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Photograph. At the left is a picture of Split Rock Lighthouse on Lake Superior in northern Minnesota, not something in stained glass. I searched and searched for 3-D lighthouse patterns, wanting something similar to the one in this picture. It seems there was almost nothing to choose from at the time. Therefore I created my own design. I am not an artist so the pattern for my first lighthouse evolved as I went through the various stages of making one. This is a story in itself. (Click the picture for a larger view.) |
The Lighthouse Storyor
Young girls sometimes play with paper dolls, but how many grown men play with cardboard lighthouses? Maybe I'm the only one? Making the model was a lot like putting a 3-D jigsaw puzzle together. The picture at the right shows the result. The design also includes a guard rail made of wire, around the perimeter of the elevated platform, but I didn't bother to include that in the poster-board model. From there I experimented with the octagonal shape using pieces of glass. One thing I forgot to do originally was take the thickness of the glass into account when arranged in this form. With 1/8-inch-thick glass and no mitering of the edges, a joint between two pieces widens on the outside by just over 3/32 of an inch. I didn't like the unusually wide vertical joints, so I went out and purchased a lamp bit for my grinder. Grinding an 18-degree miter on the edges of pieces that went into the octagonal shape cut the width of the vertical joints roughly in half. One comment I received was that the poster-board model looked somewhat like a bowling pin. So I set about changing the shape and adding color. The lighthouse was intended to be used as a night light, so Lighthouse 1, shown just below this story, contains a low-wattage night-light bulb. The final dimensions are 11 inches high and 4 inches across at the bottom, excluding the base platform. The design has 96 pieces. |
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Lighthouse 1. At the left, my daughter Susan admiring the finished project, and a close-up view at the right. (Click the pictures for larger views.) |
| Lighthouse 2 — the "bowling pin" lighthouse.
Undaunted by the comment about the cardboard model looking like a bowling pin (see story
above) and after successfully completing the first lighthouse, I decided to forge ahead and
create a second lighthouse from my first basic design. This design has 64 pieces of glass; the red
decorative pieces are overlaid on the white. The project contains two 4-watt night-light
bulbs, one in the upper section and one below. The soft glow of the lower bulb imparts an
orange tint to the milky white glass. Total height is 11 inches, no wider overall and no
taller than its counterpart, above.
Yes! This is the stocky look that I wanted initially! (Click the picture for a larger view.) |
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How do you design a 3-D lighthouse if you've never made a 3-D stained glass object in your
whole life? I decided the best way to start was to make a preliminary design and then build
from that using poster board, just to be sure all the angles and dimensions were correct etc.
I opted for an 8-sided object, 10-1/2 inches tall. I wanted it to be stocky, not tall and
skinny. I also wanted the lowest level to have vertical sides, somewhat like in the photograph
above.