Built to Last

I just received this from Sean and though it's not specifically about the stained glass of Sydney, for want of somewhere else to put this while the Renaissance Stained Glass blog is under construction - here it is.

Built to last.
I have in my hands another example of stained glass design and manufacture questionability. The design, a virtual cross-hair feature that now has a pyramidal quality in the centre, with a few wistful fripperies to make it “Pretty”, and finished off with what will no doubt turn out to be hand putty, is all bulging outwards.
Put all this together in the form of a front door panel, in a busy suburban home, and you have what amounts to an issue waiting to happen.

I hear myself saying to countless clients and would-be clients; a leadlight/stained glass panel is made up of four separate components. The glass; which most people focus on, the lead, the solder and the sealant. What is missed is that even if all the glass is intact, if the latter three components break down, it’s only a matter of time before the whole panel is at risk.

Sealing a panel; cementing, or puttying as it’s often referred to in Australia, is one of those basic jobs that in theory anyone can do. In our studio it’s the first and last thing you will do. It’s the last thing in the process of making a panel, but it’s the first thing new members of the team will undertake on paying client’s work. Sufficiently little skill or prior experience is required and you get to take the leaded panel to it’s finished state in a few short of hours. The newbie has the feeling of having completed something worthy, and the skilled hands are kept on the bench where their hard won skills are best served.

There is however, no intention to belittle the process or patronize the person carrying it out. It is a vital part of the process of manufacture. A solid, well designed and executed panel is a stark failure if it leaks, rattles or is in someway deficient in its ability to sustain an amount of wear and tear. Sealing a panel with slurry cement is, in my opinion, the only way new and restored panels should be treated. This mix, completely variable in its composition is, in a wet format, able to breathe life into tired old panels, enable prompt completion of that short deadline project when mixed more dryly, or simply form a corner stone in new panel construction.

Hand putty is the alternative, and for many, the preferred method for sealing a panel. A thick black mass of similar ingredients is literally thumbed into the panel, into the space between glass and lead. For the record, the same space as in the slurry method, but it can only go as far as the mix will allow, or the power of the human thumb, can push. There is then the practice of leaving the panel, half done, for a few days for the inside, that inside the came, as well as outside to dry, before the real inside seam is applied. Great if you have a bag of money or time to kill. Fine of you’re a student or hobbyist and the thought of mixing up five kilos of slurry is unappealing in your dining room. But professional studios should have both arrows on their bow. Hand putty is perfect for on site repairs. I wouldn’t dream of taking a slurry brush to an installed panel. Why then would I limit myself to the same in the studio?

We are no longer in a time when building in inherent weaknesses is acceptable. Even as recent as the last twenty to thirty years, stained glass apprentices, where you could find them, would have been flogged for over manufacturing panels. From solder joints being too strong, to lead being too heavy; corners have been cut in the name of cost cutting, through to industry protectionism. A committee member of a recent church restoration was lamenting their woes at the vestry windows that after 121 years were being restored. I informed him that this was typical and he should consider this time well spent.

One to five year extended warranties on mass produced items that can be replaced wholesale in the event of failure are poor comparisons, but alas, compared they are. Nobody cares, at least in the sales process, that their new stained glass panel could last fifty to one hundred years if properly cared for. But if it breaks down in anything less than a few years there is hell to pay. It doesn’t matter that the panel lasts five, ten or even twenty years of daily abuse, it is perceived as a part of the architecture and should therefore last a lifetime. To that end then I say build panels with the best of intention as well as ability. I pity the poor individual that follows in my wake. Our panels are made to last, and last they will.