How Stained Glass is Made

Stained glass is a beautiful and unique art form that has existed for centuries. The process of making colored glass through stained glass remains nearly unchanged after all these years despite the creation of different techniques such as painting on the glass for over the years. The stained glass making process starts with basic raw materials  like sand (silica), soda or potash, lead oxide or lime and one of the various metal oxides that provide different colors in making stained glass designs. These raw materials with their corresponding proportions are mixed in a large vat and heated to 2500 degrees Fahrenheit. This process will turn the mixture into molten glass which can be processed in different ways depending on the desired effect of a particular piece of stained glass.

The process of making a glass used in stained glass windows starts by the lumping of molten glass that is placed at one end of a blow pipe. The next step of this process involves molding the glass into a cylinder-like shape and then reduced to compressed into sheets and cooled. Workers may vary this process in order to produce different effects. These procedures often produce “flash glasses” which are made by putting a ball of molten white glass inside a layer of molten colored glass that results in a less concentrated color because it is white on one side and colored on the other. 

These methods allow a greater variety of produced colors available in a stained glass art. There is another process used in making Cathedral glass which is done by rolling the molten glass into flat sheets. Another example is the so-called “Norman slabs” which are created by blowing the molten glass into a rectangular box shaped mold. The sides are then sliced apart and formed into slabs which are slightly thinner at the edges and thicker in the center. These techniques are usually used by large manufacturers in which the mixing and shaping processes are done by using large machineries instead of bare hands.

They also add various metal oxides in producing different colors of stained glass. Glasses with different colors such as golden, yellow and vermillion are created by using uranium, cadmium sulfide or titanium. They may also add gold to create a beautiful ruby color and cobalt to create shades of blue in a stained glass design. In addition to that, chromium and iron oxides also create shades of green. And lastly, copper oxide is a versatile product that may be used to create ruby red, blue and green colors.

The beautiful pieces of stained glass are turned into wonderful stained glass windows and other magnificent artworks in different ways. The oldest method is by cutting out a design and assembling the pieces together using “lead cames” that are made from strips of grooved lead which are then soldered to glass. Different metal bars and loops are soldered to the lead in order to install the stained glass window in a church, home and buildings.

Some techniques use a special type of cement or other foiled metals to hold the stained glass pieces together. The methods for creating stained glass have survived efficiently for thousands of years and will certainly continue to be effective for many years to come.