Boehm Stained Glass Blog: Gray Stained Glass Lamp Repair

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Gray Stained Glass Lamp Repair

This beautiful lamp sustained a great deal of damage, primarily to one side. Read on to see the repair process ..

Here's how it came to me .. With multiple cracks and chunks of glass missing.

Another view, from the side. Here the purple border cracks can be seen.

I'm a stickler about matching glass when I do a repair. Fortunately, I had some of the exact purple in inventory.

To assure the stability of the lamp as I worked, I opted to start on the far right. Here I'm using the oil-filled pistol grip glass cutter to cross-hatch the cracked piece, starting from the inside of the dome.

Turning the lamp over, I used needle nose pliers to tug out the glass from the borders. Notice I'm wearing gloves, which I normally don't do when I'm working on a lamp. There were many sharp pieces here, so safety first.

Now the glass is removed and I'm pulling off the old solder and foil using needle nose pliers.

The border is clear now, so I'm tracing a pattern for the replacement glass using an old manila folder.

Here I've traced the pattern onto a new piece of glass.

Cutting the glass.

Running the edges through the grinder, to make it safe to handle, and to enable the copper foil to adhere tightly.

Applying the copper foil to the edges of the glass.

Now the new replacement glass is in place on the lamp.

Here I'm applying liquid flux to the copper foil, to prepare for soldering.

Now the piece is soldered on one side. Since the purple below needs replacement, as does the neighboring glass, there's no need to solder those sides yet.

Now the neighboring piece is cut and in place.

More old solder and foil being tugged off.

Another piece is in place and being soldered.

Now five large pieces of the gray glass have been replaced, as well as two pieces of the purple and two gray border pieces.

The lamp became a bit unstable at the point, so I taped it well and replaced the four border pieces, to regain the stability.

Almost done .. The border has been replaced, as have most of the larger gray pieces.

One more piece to go.

Now all of the cracked pieces have been replaced, foiled, and soldered. In between each step, the area receives a thorough cleaning,

Here I'm applying black patina to the solder. It reacts instantly with the solder. After it sets, I rinse it off.

Using Kwik-Clean Patina and Flux Remover. After the cleaning is done, I applied stained glass finishing compound to the lamp. This is a light wax which protects the patina and makes the glass shine.