Welcome to my blog. When I was a teen, I started dabbling with coloured glass and stained glass art. Later, I helped work on a number of houses, and my partner and I often changed the windows in those houses. Through that experience, I learned a lot about maintaining, protecting and repairing glass. Currently, I am not working on any projects, so I decided to create a blog full of the information I have learned about glass over the years. Whether you are an artist, a glass installer, a homeowner thinking about new windows or anyone else with a question or concern about glass, this blog is designed for you.
Leadlight doors are installed mostly for their aesthetic appeal. They also offer an additional benefit of being able to achieve multiple designs that you might not be able to achieve with standard glass. You might also find that leadlight doors offer a minimal chance of major glass damage. Here's what you need to know about leadlight doors to understand them better:
A Detailed Description of Leadlight Doors
These are mostly wooden doors that have a section made of glass. The section can either be the top or centre part of the door. If the glass section is located at the centre, it usually runs from top to bottom and is surrounded by a wooden frame.
The glass is not in the form of a large glass panel or pane, but multiple small pieces of glass panels/panes arranged in a particular pattern and separated from each other by a material known as lead cames. The lead cames usually resemble metallic stripes that appear to be surrounding each piece of glass.
The glass pieces can either be stained or not. Most of the time, you may come across stained glass because it is more aesthetically appealing. The staining can be a single colour, multiple colours or an image.
Why is it mentioned above that a leadlight door or glass offers a minimal chance of major glass damage? Since there are multiple pieces of glass panels, if something hard, for example, a rock is thrown towards the leadlight door, it would hit one piece of glass and leave the others intact. Your repair would only be replacing that piece of glass.
Clearing Up a Misconception
Sometimes, people refer to leadlight doors as stained glass doors; this is not entirely true. The correct phrase is leadlight doors that have stained glass.
As long as a door has lead cames, regardless of whether the glass is stained or not, it is referred to as a leadlight door.
Stained glass doors are doors made from glass stained with colour. The glass can either be located on a leadlight door or a typical glass door. That is why not all stained doors are leadlight doors; cames have to be present.
You should also note that the cames are not only made of lead. You can come across others made from other metals.
An Important Point to Note
If your leadlight doors are made from lead, do not DIY repair. Lead is poisonous if you breathe or consume its fine particles. Let a professional handle its repairs, especially if grinding is required.
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