Stained glass for beginners: cutting, grinding, foiling, soldering

This guide walks through the four steps between a printed pattern and a finished panel: scoring and breaking the glass, grinding the piece edges, wrapping copper foil, and soldering the seams. It uses First Cut Medallion, the free pattern on this site, as the working example.

Scoring and breaking

Trace each piece from the numbered pattern onto your glass with a permanent marker, score once along each line with a glass cutter at a steady pace and even pressure, then break along the score with running pliers or by hand over the edge of a table. A clean score sounds like a light zipper, not a scratch; a re-scored line usually breaks unevenly.

Grinding

A wet grinder cleans up the break line and rounds the piece to its exact traced shape. This is also where the pattern's minimum piece width matters in practice: a piece under about 3/8 in wide has very little material left once ground, and is the kind of piece that snaps at the grinder rather than under the cutter. Every pattern on this site is checked to stay above that width at the size you order.

Copper foil

Wrap each ground piece in self-adhesive copper foil tape along its edge, centered so an even lip shows on both the front and back faces, then burnish the foil flat with a fid or the back of a spoon.

Soldering

Flux the foiled seams, then run a bead of solder along every seam with a hot iron, keeping the iron moving so the solder domes evenly instead of pooling. Solder the front side first, flip the panel, and repeat on the back.

See Foil vs Came if you are deciding between techniques before you start, or go straight to the free pattern on the Pattern Sizer tool.