when you get your ass handed to you, just hand it right back
May 19, 2023 11:35 AM Subscribe
The always wonderful Simone Giertz accidentally panders directly to me personally by choosing to make a robot out of stained glass.
Just watching it and when she's prancing out of the stained glass store in utter joy, my immersion broke for a moment when I thought "hey, that looks like the Pasadena DMV parking lot near me" and sure enough - it's right across the street from the DMV and next door to the shop that makes the window screens for my house.
So close to an accidental Simone exposure!
posted by drewbage1847 at 12:22 PM on May 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
So close to an accidental Simone exposure!
posted by drewbage1847 at 12:22 PM on May 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm pretty sure there's a reason load-bearing members are seldom made out of glass jigsaw puzzles, but I love Simone Giertz for flouting conventional wisdom.
posted by adamrice at 12:24 PM on May 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by adamrice at 12:24 PM on May 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
For anyone who wants to buy some stained glass supplies from the same place as Simone - https://pasadenastainedglass.com/
Did anyone else grow up with the dangerous cabinet of cut stain glass fragments and easy to open bottles of dangerous chemicals within easy reach of stupidly curious fingers or was that just me?
posted by drewbage1847 at 12:29 PM on May 19, 2023 [6 favorites]
Did anyone else grow up with the dangerous cabinet of cut stain glass fragments and easy to open bottles of dangerous chemicals within easy reach of stupidly curious fingers or was that just me?
posted by drewbage1847 at 12:29 PM on May 19, 2023 [6 favorites]
Did anyone else grow up with the dangerous cabinet of cut stain glass fragments and easy to open bottles of dangerous chemicals within easy reach of stupidly curious fingers or was that just me?
Perhaps there used to be others, but now there’s just you?
posted by notoriety public at 12:54 PM on May 19, 2023 [32 favorites]
Perhaps there used to be others, but now there’s just you?
posted by notoriety public at 12:54 PM on May 19, 2023 [32 favorites]
Did anyone else grow up with the dangerous cabinet of cut stain glass fragments and easy to open bottles of dangerous chemicals within easy reach of stupidly curious fingers or was that just me?
posted by drewbage1847 at 15:29 on May 19 [1 favorite +] [!]
I, too, am a child of the '70s.
posted by slogger at 1:05 PM on May 19, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by drewbage1847 at 15:29 on May 19 [1 favorite +] [!]
I, too, am a child of the '70s.
posted by slogger at 1:05 PM on May 19, 2023 [10 favorites]
I love it. Her videos are always so wonderful.
I'm honestly surprised it worked as well as it did. The original parts were probably precision machined on a mill and could also handle the types of stresses normally found in a robot arm. The glass parts... were not and could not. I'd imagine just a millimeter difference in one side to the other was all it needed to tear the joint apart, a joint that is in no way designed to take that kind of stress. I fully expected the entire thing to shatter the second she tried to move it.
One thing I like about her videos, something that I often see in a lot of maker videos, is that she's not really an expert in anything. Whenever I see her doing something she's clearly doing it for the first time, or she's doing it the way an amateur would do it. She just has that "I can do this" spirit that one needs to make things. Sure, there's nothing like the expert flow of watching a master woodworker or machinist make a thing, but it's just as fun (and important) to see someone getting by with just enough knowledge of the tools at their disposal. I think those are my favorite types of maker videos.
She is an international treasure.
posted by bondcliff at 1:10 PM on May 19, 2023 [12 favorites]
I'm honestly surprised it worked as well as it did. The original parts were probably precision machined on a mill and could also handle the types of stresses normally found in a robot arm. The glass parts... were not and could not. I'd imagine just a millimeter difference in one side to the other was all it needed to tear the joint apart, a joint that is in no way designed to take that kind of stress. I fully expected the entire thing to shatter the second she tried to move it.
One thing I like about her videos, something that I often see in a lot of maker videos, is that she's not really an expert in anything. Whenever I see her doing something she's clearly doing it for the first time, or she's doing it the way an amateur would do it. She just has that "I can do this" spirit that one needs to make things. Sure, there's nothing like the expert flow of watching a master woodworker or machinist make a thing, but it's just as fun (and important) to see someone getting by with just enough knowledge of the tools at their disposal. I think those are my favorite types of maker videos.
