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You read a little about "Weedash" but what's the story for Cathedral Glass?  - You start with a piece of cathedral glass, either clear or with color. With a glass cutting tool you now etch a circle shape into the glass with the right diameter for the piece you're trying to create. Next, turn over the sheet  and begin "rapping" carefully along your etched line.  The glass will begin to crack. If you're lucky, this crack will follow along your line all the way around until the circle separates from the sheet. If the bowl is to be scalloped like the grape bowl above, you now take your glass cutter and etch more lines  to create the scalloped edges. Flip it, rap it, and with more luck, you've got a hexagon of flat glass. While all of this is going on, we'll give you some help and let other professional glass cutters cut the shapes in colored glass. For the bowl above, they're cutting leaves and stems in green cathedral glass and chipping "grapes"  in purple and blue. Next, artistically arrange the stems & leaves onto your flat hexagon. Then start piling up the blue and purple chips to form the grape clusters. The result goes into a kiln and the temperature is slowly  raised to about 1590 deg. F. All of the chips, stems, leaves, and the surface of the hexagon will now lose their structure and begin to liquify. At just the right moment, turn off the kiln and let the glass cool and rest.  Again, with luck, all of the pieces have retained their shape and their design but have fused together. You're now halfway home, but your piece is still flat.
Once cooled and rested, your creation now goes back into the kiln, but this time is set on top of a special mold that meets all of the dimensions of the design you first planned and cut  for. The temperature starts to climb and when it gets to about 1560 deg. F,  your flat glass piece starts to gradually lose it's structure and slumps down over the mold. Once it gets just right, turn off the kiln immediately. If the kiln stays that hot for too long, your grapes will melt again and fall off like candle wax. When you're absolute professionals like Plumb Hill Studio, the result isn't luck and the prices can be wonderful for such quality and hard effort.

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