I just wanted to thank you very much for these communications this year, I've found them fascinating (and they've often made me laugh.) Subscribing, I've learned a huge amount about the craft and the techniques (and some other stuff too!)
Dear Masters, following your writings/work is always humbling and fascinating. Always learning. Have a well deserved relax time and please enjoy whisky /gin for me!
Dear Williams & Byrne, I was interested to see your puttying technique of rubbing the ball over the lead, I like to mix my putty to a slurry and brush it under the lead to be sure that all voids are filled and similar clean it with the whiting. The Hoover polisher brushes are great, I have mounted a drill arbour onto the brush centre and use a high speed drill to burnish the lead.
Question: as an old engineer, I was under the impression that stretching the lead achieves 2 things and they are to straighten it and also to work harden it, would you agree ?
In the video: rubbing the ball over the top-half was to lubricate the old leads a bit, so they would polish up nicely. On the bottom-half, we pushed the putty in. And yes, sometimes a slurry is exactly what you need. It's important people adjust their puttying / cementing mixture to the specific window they have before them. (These windows will all be double-glazed, so to speak.)
And yes, we agree with you that you somewhat harden the lead by stretching it a bit, in order to straighten it.
Question : I thought that your reason of using the putty texture of the ...putty was in order not to damage the paint, by incrusting the liquid state of that same putty that’s being used on the “smooth “ (silver stain) side. Also, since our leads are generally harder than what we call restauration leads (that are often softer than the medieval / pre industrial ones, ironically ) we do not, here, in general close the wings of the leads.
Indeed : straighten them and by the same action work harden them (as you know : creation of local dislocations in the lead cristalline matrix). Naturally that work hardening efficiency is also attributed to the “impurities “ added. Pre industrial it was by lack of technology . Which as we know was a good thing for the longevity/integrity of the sg. Best regards
I sense that there's a far larger gulf between viewpoints here than I'd ever realized before. "You can confidently infer we do not belong to that school of conservation whose members write long monographs to denounce this type of forgery..." with regard to "counterfeiting" (as you describe it) missing or irreparable pieces in a larger whole. It may be because I've run into this same argument in other areas (most notably trains and classic cars) where it's a strongly divisive issue. In a nutshell, there's a point at which restoration ends and re-creation begins. Both have their place, but I strongly feel that for the benefit of future generations it's incumbent on us to make it possible to clearly and unambiguously identify newly-created pieces in an old historic window. It can be as simple as a tiny painted date in an obscure location where it's invisible from normal viewing distances, or as complex (and fun, in my experience) as reproducing an original shade or texture using a completely different technique than is used in other sections of the same window. The fun part there, of course, is making the new bit visually indistinguishable from the old, again at normal viewing distances. As an example, I used your own "spottling" technique on a missing piece for a window where the other pieces had been stippled, turning what had been a negative effect into a positive one, and you couldn't tell the difference with the unaided eye, but it popped right out under magnification. Anyone who cares will always be able to tell that mine is a non-original piece, and that's exactly what I want. Future historians aside, a window with all-17th-Century original glass intact has a higher market value than one that's had replacement pieces inserted, the value going progressively down as the number of replacements goes up; and while monetary value may not matter in and of itself, it tracks directly into how much the owner needs to pay for insurance, which is often of considerable importance. And there's just the irritation factor of having a docent pointing out to visitors "our magnificent window dating to the time of Archibald the 9th" or whoever (my knowledge of Brit royalty is very limited) when in fact many of the pieces date to the time of Tony Blair or later. Forgive the rant, but I just seem to keep running up against this same issue in several completely different areas, and I'm hoping I simply misunderstood your comment about "counterfeiting" in which case please feel free to delete this! :-)
Agreed. The clients have a map of where the replacements are. But people restore chapels and paintings quite happily - and irreversibly (unlike a counterfeit stained glass lion or inscription). For us, being inveterate outsiders (we're so busy working we don't have time or patience or lack of sincerity to schmooze), it's the insiders' group-think which is galling: a preference is academically elevated, by means of copious footnotes, into a certainty; the author is elevated to head of a prestigious society; the author advances in years; a young pretender arrives with a new principle, backed up by even more footnotes; the courtiers fawn, and agree to curry favour. And so forth.
