What a Wazer to Go

The Wazer: https://wazer.com/

 

I retired last month after working 44 years at a large university. Woo hoo! Some people worried that I’d stay at home, just resting and rusting. Pffft! I've already found a couple new hobbies, one of which is stained glass work.

Nice clean edges, and simple pieces for beginners

The first step on the learning curve was to be certified to operate the Wazer, a water jet cutter, at our nearby makerspace. It was intimidating! It seemed there were so many steps to getting it set up, but after a few runs I gained confidence. Other than glass, the Wazer can cut steel, stone, and tile. When cutting glass, the edges are smooth and no grinding is needed, nor do I need to trace patterns and scribe the glass for manual cutting.

 

Having learned to operate the Wazer, I now needed supplies: solder, copper tape, a fid (to firmly press the copper tape onto each cut piece), flux, flux brushes, flux remover, and a carborundum stone to smooth the one area the Wazer leaves to hold the cut piece in place during the high pressure cutting process.

Ready to assemble? Not yet. The PDF designs I purchased from Etsy needed to be converted into the DXF file format Wazer uses. I thought wrapping copper foil around each piece with only a millimeter of play was difficult, but learning to convert files took much more trial and error! Fortunately, my husband is a wiz with various software applications and patiently walked through the process with me over two days.

So, in addition to learning how to solder stained glass pieces, I’ve now learned to use Inkscape to convert files for the Wazer, create the Wazer files, and save them to an SD card. Whew!

Finally, some completed pieces! My foiling and soldering skills have a Waze to go, but I’m enjoying this new hobby.