She is an international treasure.
posted by bondcliff at 1:10 PM on May 19, 2023 [12 favorites]
I don't watch many of her videos so the chair with the little house for the dog, and the stairs, and then the little sidecar seat - that's all new to me. What a joyous piece of furniture that is
posted by onetime dormouse at 1:14 PM on May 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by onetime dormouse at 1:14 PM on May 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
Grandma cyberpunk is very much in non-shitty territory.
posted by bonehead at 1:14 PM on May 19, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by bonehead at 1:14 PM on May 19, 2023 [4 favorites]
I'm pretty sure there's a reason load-bearing members are seldom made out of glass jigsaw puzzles, but I love Simone Giertz for flouting conventional wisdom.
That was pretty much my reaction to. I was like "this seems like a pretty bad idea, let's see where she goes with it!"
What really jumped out to me was how the way this failed is not what I think most non-stained glass folks would guess to be the failure mode. It wasn't breaking glass! Which, hey, glass is fragile if you hit in any number of ways, but it's also pretty strong otherwise. It's certainly strong enough to handle the load of the weight and mild torque of that robot arm.
What failed was solder and adhesive. And it failed in what was, when I saw it, a pretty immediate "oof, bud, yeah..." way. When you use the copper foil technique she used (and I use, and is very much the way to go for smaller and also 3D work), you take each piece of glass, wrap the edges in thin copper foil tape with adhesive on the back, and then you solder those copper edges together.
And the thing is, lead/tin solder is fairly soft stuff. You can dent it, scratch it, bend or cut it with a pair of pliers, etc. It's, well, pliable. So you put a load on that stuff, it's prone to bend on you. Does a good job of holding glass together under a normal static load of just hanging in a window, not so great if you really apply a lot of extra pulling force. (Or do a normal amount for decades or centuries at a time, which is why old church windows need releading eventually even if they're otherwise fine.)
But worse, the adhesive on the copper tape is really perfunctory. You're not cementing that foil to the glass pieces, you're just sort of sticking it on, long enough to reinforce it with solder. So if you end up pulling the solder-and-tape away from the glass edge its attached to, its not going to hold on very well or very long. This is part of why any free-hanging stained glass pane above a certain size will usually have an extra lead or zinc or wood frame around it, to have a lot more strength than the solder lines internal to a piece.
So. Take a couple pieces of glass, stick copper foil to them, solder along those copper seams (or on the exterior edges, just solder along the gap between pieces). It'll hold itself together okay resting there. But you apply some amount of torque laterally to that and it'll fall right apart. The torque doesn't have to be alllll that much unfortunately.
posted by cortex at 1:27 PM on May 19, 2023 [8 favorites]
That was pretty much my reaction to. I was like "this seems like a pretty bad idea, let's see where she goes with it!"
What really jumped out to me was how the way this failed is not what I think most non-stained glass folks would guess to be the failure mode. It wasn't breaking glass! Which, hey, glass is fragile if you hit in any number of ways, but it's also pretty strong otherwise. It's certainly strong enough to handle the load of the weight and mild torque of that robot arm.
What failed was solder and adhesive. And it failed in what was, when I saw it, a pretty immediate "oof, bud, yeah..." way. When you use the copper foil technique she used (and I use, and is very much the way to go for smaller and also 3D work), you take each piece of glass, wrap the edges in thin copper foil tape with adhesive on the back, and then you solder those copper edges together.
And the thing is, lead/tin solder is fairly soft stuff. You can dent it, scratch it, bend or cut it with a pair of pliers, etc. It's, well, pliable. So you put a load on that stuff, it's prone to bend on you. Does a good job of holding glass together under a normal static load of just hanging in a window, not so great if you really apply a lot of extra pulling force. (Or do a normal amount for decades or centuries at a time, which is why old church windows need releading eventually even if they're otherwise fine.)
But worse, the adhesive on the copper tape is really perfunctory. You're not cementing that foil to the glass pieces, you're just sort of sticking it on, long enough to reinforce it with solder. So if you end up pulling the solder-and-tape away from the glass edge its attached to, its not going to hold on very well or very long. This is part of why any free-hanging stained glass pane above a certain size will usually have an extra lead or zinc or wood frame around it, to have a lot more strength than the solder lines internal to a piece.
