Making a large Tiffany mirror for outdoors
One of the things I always wanted to do was to make a large Tiffany mirror for in my garden. Such a mirror would optically enlarge the garden, and would partly hide the neighbour's house from sight. It was August 2005 when I started on this project. Below is a summary for those of you who take an interest in the various problems that needed to be addressed.
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| Tiffany mirror in garden by day and by night, with backlighting. | |
Size: 177 cm high, 80 cm wide.
Studio requirements: The Tiffany mirror needs to be on a flat surface, so that the pieces can be properly assembled and soldered. You therefore need a large, flat table for this project.
Turning the object: Both the front and the back of the workpiece need to be soldered. Therefore do the assembly of the various pieces on a flat and sturdy board, so that after soldering the front part you can turn the workpiece on its front without braking it. However, after soldering its back you must be able to turn it over again to do the finishing at the front. Hence you need two boards to sandwich the mirror while turning it. They should be sufficiently stiff to prevent the mirror from bending and cracking. Hold everything together with ropes or strip; put a protective cover on the glass before sandwiching it between the boards.
Mounting: A workpiece that is 177 cm high is quite flexible; hence it can easily break. I used strong but light metal curtain rods with a plastic protective sheet to provide the finished workpiece with a stiff skeleton. To that end the rods were perforated in various places, copper wire (from electric wiring) pulled through the holes and soldered to the back of the mirror. The whole assembly was mounted in a sturdy hardwood frame.
Inside the hardwood frame I mounted 3 TL-tubes of 8 W and another one of 16 W, so that the light would shine through the Tiffany glass in the evening. At this stage I regretted that I had bought rather cheap mirrors, because they were not completely opaque. Although the amount of light that shone through the mirror part was not dramatic, it was definitely too much. I therefore painted the back of the mirror parts black.
With a view to securing structural integrity, as well as to protecting the electric components from moisture, the frame was fitted with a trespa back cover. Where these covered the 4 TL-fittings (i.e. at the sides of the trespa backing) I cut out rectangular pieces using a jigsaw; the inside and outside of the openings were covered with strips of trespa, between which the rectangular pieces that I had removed could slide. Thus I had a more or less watertight construction which still allowed me to renew a TL tube should the need arise.
The wooden frame's 35 cm legs were firmly based into the soil. The frame was not put flat to the wall, as that would prevent access to the hatches in the back. Instead it was fastened at the top to a hardwood pole dug sufficiently deep into the soil, so that the whole construction is stable.