Learn to Work Safely with Stained Glass

Video Transcript

Alright, so let's talk about safety a little bit. First I want to talk about glass. One of the things about glass is because it is, glass is pretty strong but it's brittle, Okay. So, what that means is you shouldn't be afraid to work with glass. You shouldn't be afraid that it is just going to be breaking all the time but you do have to be careful with it, okay. So, a lot of the techniques in stained glass require you to actively break a piece of glass with your hands or with the pliers and you shouldn't be afraid of that because it is part of the technique. But, because it's brittle a lot of times it can break when you don't want it to so we want to talk about that a little bit. But also, obviously, broken glass can be very sharp, right? I don't like really working with gloves because I feel like when you are doing artistic things it's nice to have your tactile senses to their maximum so, I personally wouldn't work with gloves and I don't think many stained glass workers do. So, you just kind of learn how to work with glass kind of knowing where the sharp edges are. I mean, on a piece like this, straight out of the store or from the glass factory, these edges aren't going to be tremendously sharp because they are kind of squared off. But, you can still cut yourself on these edges so you want to be careful. But, I guess the main thing is, and I have already mentioned this, but anytime you are cutting glass, breaking glass or grinding glass, you should probably be wearing your safety goggles because you can sometimes just have very, very small pieces of glass fly up. And, if they get in your eye they can cause a problem, obviously. But, just be kind of always aware where the edges are. If you are careful and do things in a controlled manner sometimes you will have glass breaking when you don't want it to but most of the time you will be able to control what it is doing. I guess what I am saying is, you want to develop a certain confidence of working with glass so that you are comfortable cutting it and breaking it and you're not afraid all the time that you are going to cut yourself or end up in some disaster. Because to a certain degree, confidence is part of safety, being confident in what you are doing. But at the same time you don't want to be so over confident that you forget where the sharp edges are or you forget to wear your safety glasses. So, just kind of think about that when you are working with the glass.

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