So. Take a couple pieces of glass, stick copper foil to them, solder along those copper seams (or on the exterior edges, just solder along the gap between pieces). It'll hold itself together okay resting there. But you apply some amount of torque laterally to that and it'll fall right apart. The torque doesn't have to be alllll that much unfortunately.
posted by cortex at 1:27 PM on May 19, 2023 [8 favorites]
I don't watch many of her videos so the chair with the little house for the dog, and the stairs, and then the little sidecar seat - that's all new to me. What a joyous piece of furniture that is
Here's the video where she built it!
posted by mosst at 1:47 PM on May 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
Here's the video where she built it!
posted by mosst at 1:47 PM on May 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
I think I would have reinforced it with some brazed copper rod in places - just thin stuff, say 2mm. I'd imagine that would give it a lot more rigidity. You probably wouldn't even notice it once it's covered in solder and given a patina.
posted by pipeski at 1:48 PM on May 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by pipeski at 1:48 PM on May 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
I love her I love her I love her so much.
posted by Joey Michaels at 1:49 PM on May 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Joey Michaels at 1:49 PM on May 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
That was very cool. What I love also, besides the end result, is just looking at the workshops in construction/ craft videos. There should be a website with just pictures of various workshops.
posted by clavdivs at 1:52 PM on May 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by clavdivs at 1:52 PM on May 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
A long time ago she asked people to submit videos of things they built and she would rate them and I submitted a video of a thing I made with my daughter and I don't remember what she rated it but she did say that she wished I were her dad and I hope someone puts that in my obituary.
posted by bondcliff at 1:52 PM on May 19, 2023 [28 favorites]
posted by bondcliff at 1:52 PM on May 19, 2023 [28 favorites]
That... actually made me cry. How beautiful.
posted by metametamind at 1:54 PM on May 19, 2023
posted by metametamind at 1:54 PM on May 19, 2023
Can we put her in charge of all STEM education? This is how fun engineering should be.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 2:09 PM on May 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 2:09 PM on May 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm enjoying her frustration, and her new red hair (looks like mine), and that she's gone back to a "shitty" (???) robot.
I have tried stained glass and it was pretty effing hard. The sheer preciseness of the cutting, and getting the goddamned foil to stick/stay on the glass edges, really made me nuts. With you there, cortex.
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:10 PM on May 19, 2023
I have tried stained glass and it was pretty effing hard. The sheer preciseness of the cutting, and getting the goddamned foil to stick/stay on the glass edges, really made me nuts. With you there, cortex.
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:10 PM on May 19, 2023
Every now and then, I imagine myself in a different timeline. A timeline in which I'm very smart and capable and have that great back wall of ALL THE TOOLS! And my name is Simone.
posted by SPrintF at 2:22 PM on May 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by SPrintF at 2:22 PM on May 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
The reason there was a seam in her glass was because it was surrounding a hole. I wonder if it would have worked to strengthen that seam by making two layers of glass, and having the seam in a different direction in the other one, and then soldering them together at the edges. Into plyglass.
posted by aubilenon at 2:40 PM on May 19, 2023
posted by aubilenon at 2:40 PM on May 19, 2023
Probably the most likable person I’ve seen on YouTube yet, and I don't hesitate to describe her as a genius as well, but the amount of exposure to VOCs she routinely subjects herself to absolutely makes me cringe!
The burnt matchstick in resin tabletop and Truckla stand out in memory, but it’s a constant of the work of hers I’ve looked at.
posted by jamjam at 2:52 PM on May 19, 2023
The burnt matchstick in resin tabletop and Truckla stand out in memory, but it’s a constant of the work of hers I’ve looked at.
posted by jamjam at 2:52 PM on May 19, 2023
I love Simone so much! I really enjoy that she leaves mistakes and her frustrations in the video, and then you get to see her figure it out.
I was working my association's conference in March and an attendee came up to our registration booth. He was wearing the Screw Ring that she designed and I had to say something but in a casually professional way that didn't make me look too excited.
"I like your ring."
"Thanks!"
"Do you ... watch YouTube?"
"Yessssss?"
(Kim drops her professional facade)" IS THAT SIMONE'S RING!?"
(Attendee drops his professional facade) "YES! I LOVE HER VIDEOS!"
"ME TOOOOOO!"
It was fun to see another fan in the wild. :)
posted by kimberussell at 4:10 PM on May 19, 2023 [11 favorites]
I was working my association's conference in March and an attendee came up to our registration booth. He was wearing the Screw Ring that she designed and I had to say something but in a casually professional way that didn't make me look too excited.
"I like your ring."
"Thanks!"
"Do you ... watch YouTube?"
"Yessssss?"
(Kim drops her professional facade)" IS THAT SIMONE'S RING!?"
(Attendee drops his professional facade) "YES! I LOVE HER VIDEOS!"
"ME TOOOOOO!"
