Stained glass

A circle is the hardest thing to eyeball and the easiest thing to get wrong. These are the forms that hold one: flat arc segments that snap end to end into a ring you can build against, in the same 15 mm band and on the same clip as the straight bars.

The number on the segment is the opening you get. There are no corners to add anything — each segment's tab lands in its neighbour's socket, so end face meets end face and the bodies close a full circle. The inside faces are cut so their flats sit exactly on the nominal circle, never inside it, because a form that measures under is a form the glass will not fit.

The case is sized from the kit it has to hold, with a hinge that prints in place and comes off the plate working.

An oval is the shape most likely to come out looking like a mistake. Freehand it and one end is fatter than the other; approximate it with arcs and the joins show as flat spots. These are the forms that hold a real one: flat segments that snap end to end into a closed ellipse you can build against, in the same 15 mm band and on the same clip as the straight bars and the round arcs.

The width is a number the rest of the system knows. Each oval breaks at its own axes, so it comes apart across the middle into two halves exactly its width apart — and those butt straight onto a half-round of the same diameter, or a straight run of the same length. An oval is not an island in the kit.

You do not pick a piece list. You choose a proportion, say the smallest and largest width you want, and the kit is solved from that. Each oval is split into as many pieces as your printer's bed calls for — four while a quarter still prints, then eight, and more on a small bed — so a big oval arrives in more pieces rather than not arriving at all.

Metric or imperial, and both interchange with the other two kits. Every piece carries its own oval's size, engraved deep enough to take a second color.

Round work is awkward to display. Lean it against something and it slides; lay it flat and nobody sees it. This holds a plate, a bowl, or a stained glass roundel upright and tipped back, in a slot cut to the piece itself.

The slot is not a size, it is your piece. The stand is built by taking a disc the width and thickness of what you are showing, tipping it back by the lean you chose, and cutting that shape out of a semicircular arch. So the slot follows the outline of the piece rather than approximating it, and the arch is sized in proportion to the piece rather than to a size chart.

The front is open on purpose. The lean is what holds the piece back — gravity does the work — so the front of the arch is cut away to short stubs that stop it sliding forward, and nothing crosses in front of the thing you are trying to look at. A brace across the base ties the feet. Prefer the closed arch? That is one dropdown.

The wedge behind the slot is solved, not styled: a fixed wall survives in front of and behind your piece at every height, and the rear is pushed out as far as it takes to keep the loaded stand from tipping — checked for any weight of piece, since we do not know if yours is glass or earthenware.

Our angle jigs go from 10° to 40° with a common centre, so the pieces you lay in it all rise at exactly the same angle and meet cleanly along every seam.

The whole set bolts into one stack. A post runs through the middle, a keyed head screws in underneath and a knob clamps it down on top. There is no case because there is nothing to put in one: assembled is how it lives on the shelf and how it comes out of the box. The post is cut to the same number of sides as your jigs, so every piece of glass butts squarely against one flat face.

Metric or imperial, in three sizes each. Three, four, five, six, seven or eight facets. Six is a six-petal flower; two adjacent facets of a four is a butterfly's wings; eight is a rosette. Take all seven angles, or the round numbers, or the halves — the two half-sets partition the full ladder exactly, so buying one of each completes the set with nothing duplicated.

Every jig carries its own angle embossed on two faces so it reads on a shelf.