Expert: lyn buerger - 5/28/2009

Question
i bought a fairly nice piece of reclaimed stained glass, 2'x3' and have it hanging on my front porch. the problem is it's sagging. another problem is that it's not a "gem" and i don't want to spend 100's of $$$ re-leading it. a few ideas i had were: a. facing both sides with glass or plexi, thereby squeeeezing it flat. b. adding straight pieces of steel rod bracing it in a tic-tac-toe grid. ...and i was wondering if an expert such as your fine self had anyother ideas...???

Answer
I will certainly give it a try.  But....it's hard to help without actually seeing the condition of the piece.  

I am going to assume that no pieces are missing so the sagging has stretched the lead but not to the point that you have holes in the piece.

Here is what I would do

1)  Lay the piece flat on a piece of plywood that is loose with some books under it so that gravity will begin to lower the stretched areas gradually. Make sure the books you use are about the correct level if the piece sags back to level.  If it is in a deep window frame you may need phone books, if it is in a thin frame you may just need several stacks of magazines.  Does that make sense?   When the piece is level....

2 Check for any areas of the lead that are broken at the connections
where the lead is joined.  Check and re solder all broken joints on both sides.  Be careful when you turn the piece.  To turn it over I would use anothr pieces of plywood so that you can lay it on one piece of plywood and use the other to lay on top and then sandwich it over.  

3) After soldering the piece now is stronger than it was and may be OK to hang, but it is still fragile and you can do one of several things.....

4) put glass or plex on both side to help support it, as you had correctly thought of.  But it is disfiguring to the viewing of the glass.  But on a front porch it will also give the glass protection from kids and balls, and rock from auto wheels, etc, etc. so not altogether a bad thing.

5) There is a flat bar called re-bar. Available at a stained glass studio.  That you actually solder over the piece in several place which helps to strengthen the piece.  Can go vertical or horizontal and can be bent to follow the design so it is not readily visible.

Note: Your biggest problem is getting he old lead to re-solder.  You will need to have the correct iron with a regulator on it or you will burn a hole in the lead.  That can be fixed but I won't get into that here.  You will need to scrub the old lead joints with a steel wire brush and maybe even scrape it with a blade.  Use flux NoKorode which will be available at a hardware store. and 60x40 solid core solder, so acide core solder.

lots of luck and I hope this helps.