Vitreosity

Light Table for Panel Assembly??

The recent BBC documentary called Britain's Most Fragile Treasure is still online on Youtube. I was watching it again and noticed something curious.

Toward the end, starting at about 49:10, I noticed that the glazing table being used to assemble one of the panels is also a light table.

A screenshot showing that this is a light table.

This is a great idea, especially if you have a delicately painted window where there are very specific lines that need to match up from piece to piece.

But I've never seen a combination of translucent light table and assembly surface. Generally, on assembly surfaces, you need to be able to pound in glazing nails to keep the pieces in place while assembling. All light tables have a surface of either glass or plastic, neither of which can you just start pounding nails into. Most people today assemble stained glass windows on sheets of plywood. So - what materials are being used? What allows for translucency while being able to put nails or stoppers in while assembling?

I think the clue is in the close up shots.

Now, if you look at the close-up you can see the nice layout cartoon with the notations for broken pieces, etc. You can also see a regular pattern of dots which appear to indicate some kind of perforated plastic sheeting, the dots being holes in the plastic, and which receive the nails.
click on the image to see it larger -

So – my guess is that this is using something like a perforated polypropylene pegboard, perhaps similar to that which is shown on this website.

In any case, I want one!!

I’ll update if I get any additional information.

Posted by Tom at November 8, 2011 12:22 AM