Using marbles as a stained glass sort of look

[Lily left the valley]

Holy wow. Look at all that goodness you fine folks shared.

Willa, yes, the weight is one of my concerns. I think when I settle on a size, I'll have a better notion. I really like the flatter glass lid one, but the one with all the protruding pulls (word choice?) makes me nervous for some reason.

I have actually seen pics of the marbles in the fence before, but had forgotten those. Curious as to how they stay in the wood, despite expansion and contraction with the wood. One of the fencing ideas I had for 42, I had planned on using marbles for the post tops' detail. We really don't have much room for fencing at 260, though. (I had thought about the railing on the porches, though.) Rock wall on one side (still not sure who that belongs to), high wood on the other except for one strange section towards the rear that is plastic chain between two ranch style posts (that one is definitely the neighbor's fence), regular metal chain link in the back which is a pretty woodsy area, considering (that one belongs the neighbor behind).

ec, since we have so many marbles from different periods, I'd be a little concerned about the heating trick as I don't know how stable they might be, although that's useful to know. I've had some of the older cat's eyes split before. Og used to enjoy running to the top of the stairs with one in his mouth, and dropping them to watch them bounce their way down. Wasn't too bad with carpeted stairs, but one apartment didn't have that and we got splits as a result.

Mal, Although I originally was keen on the embedded idea, I'm dithering still. Thank you very much for that info. It may come in handy for another project on my "some day" list.

phil, I actually have a household sized vacuform for food storage. I'd have to find better plastic to use that didn't have their brand name all over it, but I'm sure that wouldn't be hard. I wonder how the plastic would hold up to sunlight over the long term, in terms of decay and brittleness. Heh...using the washer as an agitator. I don't know why, but it reminded me of the laundromat at my undergrad. They had an extractor you could use, and wooo...that thing would be even better than a washer.

old house lady, I've never seen or heard of that apparently famous door. The forum post about it was hilarious! One of the links within it pointed to the types of metal sheeting I'd considered, with the precut holes (I was thinking either round or possibly quadrafoil.) I can see the lure in playing with them for a door, but for what I had in mind for the windows, not so much since they wouldn't be permanently mounted. Still, notions can change along the way!

[nhguy]

Here's privacy window I made using half of an old sash. The glass is glued on using a waterproof two port epoxy. I've never done stained glass. I dug all kinds of antique bottles in high school and try to come up with crafts to use some of them.

[Willa]

nhguy - that looks great !

Lily - the first stained glass with what looks like pressed glass circles is the same piece with the protruding lids. I feel badly I didn't record the artist's name. I thought the use of these lids was very innovative.

[Lily left the valley]

nhguy, you are another folk more adventurous than I in pushing 2D into the 3D range. I don't know if it's because I can be a bit klutzy at times, or that I grew up in an overprotective home (before helicopter parents).

Willa, that's interesting. I guess I didn't look close enough at the images at the time to realize that. Thank goodness for the internet. We get to see so many interesting things we might never have been able otherwise.

[phil]

With plastic bags and epoxy the trick is that the plastic doesn't stick to the epoxy. It won't bond to plastic. Not only that but the surface of the plastic is very smooth which produces a polished surface on the epoxy

You could put some 5 minute epoxy and some marbles in a sandwich bag to test some ideas even without vacuum

If you use vacuum you'd need a vacuum container that can fill with any excess epoxy it pulls out as you wouldn't want epoxy in the vacuum pump itself

[Lily left the valley]

It's funny, until this moment, I never wondered how the machine works, I just know it does. Very different than when I used similar machines in theatre shops for props and set details. One shop I worked out had a plastic vacuform for pseudo wood details, since they are much lighter and cheaper than traditional trim to put on flats overall.

I hadn't realized you meant to use the bags with the epoxy, to deal with the air bubbles. I was thinking you meant that the plastic sheeting itself would be the suspension method to use it as "sheets".

I'd have to take a closer look at our wee one and see if maybe I could slips in a thin bit of tubing to protect the machine from exiting epoxy since I'm not sure where the air goes when it's expelled. It's been a while since I've used it, and I really never thought about it overly much for how little I use it. I can always take it out when I'm using it as I normally do. That way I wouldn't have to worry about epoxy remaining inside and clogging up the works.

[phil]

If you put a bunch of marbles in a bag and could create a little vacuum it would try to make them go into a ball shape

If you put the balls between two backer sheets spaced about like the marbles they would get forced into a group but couldn't stray from a flat plane. The bag would hug the marbles and not all the epoxy would leave from between the balls.

The plastic might crinkle a little and leave a little pattern from that but I don't think the marbles would be encased so much as held together with a shared membrane , sort of you'd be able to suck most of the epoxy back or use less..

You could pour it full between sheets of plastic but that would take a lot of epoxy and it's expensive

[phil]

I think if you had a strong plastic reservoir like maybe a piece of plastic pipe with end caps that might stop the pump from being able to suck up epoxy which would kill the pump instantly. Vacuum has a strong force so the container would need to be resistant to imploding if you had too much vacuum

[Lily left the valley]

*nods a lot, reading*
I've been pondering the plastics in general, and think I'm going to forget about experimenting with the vacuforms. It just seems like too much work, and I'm not a big fan of plastics in most cases as it is these days. I'm more prone to being ok with spending more time on something/method when I really want it to work, even if it ultimately doesn't.

I do think when I set out to do this, I'm going to try a few smaller samples, as you suggested here, before trying the one I like best in a larger form. I have a few other completely out of left field framing notions that have come up since all the suggestions in this thread, but I'm going to wait, I think, the month to get through closing before I pursue this further in a find out if these other materials might work, get samples of those plus ones already discussed here, and apply the practical applications.

I love this distraction right now, but we still have a lot of boxes that need reorganizing, so I better put my sensible hat back on for while until I can get back to this.

[nhguy]

This is the epoxy I used. https://www.amazon.com/ITW-Devcon-20945 ... waterproof
The waterproof type stays clear. The water resistant version will yellow in sunlight. I found out the hard way the first time I made one of the bottle windows.