It was fun to see another fan in the wild. :)
posted by kimberussell at 4:10 PM on May 19, 2023 [11 favorites]
Robot: 'What is my purpose?'
Simone: 'You make tea; Also you're freaking beautiful.'
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 5:27 PM on May 19, 2023 [5 favorites]
Simone: 'You make tea; Also you're freaking beautiful.'
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 5:27 PM on May 19, 2023 [5 favorites]
I, too, am a child of the '70s.
Aw, all I got was macrame
posted by ctmf at 6:16 PM on May 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
Aw, all I got was macrame
posted by ctmf at 6:16 PM on May 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
Robot: 'What is my purpose?'
Simone: 'You make tea; Also you're freaking beautiful.'
The Golem of Chartes.
posted by jamjam at 6:51 PM on May 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Simone: 'You make tea; Also you're freaking beautiful.'
The Golem of Chartes.
posted by jamjam at 6:51 PM on May 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
A step backwards is still a step, and my fitness tracker still counted it towards my daily goal.
I didn't know how much I needed those words until I heard them. Thanks, Simone.
posted by lock robster at 10:57 PM on May 19, 2023 [5 favorites]
I didn't know how much I needed those words until I heard them. Thanks, Simone.
posted by lock robster at 10:57 PM on May 19, 2023 [5 favorites]
Thanks for sharing this Cortex. It was a lot of fun watching all her trial and error and a good reminder that sometimes things just don't fit right. I like what she said after the second set-back, "A step back is still a step." Her persistence and adaptability paid off in the end and she turned out such a beautiful creation. Love it.
posted by Fizz at 4:57 AM on May 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Fizz at 4:57 AM on May 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
There should be a website with just pictures of various workshops.
Every so often Fine Wiodworking has most of an issue on them.
I love how different that can be for putatively similar work.
posted by clew at 8:21 AM on May 20, 2023
Every so often Fine Wiodworking has most of an issue on them.
I love how different that can be for putatively similar work.
posted by clew at 8:21 AM on May 20, 2023
She's so much fun and Commander Scraps is a perfect dog.
I don't really have a lot of interest in making "tech"-y things, but she does make it seem approachable and like it is just playing. I like how much she combines artistry with the more technical side of things. Not enough people do that.
I also love her spirit of "why not?" Why not make a robot out of stained glass? There is just something so free about how her mind works and I find that inspiring.
My only complaint is that she doesn't release enough videos! (I have watched the doggie selfie booth one several times, though. It's a comfort and lots of Commander Scraps, who I already noted is perfect.)
posted by edencosmic at 2:09 PM on May 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
I don't really have a lot of interest in making "tech"-y things, but she does make it seem approachable and like it is just playing. I like how much she combines artistry with the more technical side of things. Not enough people do that.
I also love her spirit of "why not?" Why not make a robot out of stained glass? There is just something so free about how her mind works and I find that inspiring.
My only complaint is that she doesn't release enough videos! (I have watched the doggie selfie booth one several times, though. It's a comfort and lots of Commander Scraps, who I already noted is perfect.)
posted by edencosmic at 2:09 PM on May 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
I love the look of solder flowing on foil.
I've mostly given up doing glass, but I fixed an old one just last night.
posted by MtDewd at 5:55 AM on May 21, 2023
I've mostly given up doing glass, but I fixed an old one just last night.
posted by MtDewd at 5:55 AM on May 21, 2023
I wonder if she'd have had more luck if she used something like a waterjet or ring saw to eliminate or limit the number of 'break' points/solder lines. I'm not sure if this would have just failed in a different way, but I'm curious!
Also, it's really nice to see a thriving stained glass retail store. My family operated a retail store for stained glass hobbyists alongside a studio (for custom work and repairs) for 30 years before they had to close up the retail shop. Too much square footage, not enough customers and profit. There seems to have been a bit of a boom in interest in stained glass recently though - sometimes I wonder if it'd be successful again if they brought back the retail side of the shop.
posted by rachaelfaith at 8:00 AM on May 21, 2023
Also, it's really nice to see a thriving stained glass retail store. My family operated a retail store for stained glass hobbyists alongside a studio (for custom work and repairs) for 30 years before they had to close up the retail shop. Too much square footage, not enough customers and profit. There seems to have been a bit of a boom in interest in stained glass recently though - sometimes I wonder if it'd be successful again if they brought back the retail side of the shop.
posted by rachaelfaith at 8:00 AM on May 21, 2023
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