 75 miles for replacement glass.

You tin meet the crack in close upward hither:

Milly's Quick Tip For Fixing Cleaved Stained Drinking glass

Rather than having to disengage your piece of work at that place is a unproblematic fix:

Detect a spare piece of interior lead came longer than the crack
Cut the meridian face/flange off a this slice of lead came with either a lead knife, nippers or lead angle cutters

To do this, I use a SHARP atomic number 82 knife or for this task I peculiarly similar these Atomic number 82 Angle Cutters ( affiliate link from Amazon) in the US. If you're in the Britain I institute a pair hither from UK Amazon (affiliate link) – at a very reasonable price considering the toll I paid for mine!

Shape the flange to fit over the crack and trim it to butt up to the adjoining lead

Solder it at either end to hold it securely in place
Turn over and repeat on the backside
Cement, clean and polish every bit normal

Adjusting The Design

As this is a geometric panel, I suggested add matching 'false' leads on the other side of the panel to even the blueprint up visually. You can run into how this balances the design below.

If yous're new to using lead came every bit a technique I would highly recommend you requite it a try. It will add a corking deal to your skill set up and give you the best of both stained glass worlds – foil and pb.

If you don't take a local class my Leaded Stained Glass Artistry grade has taught many people – even those who take never used pb earlier – how to brand a stained glass panel using lead came. The course is self-paced and online so yous can learn this lovely technique even if you are unable to get to a class. You lot can find out more than about it hither Leaded Stained Drinking glass Artistry.

The client loved the finished stained drinking glass window. I don't know about y'all, but I recall the additional 'false' leads actually Add to the overall design! They requite it a squeamish bit of detail in the centre.

This is a very skilful method for lead came when the cleaved stained glass window doesn't take to be weather proof. If the window is an external window and DOES need weather condition proofing, you lot'll demand to remove the piece of glass and replace I'chiliad agape.

The amazing Karal has a page on how to practise this here.

Pin It FOR After!

More than Resources

There are dissimilar solutions for panels that have been constructed using copper foil. I'll add together to this page afterwards with those so continue checking back 🙂

If you struggle with cut authentic angles in atomic number 82 came there'due south a page for yous hither.