The Dale C. Maley Family Web Site

I was at Hobby Lobby in Bloomington picking up some stained glass, when I saw a pattern book that had some neat items in.  I took a cell phone picture of the cover........then ended up buying a copy from Amazon of the book.

I liked the pattern for the Prairie Style panel.................

Although I did not expect it, finding the square colored bevels turned out to be the hardest part of the project !!

I found the 18mm or 3/4" colored bevels at StallingsGlass.com web site.  $3.00 a piece was a little pricey for a 3/4" square colored bevel, but I did not find any cheaper sources.

I checked my usual stained glass suppliers, and they had none.  I googled and still had no look.  I went to Ebay and found a green one.

But when I received this one from ebay..............it seems like it is almost too thick to use on a stained glass panel.  I will have to take a photo.

StainedGlassExpress.com has 2 inch bevels. Their shipping cost is high, so I combined some other things on the order.

I carefully pulled out the pattern from the book, then scanned it in pieces on my scanner.  Then I tried using my free microsoft program to reassemble the pieces......and it did not work !!  I even tried retracing the lines using an ink pen then scanning again.........and it still did not work !!   I scanned the lower half of the pattern in 1 piece, then imported that to Sketchup, and drew it in sketchup.  Now I can make as many full scale patterns as I like using Sketchup.

I thought this panel would look nice with a copper patina versus black patina.

I went to test my copper patina bottle on lead, and it does not color lead at all !!!!!!!    

The black patina bottle says for solder and lead...............the copper patina bottle says solder only, and does not mention lead.

I did not realize black patina works on copper foil solder and lead............while copper only works on foil solder !!

So, I will do this first panel in copper foil instead of lead.

I like the looks of this panel.............including the copper patina.

The only thing I don't like is that my 2" square green bevel................is too light of green color.  I would prefer a darker green color.

I'm also wondering why one should spend $40 on the colored bevels..............when one could just use colored glass???  Food for thought.