I just wanted to thank you very much for these communications this year, I've found them fascinating (and they've often made me laugh.) Subscribing, I've learned a huge amount about the craft and the techniques (and some other stuff too!)
I wish you a very happy Christmas.
Dear Masters, following your writings/work is always humbling and fascinating. Always learning. Have a well deserved relax time and please enjoy whisky /gin for me!
Dear Williams & Byrne, I was interested to see your puttying technique of rubbing the ball over the lead, I like to mix my putty to a slurry and brush it under the lead to be sure that all voids are filled and similar clean it with the whiting. The Hoover polisher brushes are great, I have mounted a drill arbour onto the brush centre and use a high speed drill to burnish the lead.
Question: as an old engineer, I was under the impression that stretching the lead achieves 2 things and they are to straighten it and also to work harden it, would you agree ?
Kind regards
Peter Robertson
stainedglassworks.com.au
Helpful points, Peter: thank you.
In the video: rubbing the ball over the top-half was to lubricate the old leads a bit, so they would polish up nicely. On the bottom-half, we pushed the putty in. And yes, sometimes a slurry is exactly what you need. It's important people adjust their puttying / cementing mixture to the specific window they have before them. (These windows will all be double-glazed, so to speak.)
And yes, we agree with you that you somewhat harden the lead by stretching it a bit, in order to straighten it.
Question : I thought that your reason of using the putty texture of the ...putty was in order not to damage the paint, by incrusting the liquid state of that same putty that’s being used on the “smooth “ (silver stain) side. Also, since our leads are generally harder than what we call restauration leads (that are often softer than the medieval / pre industrial ones, ironically ) we do not, here, in general close the wings of the leads.
Indeed : straighten them and by the same action work harden them (as you know : creation of local dislocations in the lead cristalline matrix). Naturally that work hardening efficiency is also attributed to the “impurities “ added. Pre industrial it was by lack of technology . Which as we know was a good thing for the longevity/integrity of the sg. Best regards
I sense that there's a far larger gulf between viewpoints here than I'd ever realized before. "You can confidently infer we do not belong to that school of conservation whose members write long monographs to denounce this type of forgery..." with regard to "counterfeiting" (as you describe it) missing or irreparable pieces in a larger whole. It may be because I've run into this same argument in other areas (most notably trains and classic cars) where it's a strongly divisive issue. In a nutshell, there's a point at which restoration ends and re-creation begins. Both have their place, but I strongly feel that for the benefit of future generations it's incumbent on us to make it possible to clearly and unambiguously identify newly-created pieces in an old historic window. It can be as simple as a tiny painted date in an obscure location where it's invisible from normal viewing distances, or as complex (and fun, in my experience) as reproducing an original shade or texture using a completely different technique than is used in other sections of the same window. The fun part there, of course, is making the new bit visually indistinguishable from the old, again at normal viewing distances. As an example, I used your own "spottling" technique on a missing piece for a window where the other pieces had been stippled, turning what had been a negative effect into a positive one, and you couldn't tell the difference with the unaided eye, but it popped right out under magnification. Anyone who cares will always be able to tell that mine is a non-original piece, and that's exactly what I want. Future historians aside, a window with all-17th-Century original glass intact has a higher market value than one that's had replacement pieces inserted, the value going progressively down as the number of replacements goes up; and while monetary value may not matter in and of itself, it tracks directly into how much the owner needs to pay for insurance, which is often of considerable importance. And there's just the irritation factor of having a docent pointing out to visitors "our magnificent window dating to the time of Archibald the 9th" or whoever (my knowledge of Brit royalty is very limited) when in fact many of the pieces date to the time of Tony Blair or later. Forgive the rant, but I just seem to keep running up against this same issue in several completely different areas, and I'm hoping I simply misunderstood your comment about "counterfeiting" in which case please feel free to delete this! :-)
Agreed. The clients have a map of where the replacements are. But people restore chapels and paintings quite happily - and irreversibly (unlike a counterfeit stained glass lion or inscription). For us, being inveterate outsiders (we're so busy working we don't have time or patience or lack of sincerity to schmooze), it's the insiders' group-think which is galling: a preference is academically elevated, by means of copious footnotes, into a certainty; the author is elevated to head of a prestigious society; the author advances in years; a young pretender arrives with a new principle, backed up by even more footnotes; the courtiers fawn, and agree to curry favour. And so forth.